A
female
age
41-50,
anonymous
writes:My boyfriend and I have been together for almost two years. We have an amazing relationship except our insecurities. I think he truthfully feels I am cheating on him and I am not. I love him more than I have ever loved anyone and I thought the issues on his insecurities was just his hang up and he would get over it but its now a huge problem. I feel extremely defensive all the time and hurt because he never believes me. I also hold a lot of anger because the only one that has lied in our relationship is him. It caused me a lot of pain but I muddled through it under the idealism no one is perfect and I love him unconditionally. Whenever I have insecurities he wants to talk them out and it helps. When moments of insecurities happen on his end he always has to leave, think about it and then decide whether he believes me or not. We never fight, we have amazing respect and communication, he has access to my phone, phone bill, access to all my accounts, facebook, email exc. I've done everything I possible can to show him I am not hiding anything and now I don't know what to do, I want to end the relationship but I love him so much.
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female
reader, IamJess  +, writes (15 July 2012):
 He's probably really insecure about you because he lied to you before and its his own guilt shadowing through, if you've proved and proved yourself to him the most you can, and he still doesn't have faith in you, thats HIS problem and you seriously can't do anything more to try and persuade him, because you've done everything, its up to him to believe you and if he doesn't he doesn't trust you, without trust what is a relationship? If you've got faith in him even though he's lied to you, I think he owes you some respect to at least trust you, if you've never done anything wrong. And if something did happen in the future, that did make him not trust you, he'd know, and that'd be the end of it. I think if its making you unhappy, you should talk to him about it, if it doesn't change - end it, because he won't change his ways.
A
female
reader, Ciar  +, writes (15 July 2012):
 You've received some very good advice here and I hope you take it. And like Janniepeg, I find this sort of thing exremely annoying.
Ask yourself this: What would your boyfriend do if he caught you in bed with another man? Would he say 'Yeah, I knew it" and carry on business as usual? Of course not. If he truly thought you were cheating he would have done whatever it is you think he would do.
Do you think his guy friends are as accomodating of his insecurities? Assuming he has any of course. If he suspected they found a new friend they liked better do you think he'd ask to see their phones, their phone bills and have access to their accounts? Do you think they'd offer? Of course not.
What does this tell you?
It tells me he does not think you're cheating. In fact trusts you a great deal. He trusts you to go above and beyond trying to reassure him. He trusts you to acquiesce to all of his unreasonable demands regardless of the cost to you. He trusts that no matter how outrageous his behaviour or his accusations that you will see the best in him and keep 'loving' him. THAT is why he does what he does.
How do we treat someone who is physically ill or injured? We take care of them, we go the extra mile to ensure they're comfortable, we're patient with mood swings, we talk about whatever they want to talk about, and most importantly we don't expect anything in return. You're boyfriend wants all that but he knows he isn't entitled to it because he is not ill or injured. The only way he can obtain it is to pretend to be injured...by you. And you jumpt to action because you believe that you will nurse him back to 'health', pay off your debt and everything will be great. The problem is once that debt is paid he stops getting all the perks an injured person gets. What happens then? He has to continue to be injured to continue receiving those perks, hence why he continues to accuse you of cheating.
Everything we do we do because we think we're getting something out of it. The pay off doesn't have to be universally desired or even understood. As long as it benefits us and is worth the cost we'll do it, which is another reason why you've been accomodating your boyfriend's insecurities. It's up to you to figure out what that payoff to you is and find another way to satisfy it. If I were to guess I'd say that the more afraid your he was at you leaving the less fearful you had to be of his leaving. The more desireable he thought you were to others, the more in control you felt. Like I said, that's just a guess. It's for you to figure out.
In any event by coddling his fears you're doing both of you a disservice. You're encouraging him to rely on you instead of himself for his own security which may give you some short term power, but it also places greater demands upon your time and freedom. We don't give a heroine addict heroine and then say the calm afterwards is proof of progress. You've just fed the addiction and shortened the interval to the next episode.
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A
male
reader, no nonsense Aidan +, writes (15 July 2012):
You might love him but that isn’t enough. Whoever said that love conquers all was possibly a hopeless romantic, but they were quite wrong! It’s ridiculous that you’ve had to give up all of your privacy to help this man get over his insecurities, insecurities that probably stem from him knowing that he has it in him to be dishonest and assuming that everyone else must be equally devious. If you really had amazing communication, you’d be able to talk through his insecurities and he’d commit himself to identifying the cause of his trust issues and to learning how he could overcome them, even if this meant relationship counselling. It’s time to give him an ultimatum: start dealing with this, or you’re leaving-and mean it! Set a time limit after which you expect him to have made some changes and some effort to tackle this, after which you should walk away. Because this kind of relationship isn’t sustainable and you will make each other more and more unhappy, so if he can’t change it’s better to separate.
I wish you all the very best.
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A
female
reader, YouWish +, writes (15 July 2012):
 So far, you have accommodated his insecurities, and that's where you've gone wrong. You are acting as a guilty person, and it hasn't mollified his obsessiveness.
First of all, you are not married, and he shouldn't have access to your stuff carte blanche. Change all of your passwords. Being girlfriend/boyfriend doesn't mean you have to surrender your privacy and individuality. You're already seeing how futile it is to try and assuage someone who doesn't let go of insecurity.
Being eager to show transparency to the degree that you have is usually called for when someone has, in fact, cheated, and wants to rebuild trust in a relationship. You haven't cheated, so you shouldn't have to be working on easing distrust you haven't earned.
My advice is to stop feeding his insecurities, change your passwords, and tell him to knock off the undeserved pressure. Live you life and stop accommodating him like this. People being together should trust each other unless one has proven otherwise.
As for his lying in the relationship, has he cheated on you? What are the nature of these lies, and how do they have bearing on what's been happening now?
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A
female
reader, janniepeg +, writes (15 July 2012):
 You think that makes you insecure? It makes me feel annoyed. He is projecting insecurities onto you. It's a different kind of insecurity though. He is afraid another man is better than him. You are afraid that he would believe his own mind then leave you. When you control love, you stifle freedom and you feel trapped. You don't have amazing respect and communication in this relationship. It may not be a physical fight, but he is putting you in place, keeping you in check, controlling your communciations with people. That alone can be just bad as a fight. He has even used breakups as anticipated punishments should you do anything suspicious. When a man has an irrational fear that a woman would go cheat any time available, he should not be in a relationship. When he can't keep these thoughts to himself but make constant accusations, that's disrespectful. He himself lied too, so he is no longer the noble one in the relationship.
You know this is not a man you can reason with. When you end it with him, do it firmly and briefly. He does not make you happy. Pack your things, move on and look forward to a healthier relationship in the future.
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