A
female
age
30-35,
anonymous
writes:I need advice on what happens next in a relationship - I have been with my girlfriend for almost a year. There is many years age difference (25 years) so our opinions differ a lot of the time. She is well liked by everyone and has an adoring personality but feels a need to be friends with all her exes. Her recent ex (nearly two years ago) is still in love with her and I worry if she spends time with her she will lead her on to thinking they will get back together.I have insecurities, I have jealously issues and I have trust issues after she lied to me for 4 months as to where she was and when she was seeing her 'friends' was in fact her ex girlfriend. I find it difficult to trust her now more than ever and find myself worrying and getting worked up if I think she is with her. I think she could cheat on me when I know deep down she is not like that but I really struggle. As days go on we have some amazing times but then we have some very big lows, how do I stop this merry-go-round of the same thing happening and how do I deal with this ex. Shes not going away, she wants her as part of her life as a 'friend' but how can I convince myself that is all there is too it?I don't want to struggle, seem needy or insecure, it crazes me and just makes things worse but I struggle to know what to do. I struggle with trust - I hate people that lie but not sure if it is too late.Any advice, constructive or critical is more than welcome!! :)
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reader, anonymous, writes (6 August 2014): I'm gonna tell you the same thing I told my sister just a week ago when she came to me with the same problem with her boyfriend - either you end it and forget about the whole thing, or you close your mind to it and accept that your partner has a mind of their own and they have the right to be friends with who they want. If you have issues with jealousy, as you admitted you do, then sometimes your partner will lie to you because they don't want you to get angry about what they're really doing. They feel like telling you what you want to hear will solve the problems you have, but it often backfires when the truth comes out and you then get suspicious and accuse them of lying when they're telling the truth. If you want this relationship to continue, you need to relax about the whole situation. Your partner broke up with this other woman for a reason and she chose to be with you, think about that. She wouldn't stay with you for almost a year if she didn't like you. So what if this other woman likes her? That's not your concern, as long as your girlfriend doesn't love her back then nothing will happen, and even if she does like her back, you said it yourself, she's not the sort to cheat on you, so why are your stressing out?I agree, your girlfriend shouldn't have lied to you in the first place, and so I understand your jealousy, but there's nothing you can do to change anything so just relax and let things go. Keep your wits about you and recognise the situation but don't wind yourself up about it when there's nothing to actually worry about. You probably have more arguments because of your jealousy, whether you realise it or not.
A
female
reader, xTheAlmightyDuckx +, writes (6 August 2014):
 Okay. First of all, why did she lie to you? This all sounds very suspicious.
If she wasn't doing anything with this ex of hers then why did she lie to you about where she was? People only lie if they are trying to hide something, so what exactly does she have to hide?
You aren't being obsessive, or crazy, or anything like that, if my partner was good friends with an ex who still had feelings for my partner I would react exactly the same way.
Its not fair on you that this girlfriend of yours is putting you through all this stress, can she not see why you have these trust issues? if someone is hanging around with somebody who is in love with them, then of course their partner is going to be worried about it!
Another thing I don't understand is why your girlfriend is hanging around with an ex who is still in love with her...I mean people need time to get over there feelings, and if your girlfriend is hanging out with her isn't it just going to make the other girl fall more in love. It also sounds like your girlfriend is kinda being unfair to this other girl, its a well known fact that some exes are simply un-able to be friends, and if one of them still loves the other then being just FRIENDS is out of the question.
However putting all that aside, I am more worried about you. It sounds like the stress is really getting to you, and when you already have issues which may of stemmed from previous relationships it makes the stress 10 times worse.
I've been in a similar situation as you, I had a boyfriend who would always go out cheating on me. Even when he wasn't cheating i'd sit at home and just constantly worry about where he was, what he was doing, it was so bad that I ended up in hospital due to stress.
So, to avoid the stress getting to much for you, I think you need to either 1) learn to put up with your girlfriends choices or 2) remove the thing which is causing the stress.
I think removing the root of the stress would be the best, but its up to you, but if you do want to do that then you need to sit down and have a very serious chat with your girlfriend. You need to tell her what this is doing to you, you need to let her know that the whole fact she lied to is making this situation unbearable for you to live with, you may even want to question why she lied to you, you then need to bring up the fact her ex is still in love with her and how much that is making you worry.
After that you can then either politely ask your girlfriend to not be friends with this ex anymore, or try and come up with a way to make the stress easier for you. Of course, your gf is a human being, and she may not want to get rid of this ex of hers, and if so you can't force her too, which then puts you in an even more difficult position.
You can either put up with it, work ways around trying to deal with the stress, try and trust her and take her word when she promises you nothing is going on.
Or you can end it with your girlfriend, which of course would get rid of the stress, the anxiety and everything like that as if the root of the stress isn't removed you will have to live with it until it does get easier. I hope I have at least shed some light on the situation, good luck x
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