Dear Miss U,

I have been with my fiancé for 3 and a half yrs. He for a yr he has been living in another country and it has been extremely strenuous on our relationship. Financially it's hard for me to visit him. I have trust issues with him. Every time I call him he always finds an excuse to get off the phone. Where he is at he's having a lot of problems, mostly financially. (He lives in a 3rd world country) my biggest fear is him cheating so I accuse him a lot. He says he never did but if he misses me like he says then why doesn't he call? plz help me, he has lied to me in the past bout little things so its hard 4 me to trust. Plus I am insecure and he has told me he got tempted 2 times but just looked at a pretty girl. I have so much anxiety over it I have bad dreams of him cheating. This separation is killing me. My last relationship I was cheated on multiple times with a severe adult film addict. Plus he was a huge liar and sociopath. Is it just my fear? I love my fiancé and I want a healthy relationship.

Anxious in Mass


Dear Anxious,

You're not going to be able to have a healthy relationship until you resolve your issues with your last relationship. You can't just drag all that old baggage along into a new marriage and expect it to work, because it won't. Your fiancé is a completely different person. It's a different situation. A different relationship. So drop the comparisons. If you want a future, you need to let go of the past. If you don't feel you can do that alone, there are trained professionals available to help and in some places free hotlines you can call just to talk to someone.

Let me ask you something: If he's already getting in trouble off you for cheating, if you're already accusing him and not believing his assertion that he is faithful, then really why shouldn't he cheat? If you're already punishing him for the crime, don't you think that's just incentive to go ahead and break the rules? A person should be innocent until proven guilty. The necessity of proof always lies with the person who lays charges. That is to say, you. If you have no actual evidence that he is cheating, get off the guy's case because he's not going to put up with that forever. You can't punish someone for a past lover's transgressions, nor for your own fear.

Think about it, every time you accuse him you're effectively calling him a liar. You're saying he's not worthy of your trust. Not worthy. That's huge. And offensive. Stop it.

Have you asked him why he makes excuses to get off the phone? Maybe he just really hates talking on the phone; plenty of people do! Have you asked him if there's another method of communication he would be more comfortable with? Have you made an effort to do things together occasionally rather than just talking?

Have you spoken in depth about why he lied before? Understanding why doesn't take away his dishonesty, but it can help open up better lines of communication so that there isn't a next time. How long ago was this? Do you really need to be holding onto it?

The distance can be hard mentally. The silence can make the imagination run away with you, and not always to a positive place. It truly is hard to tell the difference between paranoia and intuition and not something I can instruct you in with one letter, but what I can tell you is this: If you honestly can't trust him you shouldn't marry him.

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Hi, kinda freaking out here! So the girl I love loves me back she's in Texas I'm in England made it a year so far! She's bi so I said she can be a physical as she want with women but she hasn't ever been with a guy. It will be a few years before I get there and she wants a sex life more than just what we can provide she wants physicality I suggested she has some time open but I wanted all the details I now regret this I thought she wouldn't find anyone or chicken out. I was wrong. A guy that lives across the street is stepping in. I don't wanna lose her but I'm scared I'm gonna and I can't get her and him out my head I love her but this kills me what do I do please help me!!!

Jamie


Dear Jamie,

It's always a terrible idea to enter into an open relationship because you feel you have to. That never ends well. It needs to be a mutually beneficial situation, and very obviously it isn't. Speak up! It's ok to admit you were wrong and ask to close the relationship again. Yes, there's the chance she will break up with you so that she can go and sleep around, but at least it's honest. You'll be hurt, but you'd be hurt by this situation regardless. So just say your piece to her.

I have been in the same situation as you Jamie, and I didn't speak up. It was a mixed experience. I was hurt, of course. But reading about my partner's experiences (I couldn't handle talking about it, but I still needed to know. It was better for me to have the facts than to guess what had gone on and blow it all out of proportion) was also very arousing. I learned a lot about what he liked and didn't like, what made him uncomfortable, grossed him out or reached him on a deeper level. It was educational for him too, because afterwards when we'd converse I would explain to him why a certain thing happened or that no, not all women want that in the bedroom, etc. It gave us an opportunity to share really intimate information that otherwise would have either never come up or would have been super awkward.

It went on for a couple of years, right up until I was to finally visit. He was meeting up with an old flame less than a month before my plane was due to touch down, and wanted to know how I felt about him hooking up. I said that I couldn't stop him.

How could I? Love for me had never been enough to stay his hand in the past. He had to have known I hated it. He knew that (at the time) I was strongly against casual sex of any sort. He knew that I was waiting for him, and that I'd turned down a few advances. But I did let him know if he couldn't wait a mere handful of extra days until I got there, then there was something very wrong with him. In the end, he met up with that old flame just as friends. I believe him when he says nothing happened.

I'm telling you this story because of what ensued after that. Because eventually you will meet. Eventually you will close the distance. But her past – and yours – will still be there.

After I left that first visit things changed. The relationship was more real to both of us. But that didn't make all those bed buddies suddenly disappear. They were still there; and I wasn't. There was still attraction and friendship, but once I'd shared my body with him I wasn't going to stand for continuing an open relationship. He took it well enough, but those others didn't; and even so habits are hard to break. They would still call him. There would still be flirting in conversation and text. There was much too much casual touching. Even when we closed the distance one particularly tenacious person still would not let up and that's what really strained the trust between us. He says he didn't notice the flirting, or thought they were jokes. It didn't matter what he claimed, I completely lost my composure and said I wanted proof that it wouldn't happen again.

He sent a written letter to that person saying that the flirting, the casual touching, and the innuendo all needed to stop. Not that they couldn't be friends, I will not chose my partner's friends, but the over-familiarity had to go. The friendship died soon after. As it turned out, the other person wasn't as interested in my love's personality as what hides in his pants.

After that I struggled to come to grips with his sexual history. I felt like I was getting used goods. Like I wasn't good enough. At times I would become preoccupied with his past to the extent that I couldn't become aroused. Even though through the whole thing he'd been above board, I found it hard to trust him because those people hadn't instantly been cast from his world once I moved in. It was a dark, awful period in our relationship.

But you know what heals that kind of thing? Time. Time without transgressions heals trust. We stuck it out, and eventually I realized that it was me he had wanted all along; he was substituting for me and now he had me he was being faithful.

We have spoken about it more recently, just reminiscing. Now it's behind us, now that I am more confident in myself and secure in our relationship, I am quite comfortable with everything that happened and one thing that sticks with me is this: He admitted that if he hadn't gone and gotten it all out of his system he may have ended up breaking up with me much later so that he could go and play the field. It was something he needed to do for himself. It did wonders for his confidence and self-worth, and I benefited from him knowing a few extra tricks. He knows what's out there now, and he knows what he has at home is superior.

There's my life story. Make of it what you will. Imagine your own future. Renegotiate the terms of your open relationship. Read my last article for more ideas on that. Do what you need to do. Be honest to yourself.

Also, a note on Bisexuality. Being bisexual doesn't mean you need to sleep with people of both genders. It doesn't mean her sleeping with women isn't cheating because you are a man. Bisexuality is simply the ability to fall in love with and be sexually attracted to both men and women. Nowhere does that imply she can have, or should have, one of each. It means the pool of potential she goes fishing in is much bigger, it doesn't give her an extra rod. Again, relationships need to be fair. It's not fair to say you can both sleep with people of the same gender if only one of you has a same-gender attraction.

Sincerely,
Miss U