A friend of mine has been dating a dude for a good amount of time now. Months ago, they had a bit of a hiccup when she got peeved at how overbearing he could be. He's been cheated on in the past, told he wasn't good enough for one reason or another by chicks and it's affected him to the point where it poisons his other relationships. They seemed to have made it past that but now there's new drama taking place. While they were both laying in bed last night, she caught a glimpse of his text conversation with another chick. There was some "romantic" type of conversation, including this chick asking him how he liked to be kissed. She only caught the convo out of the corner of her eye, but was also able to see him say, "I can definitely do that," although she's not sure what message of this other chick's that he was responding to. She wasn't sure what to do; should she confront him, did she have any right to, and solicited my advice. And you know what I said. Hell yes, she had a right to confront him and should probably do so. When she called him on it, he said that he was all about her, that he loved her and apologized for having a conversation "that could be perceived" as inappropriate. He claimed the romantic things she had read were actually this chick just "asking for a favor". At that point, she got up and went for a walk and the two of us continued our conversation about what she should do, and what she believed about his texting with this other chick. I side eyed his explanations and pointed out that there is no way something like "how do you like to be kissed" came into the convo as a result of "asking for a favor". That's a VERY specific question, and it's an inappropriate one when you are in a relationship with someone else. The friend decided she wasn't going to be able to move forward unless she knew exactly what was said and upon returning from her walk, asked to see the full conversation in order to see the context. Fucker had deleted all the texts and got attitude with her, claiming his word should be enough and saying that he doesn't have to prove anything to her. Then, he said that despite his many trust issues, he manages to trust her and that he had a huge problem with her thinking him capable of doing something like this with another woman. Apparently they stopped short of breaking up. A day later, she's still trying to figure out exactly what happened and what she should do next. But her gut is telling her that the convo was much worse than he made it out to be.
Three things: one, you for damn sure have to prove something to me if I catch you exchanging risque texts with someone else, and if you think you don't, then we have a bigger problem. Two, I hate that manipulative "well I did this so you should do that" bullshit he tried to pull about trust. Trust is earned, and it takes a long time to earn and seconds to lose. She has every right to react the way she did and feel the way she feels. It shouldn't be "I have trust issues, but trust you so I should be able to get away with murder". And three, the fact that you deleted the texts immediately upon being caught tells me there was something else going on and you knew you were doing wrong. There's no other reason as to why that would happen. If it genuinely was just "asking for a favor" and she turned the convo to something inappropriate, and you did nothing to contribute to that, there would be zero reason to delete anything. If it were innocent, all he had to do was say, "See? This is all that happened", show her the screen and put her mind at ease. It would've been that easy to put all of this to rest. Let us remember, it's always the cover-up, not the original act, that gets us into trouble. I value honesty above a lot of ish in relationships, so I would make a huge deal out of this until I knew just what had been said. But I don't know what her response will be. She's not a fan of confrontation and since he deleted everything, her only options are either asking the chick what happened or taking his word about it all and waiting to see if it happens again. And neither of those are very appealing.
In my experience, anyone worth trusting makes you earn their trust big time and expects the same of you. I couldn't be in a relationship with someone I no longer trusted, regardless of how good things had been before trust was lost. Her view is that the reason she didn't end it is because she believes he's been too good to her up until now and she's not ready to throw it away over this. And I get that. I've been guilty of staying in things too long for much pettier reasons than that, as well as departing them too early for equally ridiculous reasons. We all have our quirks in relationships. And we all value different things. For me, it's trust, honesty, respect and loyalty. If any of those goes missing, there's a pretty good chance I'm gonna back away with the quickness. And that's why I've been more mindful of the advice I dish out on this matter, because I know what I'd have done is way different than how she handles things. In the end, I just hope it works out for the best. She deserves better than some fool carrying on that kinda ish, especially right in front of her. Talk about disrespect, yo.
