Hi there, I'm new here. I'm just looking for a forum to discuss a little bit of a predicament I have in my relationship. Sorry it's a bit long, need to kind of explain the background.
I've been a little bummed out recently in my relationship. Just to preface my little predicament, I have been with my boyfriend for about a year now and it's my first actual long term relationship. The relationship is almost perfect, we laugh together, he compliments me all the time, cooks for me, and he's always there for me no matter what. I also feel our relationship just keeps on growing stronger and stronger. That being said, there's still something I feel can potentially turn into a big problem later on if I keep letting this go. My boyfriend is a very social person and has a lot of friends. Most of his friends (I'd have to say about 90-95%) are guys. Most of them have girlfriends as well and I get along great with all of them. I am a bit on the opposite end of the spectrum. I'm much more introverted. I have many friends (mostly female, all of my guy friends he has met already) but we don't get together as often as they all have separate lives due to kids, marriage, etc. On occasion, my dear boyfriend will invite me out with him and his friends but most of the time I give him his space with them. He should hang out with them without me clinging to him 24/7 or every time he wants to do something without me.
So my problem is that he has this female friend, I'll name her "Ashley" for my own privacy reasons. I've met Ashley on two different occasions. The first time was when me and my bf just started dating and we had bumped into her and her friend while on an errand. I was introduced to the girls, they gave me a congenial smile and a hello and they quickly went into discussing a party they had been at with my boyfriend a few nights prior. I basically stood there feeling like a ghost. Since I am more on the shyer side, it was difficult for me to participate in the conversation thus leaving me feeling very awkward. Fast forward 6 or 7 months later, I'm out with my bf and his friends and as we show up to the bar, Ashley comes out, drunk, rambling and extremely happy to see my boyfriend. She also *seemed* very excited to see me and wouldn't stop saying that "when he's happy it makes her happy" (she repeated it a few times)...he kind of stood there, wasn't acting like his old friendly self. He was stand offish towards her...but she was too drunk to notice. We ended up leaving and not really talking to her again the rest of the night.
Recently, I made a typical girlfriend move while I was using the browser on his phone....I snooped through his text messages a little. I came across Ashley's texts and even though there was nothing screaming at me, her messages to him made me feel very suspicious of her motives. I trust my boyfriend completely. Ashley sends him text after text after text and he doesn't reply. She calls and he doesn't answer...actually he even mentions it to me when she does call. I'll ask him why she would call him at a late hour or on a random weeknight and he'll act non-nonchalant and say something like "she just wants to go out" or "she just wants to hang out". The texts I saw her write to him were along the lines of: "what are you doing tonight?? Drinking with me is what you should be doing!"...she's giving him nicknames like "Jimmy-poo" and saying I love you and stuff like that. Whether he calls her up afterwards, that's what I'm not sure about. While he was out with his friends a couple weekends ago, she had been texting him while she was out, trying to get him to go meet up with her. I have no idea what for, could be innocent for all I know but I'm suspicious about her motives. In the same string of texts, she told him that she was done trying to maintain their friendship and topped that off the next morning with a "sorry for being mean" message and telling him that she was annoyed that he kept flaking out on her.
I mentioned to my boyfriend the other day (when she had been trying to call him and he had been ignoring her) that I didn't like her. He kind of brushed it off. I don't want this to cause friction between me and my boyfriend though....I don't know how to go about this. Should I say something? I feel that there's not a good way to go about it...I can't tell him "that time I was using the internet on your phone, I looked at all of Ashley's texts". That seems a bit too brutal. Since I don't know exactly what her motives are, I kind of want to let this roll out to see how far she goes because she may give up eventually.
So next time my boyfriend wants to hang out with his friends, should I tell him that I don't feel comfortable with him at the moment because of this girl? Could this potentially stir up frustrations on his end? I'm completely fine with him having female friends...he's got a few and there's at least one, whom he has referred to as one of his best friends and she was extremely nice. When I met her, she had told me that she heard a lot about me... she basically didn't exclude me from the conversation. This Ashley girl is bad news to me. I really don't like her, I don't like the way she acts, like getting drunk on any day of the week, and I don't like the messages she's sending my boyfriend, regardless of the fact that he's being a good boyfriend. All in all, I want him to cut her out or put her in her place and tell her that she needs to stop. If I could tell her, I would do that right now, but I don't know her at all. I feel that she needs to know that he's not available and my boyfriend needs to know that I feel somewhat disrespected by her advances on him.
Any advice on how I can go about this? I hope someone can give me some perspective!