Your Man Just Hit on Me…

A situation that comes up more often than anyone would like to admit is the one where your boyfriend, fiance or husband actually hits on a good friend of yours. It’s definitely one of the more humiliating things that can happen to anyone and it’s also one that’s very difficult to know how to handle. There are many things that come to mind at first, but there are also other things to consider before making an immediate decision.

To begin with, you need to consider the source. Is the person telling you that your man just hit on her a reliable person? Or is she someone that has been known to be jealous of you in the past and has lied to you on more than one occasion? If that’s the case, you’ll want some definitive proof that she’s not lying to you this time before you start throwing your man’s clothes out onto the front lawn. Witnesses would be ideal but they usually aren’t part of the equation as even a man stupid enough to hit on his woman’s friend will be smart enough to do it privately. So you’ll have to take another route in sniffing out the truth.

The best method to try is taking them both by surprise. Get them both together in front of you and confront him with what you’ve been told. Unless your man is an exceptional liar, you’ve probably noticed little things he does when he’s not being completely truthful with you. Watch him closely because you don’t want to miss that first involuntary response from him when you make the initial accusation. You should be able to tell if he’s guilty as charged.

Now, if he DID actually hit on your friend, you’re most likely going to want to know why. Ask the question if you really want the answer. But you’re still going to need to decide whether he stays or goes. Can you ever trust him again? Probably not. Has this ever happened before while you’ve been together? It may have. Was he drunk when he made the pass? Does it really matter? The bottom line is that he was TRYING to cheat on you and that’s not acceptable in a monogamous relationship.

So unless you want to entertain the idea of threesomes and swapping, this is one man that you probably will want to send on his way. Don’t put yourself through the agony of worrying about whether or not he can be trusted around your friends. You should be able to have attractive friends without limiting yourself to only those that probably will be old maids until they leave the earth. There should be trust between the two of you and if you’ve got to worry about whether or not he’s in the hall bathroom trying to feel up your best friend, it’s simply not worth it. Help him pack and take away his door key. Then you can find someone that’s worthy of you and who won’t behave like a wild animal in heat with anyone other than you.

Dealing with Jealousy in your Relationship

The Green Eyed Monster is bound to rear its ugly head at some point in time during most relationships. Whether there’s an actual reason for it or not, it does happen from time to time. In some relationships, jealousy is present too much of the time and makes for a stressful connection between the partners in these relationships. The question surrounding jealousy is more about how to deal with it than anything else.

The first thing in dealing with jealousy in your relationship is to try to get to the root cause of it. Why is there distrust that can cause jealousy? Typically, it’s because the partner with the jealousy problem has been mistreated in a relationship in the past. This is usually because an ex has cheated on this partner and fidelity is something that he or she no longer takes for granted in a relationship.

Oddly enough, it can also come from the partner that cheated. The belief here is that if he or she is capable of cheating, then their partner could also be capable of it. Anytime there are trust issues of any kind in a relationship, there’s a huge probability that there will be jealousy within that relationship.

Insecurity is also another major root cause for a partner to be jealous. This insecurity can come from an assortment of past issues. Sometimes a person may pass through an “ugly duckling” phase before blossoming into their present day swan. Many times these people can’t move past the fact that they were once grossly overweight or had acne that covered their face. Even though they may now sport clear skin and a killer body, they look in the mirror and still see that fat, acne faced person that others used to make fun of.

Insecurity can come from other reasons, too. Nearly everyone starts out with the innocence of believing everything they’re told. This is particularly true in a relationship. Until you learn that people can and do lie, it’s easy to live in a cloud of happiness. Then one day, you catch your partner cheating on you, or you find out that he or she has been lying to you all along. That’s the beginning of the undoing of most people. They’ve learned that they trusted when they shouldn’t have. That can bring about a permanent insecurity that will be the cause of jealousy in all future relationships.

Once you learn the root cause of your jealousy, then you can begin to go about finding a way to deal with it. For example, if you’ve been cheated on in the past, look at your suspicious nature in your present relationship.  Unless your partner has given you any reason to feel that he or she has been unfaithful to you, there’s no real reason to get upset if you see them noticing an attractive individual. On the other hand, if your partner is openly staring and gawking while out with you, there’s every reason for anger, rather than jealousy.

If you find that you simply cannot move past jealous feelings even though you have no reason for it, you may want to get some counseling to help you deal with these feelings.

How Much Privacy Should Exist in Relationships?

There are many people these days that have been cheated on and betrayed in other ways by their partners. These are the partners that were supposed to love and support them. Yet, they turned out to be little more than sneaky, conniving, cheating and lying pieces of scum that really didn’t deserve what they had. Oddly enough, these same morally deficient individuals will step back and wonder exactly what happened.

If those relationships had been a bit more open, would there have been all of the sneaking around, lying and cheating going on? Maybe, because the ones that are really determined will usually find a way. On the other hand, it may not have turned out to be such a shock to the partner that was wrongly treated. They would have picked up on little hints and clues that their partner was trying to cheat on them.

People that have been mistreated in this way in relationships may find it hard to trust anyone again. For this reason, it may be a good idea to limit the amount of privacy in their next relationship. The idea behind this way of thinking is that you only need total privacy if you have something to hide. Granted, there are SOME things that everyone should have privacy for such as bathroom visits and other intimate things. However, why do you need to be hiding your email passwords from each other? Do you plan to be getting emails that you don’t want your partner to see?

Again, this doesn’t mean that you have to be peering over each other’s shoulders while reading emails. It simply means that there shouldn’t be any need for such strict privacy unless there’s something that you’re hiding from each other. The first thing that comes to mind is that one of you needs to hide online conversations with others.  At least that’s what partners that have been cheated on before may think.  This is one of the primary reasons that couples should be comfortable enough to be completely open with each other.

When you think about it, loving someone should make it unnecessary to keep too many things private from each other. The trust in a really good relationship should be of such a level that neither of you should be worried about what the other one is doing. A truly great relationship will not hold the need to keep passwords secret or other things. When you have a completely open relationship in this way, there will be no need to worry about secrets being kept on either side.

Of course, this type of relationship requires the utmost in trust, which is the sticky part of it all. Therefore, it can be rather difficult to know if you can have this type of relationship, especially when you’ve been betrayed in the past. So you’ll need to be quite careful. Of course, a certain amount of caution is needed in all relationships, especially at the beginning. So, hopefully, you’ll get to know each other to the point where you can have this type of trust. Privacy just isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be.

Rebuilding Trust In a Relationship

Something that can single-handedly destroy any relationship is when trust is broken. This can be through lying, cheating or anything else that constitutes betrayal.

There are many ways that trust can be broken:

• Cheating, of course, is number one on the list. When one partner goes outside of the relationship and has sex with someone else, it brings about a situation in the relationship that many don’t survive.
• Lying to your partner about something important will also break trust. Your partner won’t know when you’re lying or not after that.
• Talking badly about your partner to others is disrespectful as well as trust breaking.

Once trust is broken, it can be next to impossible to rebuild. The first step is deciding how badly you want the relationship to survive. If you really want to make it work in spite of what you’ve done, you need to understand that it’s not going to be easy. You’re going to be on probation for a long time. Expect to have to explain your every move for a while. Also, don’t be late in coming home or calling when you’ve said you would be. Once you lie about something, it’s going to be difficult to convince your partner that you won’t do it anymore.

When you say you’ll be home at a certain time, it’s vital that you be there within at least 5 minutes of the set time. If you get caught in traffic or were delayed at work, you had better take a couple of minutes to call ahead of time to explain what’s going on. It may be necessary to make more than one call depending on what has caused your delay and how long you’re going to be. This may be a bit annoying but when you cheat or lie to your partner, you can expect to be making it up for a long time to come. If you want to repair your relationship, it’s not going to be easy on you and it shouldn’t be.

If your screw up was talking badly about your partner to others, assuming your partner still wants to try to work on things, the hoops that you’ll probably have to jump through may be even more irritating.

First of all, though, think about why you said the things you did about your partner. Is it possible that you really want to end the relationship and this is how you were getting that out in the open? Why would you say negative things about your partner behind their back if you really are in love with them? Yes, those are some things to think about because being talked badly about by someone that’s supposed to love you can be very hurtful.

The bottom line is that if you want to make the relationship work in spite of what you did to ruin it, there are things that you’ll need to do to rebuild that broken trust. You must be willing to toe the line for as long as it takes or walk away now.