Can someone be objective about my/his suspicions? I'm so confused.
My boyfriend and I have been dating for five months. We have a great time together, come from similar backgrounds, and have amazing chemistry. However, we have a very difficult time communicating. We approach issues from completely different standpoints, which I believe is part of the problem. Though he is sweet and sensitive, he is also very logical, solution-oriented and pragmatic. I am those things to an extent, however I am additionally very emotionally-driven. I am good at keeping myself in check (he actually has no idea how good), but I genuinely need to talk about things to make sense of them; feelings, ideas, worries, problems, etc. This seems to drives him crazy, as he tends to shy away from intense conversations.
Over the course of the past six weeks, I have noticed changes in his behavior. I literally used to feel like he couldn’t get enough of me. He’d text me on his way into work and say how he couldn’t stop thinking about me, or he would stare at me for a prolonged period of time adoringly. Suddenly, there is much, much less of that. I’m terrified it’s because someone else is getting that attention now. I know that relationships eventually settle, but I miss the intimacy.
He can also be very jealous. I have my demons as well. I am very suspicious and can be extremely distrusting of men specifically. Before we dated, we were friends. Our families have known each other for years. We spent a lot of time texting (though we were much younger— about six years ago). We stopped talking because it began to feel like we were heading down an inappropriate path and had both just started dating other people. He used to tell me how he’d hide his texting habits (or delete messages) from his then girlfriend, how he would use work to excuse his not being home, and he (at one point) overtly made passes at me while they were still together. Sometimes I think about how he used to speak to me (which is why we stopped talking) while he was with her and I feel like I would have to be an idiot not to expect the same would happen to me.
For the sake of the entire picture, we are also both very intuitive people. And while you would think that could be a great thing (and it can), he can boil over into cocktail of intense suspicion, a bit of self-assuredness about his own level of intuitiveness and then the lack of desire to discuss possible insecurities. Thus, what I have on my hands now is a man I love very much who I feel I cannot connect with sometimes. Whether it be because I need to be able to communicate my own insecurities with him, or because he is sure that he has reasons to be angry when he doesn’t and pulls away.
As I am writing this, I’m finding it sounds far more horrible in this succinct written version of our relationship. He really is an amazing person, very generous and loving. I'm completely in love with him and I enjoy our relationship tremendously. We are both much more mature and grounded now than either of us were when we were younger (we were both kind of wild cards back then). There is a lot of good in our relationship. But when he becomes suspicious, moody or cold I instantly think that maybe I have reasons to be suspicious as well. People tend to expect from others (or project onto them) what they would do, or have done, and I cannot tell whether or not he just very insecure or very good at hiding things from me.
He is literally at my house every single day, sometimes there when I get home waiting for me. He has prompted the discussion about moving in together officially, and we have been looking for possible places. But I’m so afraid of the betrayal. The idea of him carrying on a secret correspondence, even, with another woman makes me sick inside. I would actually rather him tell me he made a mistake and did something once than find out he never did a thing but was carrying on an emotional relationship with another person.
And here is where the problem lies. I drive myself crazy trying to figure out his behavior, and when I attempt to discuss it with him he takes immediate offense. Is it paranoia? Is it good judgement? Or is it a mix, perhaps?
My questions are: Is it naive of me to hope that he has grown up and changed since we first met? Does it sound like we are both in each other’s heads too much or should I be wary about his fidelity? Does it sound like I am missing something here, or that I am simply making too much out of nothing (or very little)?
