Hi everyone and thank you in advance for hearing me out.

I’m having some doubts about my relationship. I’m in a 7 month relationship with my boyfriend and it’s been a rocky ride to say the least. Yet we are moving in together in a few weeks. But in my opinion we have some pretty bad underlying issues and I’m not sure how to handle it all. Yesterday I became triggered by something I saw (I’ll explain in a bit) and I have the tendency to become very emotional and dramatic when I’m hurt or angry. But I’m trying to work on myself and always cool down and maybe . talk to a friend to stop myself from overreacting. So here I am, on the internet asking your opinion of my situation.

BEFORE my relationship:

I was in a very intense relationship, crazy about my ex. Extreme highs and lows and to be honest, I’m still healing from that breakup. I still think about him and sometimes wish things were different. Yet I do accept that it wasn’t meant to be and that we tried, I got hurt a lot more than him in the whole thing. It was miserable. Some time after this breakup I met my current boyfriend. I didn’t hit it off immediately with him but ended up falling for him and we were very much in love for 2 months. Except my ex is always in the back of my head. It’s as if he lives there (even though we don’t talk anymore). I ignored my feelings and focus on current boyfriend.

START of issues:

My current boyfriend knew about my heartbreak and how insecure I felt about myself, my feelings, love and that I wasn’t exactly “over” the whole thing. This made him insecure. He would often ask things about my ex, and my dumb self would always answer honestly. I should have just avoided those questions. Some days he can be very focused on my past, which only makes me feel worse because I don’t want to think about it and even if I wanted to talk about it, I’d do so with friends. So now during fights my boyfriend sometimes brings this up. “You and your ex were this and that, you don’t love me as much, you think he’s better than me, you want him back”. In the beginning I felt very stupid about this, I had given him this feeling and I felt so bad and guilty. But in the meantime it’s always the same thing over and over again. The effect that this has caused is him not trusting me AND that I focus on HIS past as well. I’m bothered by an ex-girlfriend, a friend with benefits, the girl he calls: the one who got away, a female friend he calls sweety. It bothers the hell out of me and it makes me feel “less” just like he feels sometimes.

So this was kind of an underlying issue from the start. And he used to always say: oh you’re chatting with this guy and that one and they all want you, I bet you are flirting with them all, or did you f***k him too? He’s saying those things because I have a lot of male friends and because when I was single (and younger) I used to be a little wild, partying and fooling around. However I’m over that phase already for quite some time. When I express hurt over those sayings he would say he is joking and I shouldn’t take him all that serious.

Despite these insecurities, we loved each other, had a lot of fun and were there for each other emotionally and we always talk about our issues and pain. We always communicate.

SHIT HAPPENED:

But about 4 months ago things got messy. I gave him a secondhand phone of mine cause his phone broke. Apparently that phone was still logged into all of my social accounts. And he started snooping like crazy. Of course he didn’t find anything because I am loyal and I’m not flirting and chatting with every guy on the town. What he did find was a sad conversation between me and my ex from a year ago (my ex begging me for sex and me being whiny and sad that he can’t use me for sex, that I want a rship and to be loved). My boyfriend confessed he had been snooping and said he saw that conversation. He also went through every convo I had with male friends.

At first I wasn’t mad, I thought oh well.. we’re all curious you know and I don’t have anything to hide. But then I became a bit unsettled. Why was he so focused on this? Why was he so sure he’d find some kind of evidence. I decided that maybe it was because he was projecting and this behavior he accused me of might actually closer to him than it is to me. So I logged into his account..

And there I found he had been chatting with his old “friend with benefits” VERY FLIRTY, sending a lot of winky faces and phrases like: “aww you know I wouldn’t ever forget about you”, “you know you’re freaky”, “oh you dyed you hair? Show me a picture (he asked this 4 times before she agreed)”, “we did have fun didn’t we?”. You know stuff like that, he also said he didn’t miss me (this was during a trip he took) even though he was texting me every day saying he wanted me to be there and that he missed me. These convo’s weren’t daily or even weekly but were 3/4 times initiated by him.

I decided to dig deeper and found that before he and I were official he was complaining a lot about me to her. Saying I was weak and depressed, that he preferred his nympho girl (I didn’t want to have sex at that time). That I was annoying. And she was feeding into it, saying it was just a weak pathetic sad girl cause I can’t handle a break up. So before we dated he was actually talking shit about me to her.

Of course I freaked out. I broke up with him. He did everything he could to make it right and begged to give him another chance. That she was nothing, that he’d just been looking for attention because I wasn’t always giving it. That he just had been good friends with her for some time while he was single. That he’d never cheat on me. etc etc etc.

I decided to give him another chance. Even though the existence of this girl had made me very nervous before. He often talked about sex with her and how kinky she was (she’s into BDSM, does drugs, has loads of piercings). While I am very girly and sweet looking with 1 piercing (lol) and I’m definitely not a prude in bed or anything but i don’t do coke or worship satan or own butt plugs.

DOUBLE trouble:

A few weeks later I found out that in a drunken state on a night I remember nothing about that I had kissed someone (my bf and I were already together for a few weeks). That person came telling me, since I don’t remember I can’t say exactly what happened. What is true, what is exaggerated or fake. I told my boyfriend, he became angry but said we had both made mistakes and he would let it pass. We talked about this a lot, he was mad at me for weeks, would make snarky comments. All normal but I was definitely not allowed to say the same about his texting affair. Because if I brought that up he starts laughing every time, he laughs at me: says I completely overreacted, what I did was a lot worse, the texting was “totally friendly”, that he even disliked the girl, that i was just a dramaqueen.

NOW:

We talked a lot, cried a lot and decided to leave it behind us and try and learn. That we deserved an honest chance, no other people involved. Now we’re both in our mid-twenties and are both struggling a bit with finding the right carreer/company so we can both be a little stressed, we still fight now and then. Nothing too weird. But if I’m honest.. I’m still hurt about the texting with that old FWB. I still don’t trust him and he doesn’t trust me either. He still brings up my ex a lot.

Yesterday we were casually talking on the phone and I asked him if he would like to help my friend by partaking in a study about a dating app I know he used. We were just having a conversation about it and I explained the study. He got all weird about it, I asked why he was being so weird and joked: did you actually ever meet with anyone, except for that FWB? He said he only met with her in the two years he used the app (is this true?). A lot of people use the app for casual sex so I said: so you only met with 1 person and it was to have sex? (I know he had sex with her on the first date because he told me before).

He went: no it wasn’t to have sex, it was just to hang out.

Me: But you told me in the past that you never liked her and just thought she was interesting to sleep with? You did say you had sex with her on the first date no?

Him: starts laughing, awww come on honey.

Me: why are you avoiding and being weird? You told me before so why are you dancing around it now?

Him: okay yea we did have sex on the first date.

Me: You’re making me feel weird about this, it’s close to lying.

Him: Nahhh it was just to tease you!

Me: You know it makes me feel insecure with everything that happened..

We changed subject, talked about some other things and after I went to check the girl’s Instagram and saw my boyfriend had liked some pictures of her. I wondered if they were talking again but he changed his password so I can’t check.

My gut feeling is alarmed but I don’t know anymore.. What do I do? How should I feel about all of this? Is he lying or hiding again?

My trust, our trust is completely broken..

Sorry for the long post but I had to get it out.