I suspect I'm being cheated on.

[serial_monogamist]

Sorry this is kind of long, but I guess I have to explain the background and where I'm coming from.

 

Long before we met, BF used to go to prostitutes. But then he wondered why he was giving himself to complete strangers and then stopped. He coped by satisfying himself before we met. He decided that he wanted to save himself for The One.

 

BF's father always taught him that he must not chase more than one girl, otherwise, they might talk behind his back and he'll lose them both.

 

I am a Christian and want to wait until marriage to have sex. BF is a Christian too, but he feels that to be in a monogamous sexual relationship, even if not married, is still not as sinful (not knocking the rest of you who choose premarital sex; this is just my personal relgious belief and preference) as having multiple partners. He feels that it's all right to have sex with someone you love, in a committed relationship; I don't feel the same way. As my counsellor told me, he should respect my wishes. She suggested that we go to couples counselling because we want different things, but BF is not very open to counselling. He feels that disputes should be resolved between the couple but nothing is getting resolved. The other complication is that it's long-distance. He's 5 hours away and his PhD studies are very demanding right now. He's working day and night.

 

He said that unmarried couples at his church are openly having premarital sex and he envies them. My church is much more conservative and he thinks that people are just hiding their activities. That's another issue, if we were to have children, which church would we go to and what would he teach them? I prefer to spare my kids the complications of teenage sex and would prefer to teach them abstinence. When I was crying about this, BF said he would also teach them abstinence but he's doubtful that it will be effective.

 

He's got a really strong libido, more than I've ever seen in my ex-boyfriends. If he doesn't relieve himself now and then, he gets pain in his testicles. He feels sick after he pleasures himself, perhaps because of the lack of human contact. Once he hurt himself so he doesn't do that anymore. He was having some nocturnal emissions for some time but those have stopped and the pressure keeps building up. Sometimes, after a lot of begging, I let him rub himself against me, but I still don't feel comfortable doing this. He feels better if he's at least holding me as he relieves himself. He says that he can only come to me for this, even if I want to wait.

 

I guess I'd given up on having completely celibate courtships since my last 2 boyfriends were also passionate, though they never requested anything more than petting. For all I know, they were probably relieving themselves after they went home. I just think that men are men and they have needs. I was just hoping to at least hold off intercourse until marriage.

 

When my BF was still on campus, he was sharing a house with 2 roommates, one of whom is female. This female roommate has a boyfriend, but she has many men after her and she has had at least one other man spend the night with her. BF said that what she was doing was wrong. He also complains about how messy she is.

 

BF has been away for field work for several months, but his campus landlord is still reserving the room for his return. Once in a while, BF returns to the campus and checks his mail at that house. We were there over a month ago and found that his female roommate was there, the other rooms were not occupied. We were really disgusted by the bathroom conditions, as she had not cleaned for ages. She was preparing to vacate the house in a few days, for summer holiday. When I mentioned her later on, BF was not sure that she would return to that house this fall, as he doesn't talk to her outside their house.

 

I helped BF install Skype on his laptop, so that he could call me long-distance. I set up his username and password for him. However, during a thunderstorm, his laptop got toasted. He is bringing it in for repair.

 

BF has a 2nd laptop and asked about installing Skype on it. So I told him to download Skype and I will e-mail him his username and password, as well as my username so he can re-add me. When I sat down at my computer to do this, I momentarily forgot if the password was in caps or lowercase. Just to verify this, I tried logging in to Skype with his username. I honestly didn't realize that the contact list, even the Skype-Out contacts would be stored on the server. There was my username and phone numbers, his best friend's phone number, another friend of his, and the female roommate. I found it odd that her contact would be there when he had so few contacts added. Why is she way up there among his close friends when he supposedly doesn't really talk to her. The name was misspelled in caps but I dialed the number and got her cell phone voicemail.

 

Now I'm wondering what's going on. He could very well have contacted her regarding the house they shared, and may share again, but then he had said that he wasn't sure if she was coming back and he doesn't really talk to her. Maybe she had mail there, but I don't understand why BF would call her instead of the landlord calling her. And if it was BF who had a concern regarding the house, he could've called his landlord.

 

Or could it be that he's using her to relieve himself? I don't know where he would get the opportunity, since he's working his butt off out of town. The last time he came this way, he stayed in his university town for one night. The university town is one hour away from me, and he asked me to meet him there but I said no, I can see him when he comes to my house. As far as I knew, that roommate was supposedly away on vacation but her cell phone number is still in that area code but maybe she just wants to keep that number for her return. Then while he was here, he needed to go to another unversity a couple hours away to consult with a prof. On his way back to my house, he stopped by a friend's house. I asked if it was his best friend and he said no he's at a friend's house.

 

I'm not sure what to do. I want to wait for BF's old laptop to come back from repair and see if I have the opportunity to check his Skype call history. But then there's no guarantee that he'd bring his laptop here or that he wouldn't delete the call history even though he's not so computer savvy (though he was capable enough to add the other contacts without my help).

 

But I'm not sure that I can do any amount of waiting. I had trouble sleeping last night and had nightmares. Right now, I feel like it's so hard to breathe.

 

On the other hand, I want to confront him about it, but it'll have to be over the phone. I don't think I will believe any answer that he gives me anyway. I want to see if I can catch him in a lie and say "Have you talk to your old roommate lately?" But since we'd been talking about getting his Skype set up last night, he might know that I logged into his account.

 

What if I'm blowing things out of proportion? What if I'm being played? I wish I knew for sure.

[john2776]

Firstly, respect, respect, respect. I have huge respect for you that you manage to keep yourself celibant. Christian relationships can be very troublesome in this area, and I think you have provided this background detail in order to demonstrate possible motive on your BF's behalf as to why he might cheat.

 

I only became a christian 18 months ago and had quite a few sexual partners prior to becoming a christian. When I met my GF she was christian and told me that she did not believe in sex before marriage. I was totally thrilled! A woman that has kept herself for marriage has more appeal for me for sure. So I had to adjust my mind to not have sex with my GF and we had many talks about it as obviously she didn't want sex. I accepted it, although not easily. At this point I say that I would never have cheated because I wasn't getting sex. So on this point, your BF cannot be said to be cheating for sure because of this, although as he is young he might not be so strong on committment yet... I don't know. If you feel that he totally loves you, then I doubt that he would cheat. For me - I ended up having sex with my GF as I found out that she had in fact already had sex with men after all, and no way was I going to go without after knowing that.

 

The skype thing is also inconclusive. In the same situation I might also be suspicious. There is no worse thought than "Am I being played?" But unless you have more reasons for being suspicious I would not worry about it. My advise is to talk to him about Skype and ask why he has her added on there. See how he reacts. If he gets angry with you asking questions, then you can worry! Otherwise don't even bother to check his other computer - no good can come of it. If you start trying to catch him you might not be able to stop, and if he is innocent you might destroy the relationship over it.

[norajane]

So, the only reason you suspect your boyfriend is cheating is that you found his roommate's phone number in his phone directory, plus he's just as horny as every other guy on the planet but feels too guilty to masturbate?

 

Before you accuse him of cheating, take a deep breath and step back. You have no idea when he added that number to his directory. If he had anything to hide from you , do you really think he wouldn't have changed his password long ago?

 

You could irreparably hurt your relationship with a guy who sounds like he is bending over backwards to listen to you and respect your beliefs. There aren't that many men out there who would do so, so give him the same amount of respect and don't immediately jump to conclusions.

 

Tell him you logged onto his account in order to verify you had the right password, and you noticed her number on his list. Ask him if he talks to her often.

 

Better yet, have faith in your boyfriend, and give him the benefit of the doubt and forget the whole thing.

[serial_monogamist]

Thanks for sharing your experiences and your advice.

 

I did talk to BF about this. I started off beating around the bush which made him really confused. He did say that he occasionally keeps in touch with both his roommates, and his classmates. The roommate went back to her home country for the summer. He didn't even remember the Skype thing until I mentioned it and it was like a light bulb went off in his head. He just added a few contacts in different cities to test Skype when he first bought the microphone. We found that Skype-out calls are next to impossible on his dial-up connection.

 

He wasn't even angry that I inadvertently snooped. He just said that because I am his GF I have the right to his information and he has nothing to hide from me.

 

This is not the first time I've jumped to conclusions. I did something similar to my XF when I found spam from a dating site in his e-mail.

 

Boyfriends should not give me too much computer access! It's like putting a gun in my hand!

[john2776]

Oh now you sound like my ex of many years ago. I came home one night after work to find her really angry and upset with me. I asked her what was wrong and she told me that she had discovered my affair. I looked at her and started laughing thinking she was making some kind of joke. She told me that she had found 'the emails' and there was no point in denying it. I was confused but still laughing said to her to show me the emails and she didn't want to because she could not bear to see the 'evidence'. Eventually she opened up my mailbox and showed me a bunch of emails titled "Thanks for last night!" "Want to cum over again on Friday?" etc etc. In otherwords they were JUNK MAIL. My ex didn't know what junk mail was so I opened them all up in front of her and explained what they were - adds and links to porn sites...

 

Don't be so mistrusting girl!!! Glad you sorted it out.

[norajane]

Serial, I'm so glad it turned out to be just your overactive imagination...maybe you could put that to good use in the future and start writing romance novels instead of fretting?