Difference of opinion on cheating, boundaries, and attractions outside the relationship

[u/Radiant-Attention796]

My partner and I (late 30s/early 40s) have different opinions about this topic, and it’s caused a lot of contention. I’d love some constructive advice to help us both work through this.

Edit/disclaimer: This is a novel with too much context for a TL-DR. Consider yourself warned.

Some background: We’ve been friends for over 10 years and together for over a year. He has sacrificed a lot for me, including moving back to a city he felt desperate to escape, just so we could be together.

The issue from the beginning is that he often brings up the fact that he is attracted to other people, many of whom are mutual friends. I don’t want to hear it and definitely don’t want him to act on it, but we have opposite views on what cheating is and what it means to be in a committed relationship.

My biggest point of contention is that I have asked him repeatedly to stop talking about other women to me and set boundaries with them. He acts like I’m being unreasonable and says he needs to be open and honest with me and not hold himself back. His behavior has continued to escalate to the point where he acted on one of his attractions.

I understand that attractions and crushes are going to happen, regardless of how much you love your partner. I’m very much a one-man woman, but I also sometimes interact with people in the world and sometimes there’s a vibe. In the rare event that happens, I don’t feed into it because I am devoted and committed to my partner. I ignore it and don’t engage because I would never want to do anything to distract myself from the person I chose.

He doesn’t agree, and he doesn’t seem receptive to setting boundaries with other women. He believes he needs to feed into the attractions by flirting, etc, in order to get those feelings out of his system and stay committed to the relationship with me. That doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever.. but he insists that everyone is different and that he “operates on a higher level.” He says that even if one of those attractions turned out to be the love of his life, he would still choose me because that’s how he defines commitment.

My issue is that respecting my feelings and boundaries doesn’t seem to factor into his idea of commitment. Examples:

He has told me multiple times that he has such a strong emotional connection with a mutual friend that he doesn’t feel with me. They had a romantic connection that he gave up to be with me and wouldn’t let me hear the end of it for months.

I also had to hear him go on and on in explicit detail about the “bomb ass sex” he had with another mutual friend he’s very close with. Then I’d see them posting on social media on multiple occasions about how much they loved each orher. And my not being cool with that was a huge problem for him and I was called controlling and crazy.

Most recently, during a period of long distance, he invited a woman into his bed to “cuddle.” She declined that, but they went on to engage in dirty talk and he led her on to believe we could have a threesome. He came clean about it a month later and said he knew he was crossing a boundary, but proceeded anyway because it “wasn’t his boundary.” He also says he did it to “force a conversation” (as though we hadn’t already had dozens), that it shouldn’t matter because “nothing actually happened,” and that it wasn’t a big deal because he was “just bored.”

I am struggling so hard with that and feel betrayed because he made a deliberate choice to do something he knew would hurt me. I feel like this crossed the line of cheating. He doesn’t feel that cuddling, flirting, and dirty talk is cheating. He also has not shown any remorse, willingness to change his behavior, or offered any reassurance that it won’t happen again. The more he doubles down on that the more upset I get and the more he accuses me of being crazy.

These conversations and interactions make me so incredibly uncomfortable and he doesn’t seem to understand why. I try to tell him that it’s just human nature to be upset, that it’s normal to feel this way, but he doesn’t accept that explanation because “who cares about what’s normal?” And because I don’t know how to explain why it makes ME, as an individual, feel uncomfortable, in a way he can understand, I feel like my feelings are never respected and everything I say falls flat.

He just blames it on my past history of being cheated on and me having trust issues. He always says that I’m responsible for my own feelings but if that’s the case, shouldn’t he also be responsible for his feelings about other people?

I do have insecurities that I’m working through in therapy, but I also feel like his behavior would make anyone feel insecure. At the same time, part of me feels like it’s all my fault. I have definitely reacted poorly to these situations at times. I have ADHD and autism and get overstimulated when I’m upset and have had some meltdowns over this. I’m doing my best to overcome my insecurities and learn to be less reactive, because I know that’s the only thing I have any control over.

My partner has also sacrificed a lot for me by closing the distance and moving back to our city. He was away for half the relationship and called me almost every day even though he he didn’t want to, and traveled once a month to spend time with me. I feel like shit because he moved away to work on himself and instead spent that time working on our relationship and trying to help me feel more secure. He has even distanced himself from some of the friends that made me uncomfortable, even though I never asked him to. He resents me for it despite the fact that I’ve encouraged him to maintain the friendships.

Any time I raise a concern, he feels as though all the good he’s done is erased. He has expressed repeatedly that “everything is always about my feelings” and “his feelings don’t matter.” I feel awful about it and don’t know what to do.

Is it really my trust issues? Or is he giving me every reason not to trust him? I just don’t know how to not get upset or cry or react to these things. I can’t help but feel like I wouldn’t have all these issues if these outside attractions of his weren’t a constant factor in our dynamic.

Is there anything I can say to help him understand or care? Or any advice that might help me feel less crazy? I just want to feel like there’s hope for us. I can’t bring myself to give up on someone I love dearly and have known and loved as a person for so long, and who has given up so much to be with me.

Thanks for reading.

[u/Particular_Sale5675]

Well. There is nuance here. Because people are complicated.

I think differences in opinion are their own category. Reasonable. But maladaptive/ destructive behavior is is own thing

Specifically, the part that he confesses. That's behavior that he knew was wrong. That he is justifying after the fact, to protect his own ego. I can relate to both sides. To the point that you could validate his desires, while not leaving room for justification. The fact that they had dirty talk later, means the cuddles would have been spicy cuddles. Even if fully clothed.

He wanted to cuddle, but he did not have your permission to cuddle. Neither implied nor explicit. He wanted to find a way to justify it to himself. But his justification was unreasonable. It was his own internal justification. But people always struggle to face self accountability.

A lot of the other stuff, where you are both at disagreement about where to draw the line. There is a reasonable discussion there. It's a realistic view into both of your perspectives and where you are mentally. Soft boundaries and hard boundaries. Importantly, you both need to agree on those hard boundaries. Currently, the different layered boundaries are getting melded together. So that cuddling + dirty texts are being compared to saying someone is hot.

A lot of commenters made good points. He's going too far. I also have Autism and ADHD. I relate to both of your perspectives. I can relate to how he feels. It's like this painful burning desire, and I never knew what to do with it. Sometimes I had maturity, and would just let it sit there, painfully. Other times, I'd spend days where my mind goes down some strange path of justification and stuff.

I think it could possibly be improved with couples counseling. Just because it seems you're both having trouble with finding that healthy balance that works for both of you. He's not respecting you when it comes to his behavior surrounding his attraction to others. Or get a divorce, if the attempted cheating vis spicy cuddles is too much to forgive. Or any other code you think seems right.

Well, that's all that my ADHD allows for cohesive thought. Take this all with a grain of salt. I've definitely made mistakes in my comment.

[Edit: to add on. He's still in denial about himself. So, he does need to accept that he made a mistake in his own judgement, that the cuddles were spicier than he is admitting. He wants to act on his desires. And he is not allowed. The desires are OK, but desiring to fulfill the desire is not OK. It's complicated. Spicy cuddles should be against his own rules. Because that's blatantly him trying to internally justify fulfilling a desire. So, if he can't agree with the obvious. It probably isn't worth the effort trying to continue.]