Broke up with boyfriend b/c he couldn't stop browsing dating website

[June16]

I just broke up with my boyfriend yesterday out of anger and frustration because he couldn't quit logging into the dating website where we met each other a year and a half ago. We are both 27. Three months into the relationship, I found out he put up a new photo in his profile. I confronted him about it and he agreed to delete it. He later closed his profile, but my trust in him has been deteriorating since then. I keep checking back on that site to see if he has set up a new profile and I am sure he has used at least 2 different ones since the day he closed the old account. He didn't put up any photos in those profiles but I was sure that they belong to him because the profiles just fit him perfectly.

 

Things were great for the first three months until we wrote the CFA exam together last June. I didn't think I passed but turned out I did. However, he failed and his score was way below his expectation. He told me his score as soon as he knew it and asked how I did. I actually knew my result but I didn't know how to tell him that because I was very sure I had failed and told him there was not a chance that I could pass the exam. He actually got angry at me because of it and accused me of destroying his study plans because I was constantly complaining about how hard the material was. I never realized I was actually complaining until he pointed it out. We talked on the phone everyday until the exam day and sometimes I did say that I felt some part of the material was hard to grasp. I think part of it was my fault because as he said since we were both going to write the exam I shouldn't have complain that much and if he wasn't writing then my behaviour would have been acceptable. He complained about his frustration and how I messed up his exam about an hour on the phone during his lunch break a few days later. I understood how disappointed he was because failing means you have to wait a whole year to retake the exam. He said the best scenario would be we both had passed or failed. I think he was just being insecure and couldn't let me-the girlfriend-to surpass him. He was also competitive with me in other fields. Sometimes he would ask me to do the typing test with him and see who's faster. Most of the time, I won. I just wanted to see how fast I could type but I never really saw it as a contest. I really don't care who's better than the other because I think one's strengths could make up for the other's weaknesses. Obviously, he didn't see it this way or maybe I was being naive.

 

I later bought two soccer tickets because he has always been the one planning for our activities and I thought it was my turn to take the initiative and hopefully it could distract him a little bit from feeling bad about his exam result. But he wasn't happy at all when i told him I bought the tickets. He thought the reason I had the money to spend on the tickets was because I saved myself 800 bucks from retaking the exam next year. I never thought he could make such a big deal out of it. I tried to explain to him it wasn't what he thought and all I did was trying to let him have some fun, but he could hardly agree with me on my motivation. I thought he was just being insecure and I wasn't being as sensitive as he was.

 

So things have been going all downhill since July. I thought he just lost his interest because I found out he put up that new photo in his online dating profile around that time. I was hurt and angry and asked him if he wanted to stay together anymore. He broke down and cried and said his mother's visitor visa got rejected and he was concerned with his mother's health ( It wasn't anything serious, just something very common at her mom's age, like joint pain. But I really respects the way he treats his parents and I think this is a huge reason why I stayed him for so long.) He is very good to his parents now because he didn't talk to his parents for a year after they had forced him to break up with his first girlfriend. He's doing everything he could to make up to his parents.) He also told me that his family would be his major focus for the next couple of years and he was sure that if we were to break up one day, I would be the dumper. I think once again it was his failure at the exam that made him so insecure.

 

We had a break of 3 weeks in November but got back together. The reason for this breakup was that he never brought me to his apartment when his landlord was in. His landlord is a single mother and he lives with her and her kid. And because I have been building up the trust issues since the day I found out about the new photo, I thought it was all because he didn't want anyone to know about me so he could just go out with other girls on the dating site.

 

He has his phone on silent most of the time whether when he is with me or by himself. Most of the time when I call, nobody answers it. But he would always call back within a short period of time. But when he didn't call back within like 2-3 hours, I would get really paranoid and think he's out on dates with other girls. I asked his roommate on facebook about it and he said my ex was always like that. My ex also told me this was the way he was gonna be like for the rest of his life and it was up to me whether I adapt to it or not.

 

Fast forward to what led to our breakup. I had this huge fight with him last friday night. He called me after work and I said I felt down and wanted to go to his place on that night. He said he was tired and didn't even asked about what my problem was. He was in a rush to go down to the subway and just ended the call in a rush.

I felt ignored and that he didn't care about me. I called later on that night but nobody answered. Then I got paranoid again and called him like 20 times straight and sent like 20 messages. I couldn't control the urge to find out what he was actually doing and i texted something like "if you are ever gonna cheat, I would never forgive you." He called back after 12am and it sounded like he was standing in the hallway. So I questioned him about where he was and he got really annoyed about the messages i sent him. He didn't wanna argue with me or say anything, so I just hung up. Then I realized what I said might be out of the line and completely out of distrust so I apologized right away and told him I was mad because he didn't want to console me when I was feeling down earlier that night. I also left some angry msgs on MSN. I was fed up with the fact he were never there when i wanted to talk to him and said some hurtful things. I told him if he would have started preparing for the exam way earlier, he would have a chance at passing and I was disappointed at him. ( We just wrote another CFA exam this June. He didn't feel he could pass the same level this time around and I was writing the higher level.)

 

I realized I must have hurt his feelings by through those messages. I admit I have a problem with containing my anger whenever he becomes MIA. I could never say those hurtful words to him face to face but I can leave them on MSN. I wasn't being serious when I wrote them. All I did was venting but I then realized everything you say has a consequence. So I apologized to him very sincerely the next day by leaving a few offline msgs on MSN. He didn't call on saturday and I thought he must still be mad at me. I sent him a msg on Sunday night telling him I really missed him and hope he had a good weekend. He later called back in 30 mins but wasn't enthusiastic at all.

 

I sent him a short sweet text on monday and he called back after work said he would work late shift for the whole week, which is true. Still, not enthusiastic to talk to me. So i apologized again on late monday night via SMS and said I was sorry for those words I said. I also told him the reason why I picked up fights with him was because his checking the dating website has made it hard for me to trust him and things got worse especially when he wasn't picking up the phone. I said I wanted to fix the problem even it would take a long time for things to go back on track and I wanted to be with him forever.

He replied by text the next morning saying he has to work late shift this week and wants me to take care. We didn't communicate on Wednesday. On thursday night, I found out he logged into the dating website again and I was furious. I called him at night when he was still at work and told him that if things are over between us I would like to give back his stuff. He called back and I asked him if he still wanted to be together, and he said he was at work and didn't want to talk about it right now. So out of anger and frustration, I packed all his stuff including my birthday gift and dropped them in front of his apartment on that night when he hasn't got home. I texted him that I couldn't deal with the dating site thing anymore and there was no need for us to meet anymore.

 

However, when i went to bed that night, i started to miss him terribly and felt horrible for returning his stuff in such a cold way. Once again, I felt I had hurt his feelings and thought I let my emotion take the best of me and did something without thinking about the consequence. He is a nice person in general. He is respectful and never forced me to do anything. He never took his anger out on me like i did him. Sometimes I felt I was a bit too controlling coz I always wanted him to call me back within a short period of time and I always wanted to fix our problems on spot without giving it time and patience. There were a few times that I would call him 20 times nonstop on a friday night. And sometimes I felt I was too unwilling to lose him so I chased him too much by forgiving him very quickly because I was worried that he would leave me for some girl on the dating site. I just don't know how to deal with crisis in a relationship.

 

This relationship has become very unhealthy for me since I'm not working right now so it's hard to get all the frustration off my mind and I always think bad things are happening when he doesn't call/answer the phone. I just can't believe after all these things that I still want to give it a try. I still believe he has a good heart and he never realized his action could hurt me so bad. He is also a good son and is financially independent. But he is not good at communicating or talking about anything emotional. I've tried to confront him about why he is still checking out that site but he just completely denied it. Also he doesn't have many friends and is introverted. I could tell he was very hurt from his first relationship and maybe protecting his heart from being broken again. His second relationship ended with the girl going back to her home country. Is this the reason why he constantly looks for other opportunities in case we don't work out? I've tried to contact him the whole day friday and suggested we sit down and talk like 2 adults but he has been avoiding to see me at this moment. We talked on the phone earlier tonight and he said he wasn't sure when he would be able to meet me.

 

Now I am blaming myself for ending it so abruptly and cold when I could've done it in a better way. I just don't think about the consequences of the action I take when I'm angry. We treat each other very well although he has never opened up to me. I just think he might have lost faith in me. But i know unless he quits that dating website there is no way for this relationship to work.

 

And I just don't know if it's worth getting back together with him anymore. I feel this time we are gonna be done for good. Can you usually feel it when your relationship is coming to an end? I still want to talk it out with him and know where things went wrong but I'm afraid he's too hurt and mad to see/talk to me in the next couple days....Should I start NC or should I at least give him a chance to explain things?

 

I'm very sorry for this super long post but I think I really need some serious help. I know I should fix my relationship with myself before I can have a healthy relationship with him. But I'm also concerned that if we get back together it would only be a matter of time before he dumps me when he finds someone else. Also, I never told him that I became unemployed because I don't want him to feel that I would become a financial burden to him.

 

Thanks everyone so much for reading it!!!!!!!

[Exit]

Wow that was long.

 

Okay first of all, you've acknowledged which parts of this may be your fault, but you are going too far with blaming yourself. Maybe you get a bit too paranoid and jealous, and maybe you say things when you're angry that you don't mean (we all do). Those are the two tiny little pieces of this that I might say are something you could work on.

 

Him being on a dating website and still logging in? BS. Disrespectful. Disloyal. Don't try to justify it for him by saying he's wounded from his old relationship and is just making sure he has a backup plan in case it doesn't work out with you. No no no. That is completely rude. Him not answering when you call, or not caring to ask you about what's wrong when you're feeling down? More BS, more disinterest, doesn't sound like someone who is interested in being in a loving relationship with you.

 

You remind me a lot of myself, my ex would get me to the breaking point about things, I would finally snap, get angry, give her her stuff back or ask for my stuff back, and then when I calm down I end up blaming myself and think "oh no I just acted like such an idiot, there was no reason for that". But in reality, there WAS a reason for it, and just because the adrenaline finally wears off doesn't mean you did something wrong. Yes, you may benefit from working on controlling your emotions and making sure you don't do or say something you regret. But the fact of the matter is, he is giving you plenty of reason to be upset, not caring to talk to you when you call, logging onto a dating website, etc.

 

Every time he messed up, you get mad, and then YOU end up being the one to apologize and asking if you can talk about it like adults. Same thing happens to me. Just yesterday with my ex (We're still in contact) I asked her earlier in the day if we could go for a drive after sunset, I call her and call her and call her and she won't answer. I start getting upset and asking her if she's doing it on purpose, then as the night goes by I almost get to the point of texting "I'm sorry I called so much I just thought maybe you were asleep". I didn't send that though. And eventually after like 7 hours she texts me she was asleep and she's going back to bed. All this happens on the same day when she called me in the afternoon and needed me to help her because she locked her keys in her car. So many times I've told her even though we are broken up right now we should be there for each other in an emergency, so here I answer my phone for her and go help her, and then I call her for 7 hours and can't get through.

 

We have a reason to be mad, but we are the type of people who always try to figure out what WE did wrong instead of staying mad at the other person. You should stay mad when he does something wrong and wait for him to get the point of realizing he better reach out to you and try to say sorry.

 

Anyways, bottom line, you deserve to be mad at him, he deserves to have his stuff left outside of his apartment. You've been upset about things, you've called him to try to talk and he isn't interested, he's had the opportunity to have a conversation with you before you got fed up to this point, and he didn't care. So now that opportunity is gone, and when he realizes what a jerk he is being, he should come begging you for a chance to listen to you and what you have to say and what's been bothering you about the relationship.

 

Don't do any more apologizing. Even when you really really miss him, remind yourself that he is the one who was being a jerk. It's up to him now. If he never makes an attempt to apologize to you or get in touch, then you'll know that you successfully eliminated a loser from your life who wasn't that interested in staying together anyway. If he does try to talk to you, go from there.

 

There is no sugar-coating the fact that he is still on a dating website. There is not a SINGLE tiny excuse for it, not "I'm just trying to make friends", "I just want people to talk to", NO. It is inappropriate and disrespectful.

Edited June 18, 2011 by Exit

[June16]

Hey Exit,

 

Thank you sooo much for finish reading my story. It was way too long, I know. I just had so much going on in my mind when I was writing it. And I really appreciate the way you let me see through what was going on in my relationship with my ex by sharing your similar experience with me. I hope you are in a much better place mentally right now.

 

I think I was just too scared to lose him so I was compromising way too much, which was beyond a reasonable level. I knew I should have ended it right at the 3-month mark, but I didn't want to be alone so I just continued to put up with all his BS and hoped that one day my love and care for him would make him appreciate me more. But deep down I knew this wouldn't work and someday he would push me to my limit and I would just snap out of it.

 

I really regret that I said sorry again after returning his stuff. He must still be thinking he's the victim in the relationship and would never realize how inappropriate his behaviour is. I won't forgive him so easily this time. Actually I'm not sure whether I will be able to forgive him and regain my trust in him ever. But I will stop blaming myself from this moment on.

 

I will start NC from today, no more begging or apologizing. Actually I don't long for him anymore. I miss the old him when things were good but I can't imagine how awkward things will be when I do meet with him in the near future. I'm a very persistent person and I strongly believe in hard work. I guess I was just lying to myself the whole time that we could get through all our problems one day and things would eventually go back to what it was like in the honeymoon stage....too naive I know.

 

How are you dealing with your situation right now? Is your ex still contacting you? If you need any insight, I would be very willing to help.