“He’s Keeping Me a Secret From His Ex-Girlfriend”
There is one thorn. His ex-girlfriend and her child (over 18) do not know about me, as my boyfriend confirmed when I broached the subject recently. I know the ex and my boyfriend text each other occasionally, maybe every few weeks or months. They never lived together, and they saw each other only on weekends because of distance (she lives over two hours away from us). I have never read their texts and don’t believe in snooping. My boyfriend did tell me, when we were first dating, that he was still friends with his ex and that she had a boyfriend then.
I know my boyfriend is not interested in getting back together with her. But what concerns me is that things have not worked out with her boyfriend, and I think she is interested in getting back together with my boyfriend. I wouldn’t mind his texting them to check in occasionally, but when I found out they don’t know about me — my boyfriend is not on any social media sites so there is no way for his ex to know about us that way — my whole perspective changed. Especially if she wants him back.
He says it’s my insecurities and jealousy that are the problem, but I said it is disrespectful and cruel to all three of us to hide our relationship. He says he is here every day for me, comes home to me, loves me, and cares for me. I am his only one. However, I can’t help but wonder, when he is sending a text, if it is to her. Is he sending to her that pic I took or meme joke I shared? It’s all consuming to me now. Am I wrong to feel this way? I would hate for this one thing to otherwise ruin a great relationship. How do I handle this? I hate confrontation. I hate drama. But this is eating away at me.— The Secret Girlfriend
You may hate drama, but you’re embroiled in some, sister. What could be a really minor issue — especially if your boyfriend only texts the ex every few months (and which is it — every few weeks or every few months–because that’s a big difference) — has become “all consuming” to you and that’s a major red flag. WHY has it become all-consuming? I suspect your gut is telling you there’s a reason to be concerned, and your boyfriend’s being shady doesn’t help.
He’s keeping you a secret from his ex to preserve the relationship he has with her. He wants to keep her on the back burner and he knows she’ll take off when she realizes he is no longer emotionally and physically available in the way she believes him to be. He is getting something from her that he is afraid he won’t get in the same way if she knew about you. He is not being honest. Not with her, not with you. Maybe even not with himself, though that’s his own problem if that’s the case.
What concerns me most is the gaslighting. You are right to question him on his reluctance to be open about you to his ex, and, rather than listen to your worries, calm your concerns, share his justifications for keeping you a secret, and either try to get you to understand his perspective or change his behavior to better meet your needs (really basic needs here, let me add — we’re talking about your boyfriend showing you a modicum of respect), he’s turning things around and blaming your rightful concerns on “jealousy,” and “insecurity.”
He points out that he comes home to you every day as if that cancels any concerning behavior. What a crock of shit! Could you imagine using that excuse? Like, if your boyfriend expressed worry that you were, say, sleeping with a co-worker, and you said, “But I come home to you every day, baby!” So fucking what? You can still sleep with someone on your lunch break and go home to someone else. Just like you can still keep an ex on the back burner, getting whatever it is you’re getting from her — attention, ego-stroking, the hope for a second chance — and come home to your current girlfriend every night. These are not mutually exclusive things, and your boyfriend is a manipulative jerk for pretending they are.
I don’t know, it’s one thing to be in contact with an ex every few months. That seems like no big deal at all. To be in touch with that ex every few months — and potentially every few weeks (which, again, is a lot different than “every few months”) and never mention that you have a girlfriend you’ve moved in with? Weird. To tell your girlfriend, when she expresses concern about that, that she’s being jealous and insecure? Shady. And when there’s shade in a relationship, there is something not in the light.
Invest much more of your time and energy and heart and I’m afraid you’re looking at potentially a lot of heartache coming your way.
We’ve been together for about seven months now and I’ve noticed that he doesn’t seem to like PDA really. He’ll kiss me and stuff if I initiate it, but he won’t initiate it. Something else that’s got me a little worried is that in these months we’ve been together we’ve gone on trips and taken lots of pictures together, but he hasn’t posted anything about me on any of his social media even though he posts stuff all the time. He’s tagged me in pictures of his before but doesn’t post any pictures at all of the two of us together. I’ve met most of his friends and family, minus his parents, and the people he introduces me to all know I’m his girlfriend, so I’m not really too worried about his keeping me a secret…but then again, you never know, right?
Since I’m a lot younger than he is, I feel insecure a lot of the time and I worry about not being able to offer him things like stability and stuff that other women his age could give him. With his not really being a PDA guy and not posting stuff about me, I’m not quite sure if he’s actual into building a relationship with me or if he thinks that I’m just a young girl he can fool around with for the time being. I’ve talked to him a couple times about us and he always says he really likes me, but how can I believe it if he doesn’t show it? – Young Wild and Worried
If you’ve been dating a guy for seven months and don’t know if he likes you because he’s done nothing to show you that he does, that’s a serious problem. If you feel insecure a lot of the time and worried that you can’t offer your boyfriend things that other women could, that’s a serious problem. If you’re afraid you’re too young for him and that he’s just into fooling around with you and not building a relationship with you, and you’ve expressed those concerns and he’s done nothing to show you that he truly is interested in building a relationship with you, what he’s telling you is that you’re right: You are too young for him and he really is just interested in banging a hot 21-year-old and that’s it. The reason he isn’t making your relationship “social media official,” so to speak, is because this is as far as you two go. There’s no step forward. There’s no future. There’s no “building this relationship.” You’re his good-time girl for now. And the reason a 21-year-old girl may appeal to an older man — besides the obvious, of course — is that she still believes Mr. Perfect exists. He doesn’t. Not in a bar, not anywhere.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at wendy(AT)dearwendy.com.
Lw2, he’s “dating” you, but you are not his girlfriend.
LW1: if you are an social medias, you can post pictures of you and him as a couple.
His text conversations with friends, this is his freedom, right? Her interest again in him: this is your hypothesis, right? The child is not his, I assume. Then I would’t worry so much.
My exes knew about my new relationships when I wanted them to know, not because my actual partners asked me to do it. I would refuse such an intrusion. And I heard that exes had a new partner when they got married or had a child, not before the new partner wanted me to know as a kind of threat.
Usually, the exes are exes for a reason. Nobody wants to recouple, in most cases.
So if the relationship is good, focus on its progression. This “insecurity” is a sign you want more, isn’t it? Or that something is off? Analyse the relationship, how you feel in it and what you expect of it, not an imaginary rival from his past.
That would be my call.
I strongly disagree with Wendy on #1– Why does she need validation of her relationship from a woman that she’s never met?
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If she is insecure in the relationship, she needs to examine that. Not pick a freaking fight because he didn’t tell his ex-girlfriend from years ago that he has a new girlfriend. That makes absolutely no sense to me!!!
She doesn’t need validation from the ex-girlfriend. She needs validation from her boyfriend. When you’re friends with someone and in regular contact with that person, you share big news with them. Doesn’t moving in with your partner qualify as noteworthy? To not share that with someone is weird.
I’m going back and forth on this and I think it depends on how much contact they have and what they share. If the contact is initiated by her and comes more as things like here’s a picture of Son/Daughter, first day of senior year. Can’t believe he/she is a senior. Then the boyfriend making a comment about what a handsome young man X is or can’t believe he/she is that old would be appropriate and adding in that he’s living with his girlfriend would be odd. If that kind of texting is the limit of their contact then I could see it never coming up. If they are in more contact about more things and about life in general then it should have come up that he had a girlfriend and that the two of them moved in together.
If the contact is limited and amounts to not much of anything he should let her know that. The fact that he won’t say so seems evasive. If he spends lots of time texting and seems to not be present even when he is physically there then I think she has something to worry about.
That’s the thing, Skyblossom, if it was just “FYI chatting”, like updates on the kid, and nothing really personal, he could have just told the LW that. That’s nothing to keep secret, and it’s certainly not something worth gaslighting your girlfriend over. He could show her the texts, even, and it would be obvious that it was nothing.
Instead, he’s protecting that relationship. There’s something there that’s important enough to him that he’s trying to push the LW away from it. He doesn’t want to talk about it. He gaslights her to get her off the topic. Those are the warning signs Wendy picked up on, and I agree. He can’t give a reason why he’s kept her a secret. That’s a problem. There are possible valid reasons for keeping a relationship secret, like say maybe it would be upsetting for a child or it would affect the co-parenting relationship. But those don’t seem to apply here. If there’s a valid reason, he can give it. If the communication is nothing important or personal, he can share that. He chooses not to. He chooses not to, AND he warns her off of the topic by insulting her. That’s a problem. Something’s going on. Even if it’s something as stupid as he just wants his ego stroked, that’s not cool.
I agree that it’s the boyfriend’s reaction that is the concerning part. Given that this is an ex, it makes sense to me that they aren’t very close. I don’t keep exes updated on my life or relationship status either.
Her boyfriend easily could have put the LW’s concerns to rest, but instead he invalidated her feelings. His gaslighting makes the whole situation look suspicious.
I’m also totally with Wendy on this one. It’s all about his reaction. If he’d said, “wow I guess it never came up, we’re always chatting about how son is doing, I’ll tell her next time we talk”, then that’s fine.
But instead he’s like “no you’re just insecure, no I won’t tell her, and by the way, she’s single now.” That’s an excessively defensive reaction, and it’s weird. Why doesn’t he want to tell her?
WWS too. He’s hiding something from his ex because he knows it will change their relationship. That is shady as hell.
It makes no sense to me to avoid telling a “friend” when you’ve had something big happen—like, say, a girlfriend moving in. Why is that not pertinent information—just as pertinent as her kid’s graduation or college plans or a promotion or a trip (or whatever they’re texting about)?
If they’re friends, it’s something he would share. If they’re not friends—why are they even still in contact, anyway?
But he’s a guy. IME, to a guy moving in with his girlfriend is not a big event. It’s just a thing that happens like ‘it’s going to rain on Saturday’ (especially if they aren’t talking about marriage). I think for women, it’s a bigger deal because we attach other emotions/motives to moving in together.
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Guys will tell their really close friends but as for everyone else, if it comes up they’ll say something but they don’t seek out ways to explicitly state that they have a girlfriend.
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I don’t think he’s actively avoiding the issue. I think there hasn’t been a situation in which it’s been necessary to say something to the ex. I wholeheartedly agree, that his response to LW was shitty but I don’t think we should attach ulterior motives to the guy.
The reason this stuff matters is that over a couple of years, it’s unlikely that if they do talk about their lives (things they’ve done recently, how things are going, etc.), the LW wouldn’t have come up. All of my friends who are in relationships, even ones I only talk to infrequently, typically have reason to include their partner when we are catching up. Unless they were super long-distance , then I don’t know how a “what have you been up to lately?” or a “what did you do this weekend?” could be answered without something that vaguely referenced the LW. When I tell friends about movies I went to or anything, I either volunteer who was there or if I say “we,” then they may ask who I went with. The only situation I can imagine where this wouldn’t happen is when friends have a singular interest in common and only talk about that — like they only talk about their favorite sports teams’ games or only talk about Game of Thrones or something. But I doubt that’s how it is with an ex, (ie, someone that you know outside of one niche in your life).
In the end, based on social norms, he’s most likely phrasing his conversations with his ex in a way that’s different than how most people would normally, in a way that doesn’t mention his girlfriend. The question would then be, why? The main reasons a person does that are that they don’t want the current person to know they are in a relationship or they are embarrassed of the person. Neither is good.
LW1: Did you ask your boyfriend why his ex doesn’t know you exist? My first question would be what they actually talk about then. I get that they don’t talk often, but does he not tell her things he’s done? I’m just assuming there’s a “what’s up?” “Not too much, just got back from seeing LW’s family for the holidays” that probably should have happened at some point, but why is it not? Do they truly not discuss anything about their lives? Does he purposely change the way he talks to her to avoid talking about you? I know you don’t like confrontation, but you have a right to know these things. Similarly, if a person cannot bring up awkward subjects with their partner, then it’s either a flaw with the relationship or a flaw with the individual. Not very sustainable for long-term stability to not be able to bring up unpleasant issues.
LW2: I am soooo over “not that kind of girl” or whatever the exact words you used are. See previous post a few days ago from Wendy. There is no type! So judgemental. He could suck and be hiding you. BUT, just but, he is 31 not 21 and doesn’t give a shit about the social media thing. My ex and I dated for 10 years and I never even was his FB friend. I just could care less. FB doesn’t make your relationship. Proving it to people who you barely see does not make a relationship. I honestly want to barf when I see the “My guy love him, he’s the best” BS. Know what that means about 8/10 times? It means you are insecure and need to prove something to the World. I never, ever, share my romantic life on social media. Why? Because I don’t give a shit what people I barely know think. Those closest to me know him, me, our relationship. I feel no need to announce it in order to validate my relationship. I find this is a HUGE deal to 20 something year old’s. I am in my 30’s and frankly I use FB to see what HS friends are up to and family. I don’t have a single person on social media I don’t personally know….well except if it involves following puppies but I mean, DUH, PUPPIES!
I don’t buy it—because according to the letter, he DOES care about social media, because he posts all the time.
Agreed. If it were a work focused blog I’d be like “yeah, talking about how your girlfriend goes crazy for statistical analysis and big data doesn’t really play” but if you’re posting a vacation picture, you post a pic with the people you traveled with.
LW#2 – he’s fine showing you off to his friends but he’s hiding you from key social circles. You and he are not on the same plane here.
PS I think my answer was somewhat merged into the two questions which was not my intent but I haven’t slept all night (thanks new neighbors….ughh). I still stick with my opinion on social media…but my ex posted car stuff every dang hour but not people stuff. So if it was car stuff and there weren’t a ton of friend related posts, like my ex, then whatever. He used his more for exposure in his business. That is where my perspective came from.
Lying about your existence though (or just pretending one doesn’t exist) is not cool.
I don’t really understand the response to LW2. He has introduced her to his friends and family. This seems to me to be much more important than whether he has pictures of them together on facebook. It sounds also, like he does tag her, but just doesn’t post pictures of them smooching or whatever.
Also, people use social media differently. Some people like to post humor and snarky links but don’t post lots of “here’s me and my snugglebums making out at the grocery store” type pictures.
And most of us are grateful when they don’t post those pictures.
I think the social media thing is sort of irrelevant on his own. Since it’s established that he’s not totally hiding her, then I think it can just be a matter of preference. I’m curious as to how many photos they take alone. If you go out with friends enough for people to take photos of you as a couple, then why does it really matter if they get posted? If it’s selfies together, then I can see why he might not post them because that is more a her-generation thing, I think. But that’s what you’ve got to consider if you date someone 10 years older. They might date differently and use technology differently.
However, I think that the fact that she’s naming multiple things that bother her indicate that something is going wrong. Either a miscommunication of what each person is like in a relationship or they aren’t on the same page about where they are at.
She’s basically named two innocuous things. It’s hard to have a sense of what exactly the PDA thing entails. A lot of people don’t engage in public making out and it’s the kind of thing that becomes less common with age. It’s reasonable for her to want these things, but I don’t think that it necessarily points to some lack of interest in the relationship on his part.
@skyblossom. Yes! Every tagged picture I am suddenly a million lbs and look awful. I’m actually somewhat grateful for the lack of tagging.
Yeah I thought that was off the mark. The people that matter to him know about her, who cares about social media? I think it just highlights a bit of an age and generational gap more than anything. 21 year olds WOULD be twitchy about that, not to mention a bit less assured in themselves.
I am also baffled by the response to LW2.
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NEWSFLASH! Not everybody is quite the LOOK-AT-US! LOOK-AT-US! social media butterfly when it comes to relationships. More, these sane, er.., same people probably aren’t big on PDA either. And yet — somehow I dare say these people DO have quite real relationships…
I am with bgm on this one…pda makes me want to gag. Holding hands occasionally or a peck on the cheek (thats pushing it) is ok, but I have never needed or wanted my SO to get physical with me in front of other people. LW 2 seems to need him to be more public with everything and maybe he just isn’t that way. I hate facebook and my husband and I both gave it up years ago, but when I did have I had lots of car racing stuff on there, retro etc, kids, funny stuff, but I don’t think I tagged him in anything (or he me) I think I mentioned him once cause he built me a koi pond.
I feel so old when I read these angry letters about how some girl’s boyfriend won’t tag her on instagram and won’t engage in long streams of flirty emoji texting between dates.
Secret Girlfriend here. I appreciate all of the comments. To clear up some questions, he told me months ago that they mostly text about the child (not his btw and he actually communicates with the child more) and how work is going, etc. He also said he would like to catch up with the child, but wanted to do it when ex was at work because he did not want to see her in person. I think no matter what, she will find out about me. If she wants him back, it makes sense that she is eventually going to ask him if he is seeing anyone.
But he’s not even talking to her about his personal life, he’s asking about the kid. And he’s mostly talking to the kid, so I’m confused why he needs to explicitly tell her that y’all are dating. It’s totally irrelevant to any conversation that he’s having with her, and kid updates are generally ridiculously short conversations.
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His response to you was shitty, and he could have said it better but c’mon…isn’t it really your insecurity and jealousy that are the problem here? You’re afraid that she wants him back and you’ll be dumped.
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Here’s the thing…if they want to be together, whether she knows about you or not, they’ll be together. Knowing about you really means nothing!
You’re right about some things. I think it was his reaction that bothered me. Wendy was right in a comment that I need validation from him, not the ex. I think people like to pull the “jealous” or “insecurity” card when SO bring up a concern like this. But it is not about that, it’s about respect.
Have you contacted EVERY ex of your about this relationship?
@The Secret Girlfriend
If you feel disrespected in the relationship, address that! Don’t pick a silly ass fight about his ex girlfriend knowing about your existence. It invalidates your issue with him.
I think you were right about guys not thinking it is a big deal to mention. Guys (often) don’t think about things the same way woman do. Not trying to sound sexist, but they don’t.
My ex (husband and father of my oldest child) and I used to talk and he would tell me about his girlfriends. He had about a two year limit on his relationships.(still does) One day he told me he needed to always keep a girlfriend to help him pay the bills. He didn’t talk about emotions or attachment. To him it was just a convenient arrangement. He was just that way. But every girl thought they were gonna be forever ever just like in “Miss Jackson”. Yeah, no.
So he is still attached to the kid which is pretty natural and he would like to know how the kid is doing. The kid might even ask him for advice.
My uncle was a stepfather and after they were divorced her kids made the effort to keep him in their lives. He is the involved grandfather in the lives of the older daughter’s kids while their actual biological grandfather who lives a block from them ignores them. The younger daughter calls him for advice. When she is in a difficult situation he is the person she turns to. It sounds like he isn’t willing to turn his back on this young adult and that is a good thing. If he is mainly communicating with the kid and about the kid there is nothing to worry about.
As someone else said above, if they wanted to be together they would get together whether she knew about you or not.
You have to ask yourself whether you trust him or not. If you do it won’t matter what she does. If he isn’t trustworthy then move on because whether it is her or someone else there will be problems.
LW#1: Texting someone every few weeks or months (IS there such a big difference??) might mean absolutely nothing. I have absolutely no desire at all to get back together with my ex, but on holidays or when something big happens. I don’t tell her at all when I date someone because it would result in a big discussion. If we ran into her, I would introduce her, but I just don’t want to talk about my dating life with my ex. Perhaps the guy IS shady, but there are other options too.
You say you can’t offer him the things a 31 year old does, but that’s a lot of assuming. Maybe he doesn’t want to settle down. Maybe you would like to be married and with kids by 25. People have so much freedom on how to live their lives now, you can’t assume this stuff based on age. What do you want? What does he want? Making you FB official isn’t going to answer those questions, which I think is what you are really get at. Seven months in it’s perfectly acceptable to discuss.
I don’t think he wants his boss and conservative colleagues to know he’s banging a 21-year old, because he knows they’d see it as a bit skeevy. He doesn’t mind telling those friends and family whom he knows can roll with the age difference. He’s going to wait to tell the others until after the relationship has progressed farther. Perhaps he doesn’t want his parents to know he’s banging a 21-year old, because he knows they’ll react badly.
haha, so true!
She didn’t say that his parents don’t know about her, just that she hasn’t met them yet. If he was trying to hide her existence from his parents he wouldn’t have introduced her to the rest of the family. I don’t think that I introduced my wife to my parents during the first six months.
I guess that you’re implying the social media thing is to hide her from his colleagues, but most people I know don’t expose their social media to work. I’m not sure that my wife met any of my coworkers until after we were engaged.
I think that you are also greatly overstating the amount of disapproval that a 31/21 relationship would create. Plenty of people, if you asked them privately, would suggest it’s not a great idea, but the idea that it’s some kind of scandal that he’d hide, isn’t consistent with my experience.
Eh I’m not against a 21 year old and a 31 year old being together like many here seem to be. That was me and my husband when we got married 7 years and counting ago. However, you getting so upset about the social media does seem a red flag to me —that you are too immature for this relationship.
Also fwiw people have always given me (the younger one) way more sh*t and side eye about our age gap than they’ve given my husband.
I must say, my ex and i dated 10 years and have been friends following for 5 years. I know that women he date know about me but I really don’t need to hear about them or want to unless they are serious. Same with him and the guys I date. I may know he is seeing someone but believe me, unless one of us has true intent on being with that person long term, we have no real interest in introducing those people to each other. I wouldn’t say it is a jealousy thing, more just a, yes this person is still my ex so unless it is worth knowing I don’t need to. If I found out he had been dating someone for 2 years that would be nuts but at the same time we speak daily, not every few weeks or months or so.
LW1: I have to admit, it’s dodgy. If he has nothing to hide, it’d make sense to have mentioned at some point that he’s seeing someone new. It depends on how often they talk, and what they talk about; as others have said, if it’s just about the kid then it might seem too off topic. Nevertheless, he needs to gently tell her, in case she gets her opes up now that she’s single. And if he doesn’t want to, that might be a sign that he’s keeping her on the back burner, which isn’t fair on her.
LW2: IMHO being introduced to friends and family as the GF/BF is much more important than social media. He’s introduced you to the most important other people in his life as his partner. That’s great.
Some people don’t post selfies, or don’t post very personal stuff online. Some people aren’t into lovey dovey pics (I’m not, for example). Some people see that kind of thing as really personal; they might have work contacts on there, or half their extended family. I’m in my 30s and a lot of men my age don’t really do the whole social media thing, particularly if they are more reserved in general. I wasn’t in a rush to even add my BF to my facebook; I have nosy relatives or friends and I didn’t want to add any pressure. And I wanted us to get to know each other and each other’s friends through good old fashioned conversation rather than stalking each other’s profiles. That didn’t matter to me because he made a point of introducing me to his friends and inviting me to key events.
When you talk about PDAs do you mean he won’t initiate snogging in public, or affection at all? Some people aren’t big on *public* displays, but are perfectly affectionate somewhere with less people. For example my BF and I don’t go beyond a quick kiss on the lips and hand holding/hugging in public and I’d feel weird snogging or feeling each other up on the train! If I had a guy who was into touching me up in public, it’d be a dealbreaker for me. In private is another thing entirely. You need to work out whether you feel he desires you at all, and how he treats you when you’re intimate. Not just how he acts when you’re out.
I met this guy on June and we became official on October. One day his ex submitted a picture of them together with some friends. I asked him about and told me they broke up a long time ago and they were just friends. I believed him.
I have met his closest friends and his parents, and everyone seemed to like me. He even introduced me as his girlfriend.
Right before our first trip I noticed that he had his ex muted and that they text constantly, too much I would say, they even have hangout. She also has a boyfriend.
After our trip I decided to post a pic but he untagged himself.
I am afraid he is keeping me a secret to his ex and that everything is a lie, but why would he invest so much time with me?