Dear Miss U,
I have been with my boyfriend for 2 years later this month. He moved in with me at the beginning of last year, so has been living at our place for 1.8 years… the first year was fine we lived together. I started working away for 2 weeks home for 1 at the beginning of this year.
So my question is (finally) is it normal for him to have excessive amounts of porn on his laptop – I don’t think he was like this when we were living together (although I never checked.) He also has been Facebooking a work colleague almost every day about random stuff and the messages are similar to what we used to say to each other before we started dating. Am I being ridiculous? I have no one to turn too, I have seemed to have lost all my friends since I started working away. Please help :/
Courtney
Dear Courtney,
How much is “excessive” amounts of porn? I’m sure that’s subjective, and that your version of excessive and his might not match up. I know in our early twenties I’d have said Mr. E’s collection was excessive while he’d argue it was impressive, instead. Personally I think keeping a large amount of porn is pretty normal. Who wants to use the same material over and over again? People like variety, that’s why we don’t cook the exact same thing for dinner every night and the majority of women own way too many shoes they hardly ever wear. With that said, is porn interfering with his life? Does he stay home to watch porn instead of hanging out with his friends? Is he using it several times a day? Does he talk about it a lot, or make excuses not to talk to you so that he can go watch porn? Does he insist on watching porn while you are getting intimate with each other? Are there times when you’ve approached him for sex but he hasn’t been interested because he’s already masturbated that day? These are the kind of things to watch out for, basic criteria to help you determine if there’s a problem or if he just likes variety or to collect. Don’t dismiss the latter there by the way, collecting porn is quite a normal thing for young men to do. At least with most things being digital now his porn hording won’t take up large amounts of space and you won’t have to move it to dust.
I always think that it’s much better for my partner to be watching porn and taking care of his own needs while I’m away than finding someone closer to scratch that itch with. Porn can be your friend in that respect.
As for this other woman on Facebook, I would recommend trusting your instinct. I imagine that for you to be snooping through his laptop, checking his porn stash and reading his messages you must have had some reason to be suspicious. If you have a gut feeling about something, listen to it. Know this however: you will almost always find something you don’t like when you look through other people’s personal items. This is for a few reasons: 1) because you’re already in the mindset that there’s some wrong-doing to be uncovered; 2) because people generally are horrible in the privacy of our own minds. There’s a lot you (and I) would not want other people to see, because they can’t know what we were thinking and feeling at the time we wrote it, or can’t accurately guess at our motives for keeping an item. We all have secrets or things that whilst aren’t secrets we wouldn’t want being stumbled upon when we weren’t able to defend ourselves because 3) we all like our privacy.
If you are concerned about something, talk to your partner. It is the best way to get answers. After that if you still have an uneasiness you can’t shake, trust your intuition.
Hello my name is Nick and my girlfriend’s name is Haley. We’ve been together for 5 months now and things have been tough like any relationship, but we have been amazing otherwise.
We fell in love with each other quickly and have talked about getting married and having kids. Which is something neither one of us had ever wanted in the past. She’s my everything and I’d do anything for this girl. She’s perfect to me and I really want our future together and I know she does too.
The reason I’ve come to you is because I’m becoming desperate on what to do. Since we started dating I’ve made many attempts to go see her. Early on she would cancel or something, but now she’s just avoiding the subject all together. She says she’s afraid of our relationship changing or us not connecting in person. She knows I’m real and I know she’s real from pictures. I’ve told her that it has to happen at some point for us to process as a couple and that I believe we’re soul mates so it will be perfect and amazing.
She’s becoming so scared that she is dumping me. She’s afraid of losing me if we meet, but what future can we have over a phone?
Please I’m begging for advice on how I can get her to want to see me. I’ve been patient and I will continue to be with her, but my heart is breaking because she won’t stop dumping me because she thinks I deserve someone better even though all I want is her, but what future can we have if we never see each other? I love this girl so much. Please help
Nick
Hello Nick,
I have two thoughts about this. Perhaps it is just too soon for her to consider meeting in person yet as you’ve only been together just shy of six months. That might legitimately make her uneasy, and perhaps you need to drop the subject entirely for a little while. My second thought is that perhaps she isn’t who she makes out to be. Pictures are very easy to fake and are absolutely no guarantee that the person you are chatting with looks like that or is even the same gender and age. I highly recommend investing in web cams.
It is far easier to transition from video calling to talking in person than it is to go from other communication methods to being in each other’s physical presence.
As you have said, there is no future for your relationship if it can not progress. Inevitably it will change. She needs to decide if she’s willing to let it change for the better (progression) or for the worse (discontinuing the relationship entirely.) I recommend giving her another six months. If by your one year anniversary she is still not interested in meeting you, heartbreaking as it is, you will need to move on.
You can’t make her have faith in the relationship, you can only be the best you that you know how to be and hope that it will be enough for her to take the chance.
