Caught My Boyfriend Texting Another Girl

by Tara Block 5

This question is from a Group Therapy post in our community. Add your advice in the comments!

I'm in a committed relationship with my boyfriend of one year. We live together and recently moved into a new place. Our relationship, like most, started out great. He made me feel like the most special girl and like he only had eyes for me. In turn, I have been 100 percent faithful to him. He spent a month and a half in jail, and I waited for him, even at the beginning of our relationship. I am crazy about him and love him very much.

Of course, we have our troubles, but in recent times, things have gotten worse. His trust for me has diminished for no apparent reason. He will literally, out of nowhere, come at me with crazy accusations of cheating and being unfaithful (talking to guys, "lying" about where I am, etc.) — typical insecure guy behavior. But I've experienced this type of thing time and time again with men and almost every time I have been correct. When a man accuses you of cheating for no good reason, usually he is the one who is guilty. I am fully aware of this, in fact, it has a name: projection. It means, when someone has guilty feelings about something, they put them — in other words, "project" them — onto someone else in order to take the focus off themselves and put it on another. Apparently, this is a definite trait in narcissistic men, and I fear lately that maybe my boyfriend is a narcissist.

I catch him in strange, small lies. I feel he has developed an ego. Like this evening, he left to go to the store. He left his phone on the counter. I've had trust issues with him in the past and have caught him talking inappropriately to other girls before, so I couldn't help myself. I snooped. I'm sure a lot of girls can relate to this — we know it's wrong to snoop, but a women's intuition usually never lies. When we get a feeling something is up, it usually is. So sure enough, I found a text from him to a girl. A name was not saved in his phone, just a number. He said, "Hey babe, forgot to give you the new number, so this is it. It's that sexy guy [his name]."

I automatically got really upset. I have been starting to think things have been better with us, and I felt as though we were moving forward. Turns out I was wrong. Basically, my problem is that I feel it is wrong for a partner to call someone else "babe" or "baby," especially if that is the name they use for their boyfriend or girlfriend, as it is for us. My boyfriend calls me babe; I'm supposed to be his babe. So of course, it was really hurtful to see him say it to someone else. It made me feel like he doesn't only have eyes for me, and I definitely don't feel special anymore.

I confronted him when he got home, and he instantly went into defensive mode. He turned it all around on me and acted like he was mad at me because I snooped. Even though I had found something incriminating on his part, somehow I was still in the wrong. I told him I looked because I had a bad feeling he was hiding something. Obviously he wouldn't want me seeing what he said to the girl. I told him how it made me feel, how it is going to be much harder to trust him, and how it makes me look like a complete fool to this girl who knows he has a girlfriend. He stuck to his guns and he is still acting angry with me. I feel as though he could possibly be a narcissist because I do not feel as though he can ever put himself in my shoes and truly feel compassion or empathy or really understand how his actions negatively affected my emotions.

A few months ago, a guy I worked with texted me and called me babe. My boyfriend flipped, and it took forever for him to let it go and it wasn't even me saying it! He twists everything around to be my fault, no matter if he is in the wrong or not. Most of the time when we argue, he will get mad and threaten to leave or say, "Well, why don't you just break up with me then? I know you want to!" It's hard for me because I really want this to work out, and breaking up is the last thing I want to do. He uses the "I know how you really feel" lines on me and often tries to imply that I don't care. When the truth is, I feel that it is him who doesn't! I care very much and show him often. I really need some advice on how to deal with this type of an issue and this type of a man. Can anyone relate? Please let me know. Any advice is appreciated — thanks.

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