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Carolyn Hax: Sure, all couples have their problems. But this issue is a red flag.
This is evidently a rerun from 2005, so I'm sticking the whole thing under the cut.
Dear Carolyn: For the past 3½ years I have been in a relationship with a great guy and I'm really happy. Sure, we've had our share of problems but what couple hasn't?
I have a problem with other guys though. I get hit on fairly often. Usually it's from a sleaze on the street or something I can just blow off with, "Oh, no, I have a boyfriend."
Recently, I went back to finish college and I've met some great people I enjoy talking with, but they're "school friends" and that's it. I was always "one of the guys" in high school and am more comfortable talking to guys. My boyfriend doesn't like or understand this since he doesn't have any female friends except for his friends' girlfriends.
Also, he's 30, I'm 21. He worries that I might meet some other punky artist like myself, closer to my age, and fall for him. But he really has nothing to worry about. I love him and I would never cheat.
This past semester there was a guy in my photo class who I had a lot in common with and ended up talking to a lot. He just emailed me about how much he likes me and how he was too shy to ask me out. I feel really bad now. He's a really nice person, very attractive and fun to hang out with, but I have no romantic interest in him. I'm used to blowing off strangers, but here is a great person who if I were single I'd go for. What do I do?
— Flattered but Unavailable
Flattered but Unavailable: Unavailable. Yes. You mentioned that. Several times in several hundred words, many of which I cut or condensed, over acres of excuses preceding a question that you needed only your last two lines and none of the background information to ask.
(And that all of us can answer in one sentence: Tell him he’s great but your feelings for him aren’t romantic. Unless they are?)
Which means we’ve either taken a long walk through the daisies to answer an obvious question, or you won’t admit your real concern: that you’re in a rocky relationship with a jealous, possessive guy who at 26 picked out a 17-year-old, and you’d like to get out and feel fresh air in your lungs and discover yourself and maybe eventually date nice photo-class guy.
If that’s not your real concern, then it should be. If you need to play up your boyfriend devotion and play down other male attention sooo thoroughly and irrelevantly to me — a completely neutral stranger — then I can only imagine how doggedly you’ve had to reassure your skeptical boyfriend. And that’s not something you bat away with “Don’t we all have problems?”
This. Is. Bad. News.
He doesn’t trust you, will never trust you, and it has nothing to do with your loving him enough (or not) or cheating on him (or swearing you won’t) or having male friends (or not) or getting whistled at on the street (or scaring the tourists). He’s looking for guarantees in a world that, sorry dude, doesn’t offer them, and he’s going to pressure you for them till someone breaks. Get out, now, while you can.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/carolyn-hax-sure-all-couples-have-their-problems-but-this-issue-is-a-red-flag/2019/12/22/2d787a84-236f-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html
Dear Carolyn: For the past 3½ years I have been in a relationship with a great guy and I'm really happy. Sure, we've had our share of problems but what couple hasn't?
I have a problem with other guys though. I get hit on fairly often. Usually it's from a sleaze on the street or something I can just blow off with, "Oh, no, I have a boyfriend."
Recently, I went back to finish college and I've met some great people I enjoy talking with, but they're "school friends" and that's it. I was always "one of the guys" in high school and am more comfortable talking to guys. My boyfriend doesn't like or understand this since he doesn't have any female friends except for his friends' girlfriends.
Also, he's 30, I'm 21. He worries that I might meet some other punky artist like myself, closer to my age, and fall for him. But he really has nothing to worry about. I love him and I would never cheat.
This past semester there was a guy in my photo class who I had a lot in common with and ended up talking to a lot. He just emailed me about how much he likes me and how he was too shy to ask me out. I feel really bad now. He's a really nice person, very attractive and fun to hang out with, but I have no romantic interest in him. I'm used to blowing off strangers, but here is a great person who if I were single I'd go for. What do I do?
— Flattered but Unavailable
Flattered but Unavailable: Unavailable. Yes. You mentioned that. Several times in several hundred words, many of which I cut or condensed, over acres of excuses preceding a question that you needed only your last two lines and none of the background information to ask.
(And that all of us can answer in one sentence: Tell him he’s great but your feelings for him aren’t romantic. Unless they are?)
Which means we’ve either taken a long walk through the daisies to answer an obvious question, or you won’t admit your real concern: that you’re in a rocky relationship with a jealous, possessive guy who at 26 picked out a 17-year-old, and you’d like to get out and feel fresh air in your lungs and discover yourself and maybe eventually date nice photo-class guy.
If that’s not your real concern, then it should be. If you need to play up your boyfriend devotion and play down other male attention sooo thoroughly and irrelevantly to me — a completely neutral stranger — then I can only imagine how doggedly you’ve had to reassure your skeptical boyfriend. And that’s not something you bat away with “Don’t we all have problems?”
This. Is. Bad. News.
He doesn’t trust you, will never trust you, and it has nothing to do with your loving him enough (or not) or cheating on him (or swearing you won’t) or having male friends (or not) or getting whistled at on the street (or scaring the tourists). He’s looking for guarantees in a world that, sorry dude, doesn’t offer them, and he’s going to pressure you for them till someone breaks. Get out, now, while you can.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/carolyn-hax-sure-all-couples-have-their-problems-but-this-issue-is-a-red-flag/2019/12/22/2d787a84-236f-11ea-86f3-3b5019d451db_story.html
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If this is from 2005, I wonder what LW chose to do in the end...
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He knows this, in a way where I've told him so that he knows what the issues are going on inside my head.
And that's it. He still socializes with his female friends, still probably sees his friend/co-worker Jessie more than he sees me because that's just how our schedules work, and I don't read their messages, don't ask him not to spend time with them, don't try to limit them in any way. I just make sure he knows that I feel threatened and am insecure, and also that I know that's pathological and it's my problem.
There's a big difference between worrying about your SO falling for someone else and acting to control them in a way that just makes it more likely.