Why does my boyfriend refuse to tell me about any of his ex-girlfriends? I don’t need to know deep, secretive information. I’m just curious about how they ended, idiosyncrasies that drove him crazy, what he learned from them… anything! We’ve been dating for a year and four months and it’s definitely a serious relationship. However, every time I’ve asked any question about his previous relationships, he tells me that it’s inappropriate to talk about them. Do you think he is ashamed of them? Do you think that once a relationship is over, he forgets all about them? I don’t want to be in love with a man who keeps things from me for fear of being uncomfortable. I’ve honestly told him everything I believe he needs to know about my previous relationships. I’m worried that I’m too trusting of him. — Ex-Communicated
It sounds like you’re actually approaching this topic the same way: you both have told each other everything you believe the other needs to know about your previous relationships. You don’t need to know details to understand that all of your boyfriend’s experiences in life and relationships informs who he is today. If you like who he is today, quit the obsession with the past and focus on what’s in front of you before you. If you have doubts about who your boyfriend is today, I’m not sure that knowing why his all of his previous relationships ended is going to fix that.
You don’t need someone else’s experience with your boyfriend to validate or negate your feelings. If you think that your boyfriend has a wall up and has made it difficult to form a deeper connection, that’s a red flag. You can’t build a relationship on that. You need trust and intimacy for a lasting, longterm relationship. This may be a case of, a year and a half in, you beginning to question the longevity of your relationship. Sit with that feeling and don’t be in a rush to name it or fix it. Just sit with it and think about what your gut is trying to tell you.
I have been with my significant other for close to 20 years. Long story short, we broke up a few years back. He called me one and a half years later and said he would like to start seeing me again. So we started dating — and then he changed jobs, moving from Portland, Oregon to Maui, Hawaii. He wanted me to come with him. We have lived together now for two years. He asked me to sell his truck for him and said I could use his cell phone to take pictures and post them on Craigslist. While I was looking at his photo gallery, I ran across a picture of a younger lady. He had taken it from his work truck and she was walking away from him. All I could see was the back of her in a short black dress and her long blonde hair. When I asked him about it, he said, “What? Let me see!” Then he deleted it and didn’t answer my question. I asked: “Who is that lady walking away from your truck?” He wouldn’t answer me, so I asked him if he has a girlfriend and if I need to move out. He still won’t answer me and just ignores me like I haven’t even said anything. What is your answer for me? — Truck Stop Love
Sell the car, keep the money, quit the boyfriend, stay in Hawaii (because, why not?).
My boyfriend and I are in high school, and we have been dating one year and four months. We have had a great relationship and we were very close, but about a month ago he started MMA fighting/training with his friend. He’s trying to lose weight and learn how to fight, but ever since he started this he’s changed. He’s more into his friends and isn’t spending much time with me because he is always at training. We’ve seemed to have grown apart, and his new friends don’t seem to like me and tell him we should break up. He had good friends that accepted me, but he’s kind of pushed them away too. I really love this guy, but I feel we are falling apart and he’s losing interest and his friends are changing him. He knows I don’t like that he does training and that I’m fine with his weight. But I don’t know what to do or what to say to bring us close again. Should I give up? What do you think I should do? — Fighting for Our Love
If you haven’t already, start spending more quality time with your own friends and develop hobbies you can enjoy when your boyfriend is busy training. That way, if you continue drifting apart, you’ll have your own life and a circle of friends to support you.
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If you have a relationship/dating question I can help answer, you can send me your letters at [email protected].
LW1, i do think its odd that he wont tell you stuff.. but im a very open person and i would freely tell things like that, and then also i usually surround myself with very open people as well. maybe you two are just different in that way? i dont actually think its a bad thing, but just odd. this might be one of those things you just have to let go. i had to do that with my boyfriends email password…
LW3, your in *high school*– let him go off and do the stuff he likes. you should be doing the same thing. also, probably the one and only thing that is going to happen in your life in the next, say… 6-12 years, depending on how old you are now, is that people are going to change. you are in the prime time for people to be growing and changing. so if it happens, let it happen.
Good answers on all 3.
LW1 I don’t really understand having an issue with not hearing about your boyfriend’s exes. Other than from knowing my SO’s exes when they were dating and he and I were just friends, I really don’t know much about them, nor do I care. If you are just afraid he no longer cares about them, then isn’t that the point. They aren’t together anymore, why should he care?
LW2 If I asked my SO what he had for lunch and he flat out ignored me or refused to tell me, I would probably MOA. Not bc I care what he had for lunch, but because its rude and bizarre to say the least to ignore me or refuse to tell me something.
For LW1, I actually think it’s pretty odd that he won’t say ~anything~ about his ex-girlfriends besides, “it’s inappropriate to discuss.” I mean, I’m open with partners about my past, so maybe that’s why I’m side-eyeing this? But still…I’m thinking he’s either private to the point of being neurotic about it, OR there’s something about his past relationships he doesn’t want you to know? It’s been almost a year and a half though, so LW needs to figure out how much this really bothers her.
LW2: Haha. WWS. Even if it’s just some random woman, well, then he’s taking creepshots of random women & that’s not good? And his reaction was wack.
LW3: jeez, you’re in high school. He’s finding out what interests him and experimenting with a new hobby/possibly persona. That’s pretty normal at that age. Why don’t you do the same, so you’re not hung up on this guy all the time? I understand your distress, I really do, but if you distract yourself, he’ll get to indulge in his new obsession & new friends, AND maybe you’ll find out something about yourself as well?
WWS for all three, especially LW2. Love it Wendy!
LW1 What do you really need to know about past relationships? I never told current boyfriends about exes. What did it have to do with them? Judge your boyfriend on how he treats you – not on what he may or may not have done in the past with people you don’t even know.
LW2 It sounded like he took a random shot of a sexy girl on the street from his phone…the bigger sin is ignoring you and not even telling you it was a joke or a lapse of judgement or a dare from his friend or whatever the hell motivated him and then brushing off your other questions about your relationship. He isn’t relationship material. Give him back his phone and his truck and find someone who is capable of being honest with you. Because if he can’t be honest over small things – the big things aren’t going to work out well for you.
LW3 There is nothing you can do to make someone else act a certain way – you can’t fix a relationship by yourself and you can’t make your boyfriend into the older version of himself. If he no longer treats you the way you want to be treated – then tell him – and if nothing changes then find someone else. It doesn’t feel like it at your age but life is way too short to put up with slackness.
My deep thought for the day (so far): LW1 and LW3 are the same person! What are the odds that TWO letter writers hit the “one year and four month” point in their relationships and BOTH write to Wendy, eh? EH?! Maybe that is not a very deep thought but a) I’m right, and b) the day is still young!
There are some people who believe it is inappropriate to talk about past exes. They may do it as a sign of respect, or because they aren’t into sharing that much. I don’t talk much about them. They’re in the past, why should I? If someone asks a direct question, I might, depending on what they want to know. I kind of like it. The last thing I’d want to do is spend all my time talking about exes. Live in the present. The exception to this is if I was dating someone who’d been married before and I was thinking about marrying him, I would want to know why the marriage ended. But I don’t need to know why every relationship he’s ever been in ended. If he’s a jerk, that will make itself evident in due time.
LW1: What stands out is this: “I’m worried that I’m too trusting of him.” Everything else on the back burner for the moment, why do you think that?
In my mind, there’s one of two things going on here. One, your intuition is informing you that there IS something to mistrust, and your paranoia about his ex-girlfriends is being fed by the fact that you know, on some higher level, that he’s not 100% trustworthy. Or two, you have a lot of fear-based insecurities that are leading you to sabotage your relationship with someone who is already trustworthy. I think if you allow yourself to think about it, you’ll know which one this is.
If it’s the first, you can wait around until you get definitive proof of what your intuition already knows, or you can MOA now. And if it’s the second, it’s time to start exploring your own insecurities and fears and knocking down some emotional obstacles that are standing in the way of your confidence and self-assuredness.
I completely disagree with part of the response for LW2. When I was in the midst of my breakup, I sold my ex’s truck for him and many people here told me I should keep the money but I didn’t because that would be wrong. I did get the nice commission we had agreed upon and that was enough for me. I walked away with some cash and my morals intact, which is worth far more than money can buy IMO. No matter if he is cheating or if he just randomly took a pic of a hot blonde, it doesn’t justify stealing from him. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Either tell him to sell the car himself or tell him you’ll help him sell it if he gives you at least 10% commission. Almost a year later, I’m still glad I took the high road and honored our agreement.
LW1, I love hearing about my boyfriend’s exes, too. I want to know what they were like, why they broke up, what annoyed him (I don’t really want to hear good stuff, though, haha). I think I want all this info because it gives me a more complete picture of who he is or was, what he did before, etc. It makes me feel closer to him, in the same way that dishing with my girlfriends about our boy problems does.
But for him, it’s not a big deal. It doesn’t make him feel closer to me to share all that info, and he doesn’t really want to hear about my exes, either. So I have had to accept that and just let it go. He knows I”m interested in whatever he wants to tell me. Occasionally he’ll say something about an ex, and even if it’s just something small, I ask a casual follow-up question and then I’ll let it go. If you back off and are content, he might open up a bit more. But no one likes to be nagged for info.
The thing I would want to know about a partner’s exs is what they learned. What red flags were there, what was the dealbreaker. How have they grown beyond where they were.
LW1…this is just my opinion but i hate when i’m dating someone and they want to know about every ex and how many people i have been with…and how do you know that the person is even telling the whole truth with regards to this….i can see it from a safe sex standpoint, but you should have safe sex anyways regardless of whether the person has been with one person or a thousand…i just feel like people can judge you when you could be a good person and just happen to have had 25 previous relationships, or a totally crap person but only been in one relationship (and obviously vise versa)…why bring up the past when it will have absolutely no impact on the present and future of your relationship? (just how i feel)
I’m with you, LW1. You can’t nag for info, so that’s bad, but saying “that’s inappropriate to discuss” is just a bit weird and even a little controlling to me. It’s like saying a person you’re dating has no right to know things about you that make you who you are. But I’ve had bad experiences with dating someone super private — he ended up being controlling about what information I could share about my relationship with him to my friends, slept with another woman while we were dating and wouldn’t tell me who she was, and glared at me if I even casually came within view of his phone — and I’m sure not every extremely private person is going to be like that. Still, I think you should maybe try to figure out if there are other things that your boyfriend is going to want to shut you out of — his family life, health information, etc. — or if this is just an idiosyncrasy. If you’re generally open and he’s generally closed off, you may end up feeling this way a lot more often than just when you’re curious about his romantic history.
One my my bf’s exes was a narcoleptic, so once that came out there was no stopping my torrent of curious questions. I’m kind of like LW1 (maybe) in that I am just insanely curious about relationships, people, behavior, and (as someone mentioned above) I feel like this gives me a more complete picture of who this person I am dating is and how they have grown as a person. I’m not anxious about it, or insecure. More like I am just curious about how his personality has meshed up with other people’s personalities.
As long as I am the hottest one. Duh.
Sorta related to LW1. I’ve been seeing this guy for about a month and I haven’t told him that I recently got out of a long term relationship. At first I didn’t say anything because I didn’t expect it to go anywhere so why the heck would I tell him about my past relationships? But now we text and holy 1990s we *talk on the phone* too, and we’re going to museums and spending Friday nights making brownies and watching Bill Maher together and he’s really smart, and nice, and I like him. Oops. How did I let that happen? Goddamnit. Anyway. I feel like I have to tell him about my ex, but I don’t want it to be weird. What to do… what to do…
PS I am shamelessly threadjacking. 🙂
LW2 – I might disagree with Wendy. So, I am guessing he took the pic, sent it with a crude message to one of his friends. When you found it, he freaked. Is your guy easily embarrassed? So, over the 10 years I have been with my husband, I have caught porn/girly pics a handful of times. When confronted, he sputtered and freaked. My husband isn’t a “share porn with your wife” guy, he is an alone guy. So I accept that. To throw away a 20 year relationship over a picture seems short sited to me. Is he not answering you because he is panicking?
LW1) Um, probably because you are already obsessing like a freak with ZERO details. Know what? Not everybody kisses and tells. And knowing the sexual history of your lover is something many people simply can’t handle because the world is filled with insecure idiots… Dud he LEARN anything from his relationships? Gag. Vomit. Barf. Stop watching shitty Oprah reruns already — she’s made more than enough fucking money for a closeted, talentless vacuous media shill…
LW2) Wendy misses the boat here. The photo sounds like a random. Moreover, basically. She’s, uh, pretty much advocating a felony here by suggesting you pocket the cash. But hey — if you REALLY wanna be the batshit-crazy ex with a prison record, LW — then by all means follow her advice.
LW3) He’s just not that into You. Everybody I know who wound up with their high school lover is hopelessly miserable and trapped at 42 in a sexless, loveless marriage. So, count your blessings. Enjoy being young. Soon enough you’ll be old and wondering where all the time went. Slow curtain — the end. Stop obsessing over some pudgy, dumpy guy with hilariously lame hobbies…
I’m thinking in LW2’s case, it was either a creepshot or a prostitute that he managed to take a photo of as she was leaving. In either case, if he won’t discuss it, then you can’t really hash it out with him, can you?
Do you want to stay with someone who refuses to talk about a photo that may have been harmless (I’ve managed to accidentally take some funny photos on my phone when I’ve dropped it while attempting to open the thing, or my youngest got a hold of it while I was cooking), but seriously, he allowed you to use his phone and knew the risks of it (you’d see the photos). If he knew the photo was there, that’s on him. Maybe he didn’t know the photo was there and is trying to figure out how it got there, but that’s me playing devil’s advocate, and I kind of doubt it.
If he won’t talk about it, then the situation is shady. Do you want to continue with something shady like that?