I (M32) and D (F28) have known eachother for about 3 years now and have been dating for the majority of that time in a casual sort of matter. She was someone’s fiance prior to us starting a relationship so they’ve had things between the two that they still share between the two like a pet dog.

I’ve been aware of this and have for the most part let her do her thing, I have no idea what that situation is like and didn’t want to be in the way of it assuming it’d become less of a thing over time. I told her that I did not want to be caught in the middle of anything.

Being passive about it for so long has proven to an issue for me, contact between them hasn’t really decreased, nor has our casual dating developed into anything more than that, despite me wanting something more.

Towards Christmas, D wasn’t driving her own car, driving the other persons car. I got a handful of non-answers about why, or why their own family didn’t help him if he needed a car to drive. His car was not broken, they just…switched cars for multiple days.

I had eventually had a conversation about these things D after explaining that he still visits her apartment to talk from time to time. I expressed that this sort of arrangement with him seems to be more than just splitting things still. She mostly conceded and agreed it might be too much.

Which brings me to most recently… I was assisting D with a computer problem over a remote session. Troubleshooting a problem and doing it from her PC so she could see what I’m looking at. We ended up clicking on a reddit link. She made a semi-paniced comment about how she was still signed in. My curiosity got the better of me, and I looked at her username afterwards.

On her username I saw a post from a month ago (about the time I talked to her about them splitting things after these years) which referred to him as her husband.

I know for a fact they aren’t married, so I’m concerned on why she would type out her post this way, and has damaged my trust.

I know I’m likely in the wrong for looking in the first place, I did that to myself, but I can’t help but feel a bit justified in doing so because of what I found.

I’ve not mentioned this to her at this moment. She has since deleted the original post.

Aita? Any advice?

  • Markimus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    8 months ago

    It feels like you’re avoiding talking about those big boulders, and the symptoms of that are spiralling out with you feeling the need to look at her Reddit in order to try and understand her and connect with her a bit better; not only that, she’s there having to go to Reddit to get relationship advice instead of you. There are some weird secrets going on like with the car switching.

    All of these symptoms could be resolved if you just talked to her.

    The reason you two are staying casual is, from my point of view, because you’re too afraid to talk about the big things. You are “not wanting to be caught in the middle of anything;” you’ve communicated that she can’t really talk to you about the things that are bothering her because it makes you feel uncomfortable. That’s not a good set-up for anything more than a casual relationship.

    From now on, in every interaction with her, you should be thinking, “What is the biggest boulder here?” That will then inform your decision on what you need to talk about. (It’s a little more nuanced than that, though this is the main thing.) I would say the biggest boulder right now is the Reddit thing; she knows you saw her Reddit, and with the deletion of that post I’m sure she feels you at least might snoop, though she doesn’t want to bring it up as she’s scared of having that conversation. I feel like you need to admit that you snooped there, admit that you should have asked her first, how that was a mistake, how and why it’s not something that will happen again, resolve that and then move on to the medium-sized boulders, and then the smaller boulders.

    The biggest boulder might not be the Reddit thing, though that’s for you to decide; make sure it actually is the biggest boulder.

    The medium-sized boulders are probably to do with what’s happening in her life with her ex-partner, those sorts of conversations; you need to clear the air there. If she finds out that she can talk to you about the big stuff, your whole relationship dynamic will change.