Every now and again I lurk around subreddits for relationship advice, just out of curiosity. What’s fascinating to me is a common theme I see where people in these relationships put up with some seriously horrible behavior. Provided that their side of the story is accurate, some people are dealing with some serious boundary violations and shitty treatment. And when the author includes information about red flags they have seen along the way, they don’t seem to have honestly examined them and seen them for what they are before things escalated.
I know hindsight is 20/20 and it is easy for an internet stranger with no attachment to the situation to see things that is harder for the author to see. And I’m sure getting responses on Reddit helps them see things from a different perspective.
But what is worse about many of these scenarios is that often times the author is legitimately confused or has been gaslit so many times, that they truly question whether their partner is really behaving that bad. And I’m not passing judgment here. I have been someone who has missed (let’s be honest – probably ignored) some serious red flags, been gaslit and questioned whether I was overreacting or being “too much”.
The truth is, someone who loves you and values your relationship, wouldn’t even put themselves in a position to potentially lose you in the first place. They know that certain things are not okay in a committed relationship. And if they do them anyway, they are telling you all you need to know.
In one example on Reddit, a man’s wife was texting and calling a man that she worked with who was also married. They talked on the phone on their days off and texted often. The husband had noticed that she was on her phone a lot more than usual and would tilt the screen away when they were together so he couldn’t see it. He also noticed some other strange behaviors with her phone, but he trusted her and didn’t think much of it.
The wife and her co-worker had moved beyond just being good work friends, though. They both talked about the problems they had in their marriages. Things had turned sexual between them and one day his wife accidentally left her phone on the couch when she left the room. When her phone buzzed, the husband looked down to where she had left her phone and lo and behold, he discovered a completely inappropriate text message from her co-worker on the screen. Devastated, he opened her phone and looked at the previous messages and discovered that she had been carrying on this “relationship” with her co-worker for months.
After confronting her, she said she would put an end to the relationship and look for another job. She told her husband he could check her phone. But she kept texting and calling this guy anyway and just deleted her history. The husband found out and was, once again, devastated.
What was her reason for continuously betraying her husband’s trust? According to the author, his wife told him that she just liked the attention and wasn’t planning on leaving her marriage. But nonetheless, the damage was already done.
If you tell someone that they are hurting you, and they continue to do so, knowing it hurts you, you have to stop asking them why they keep doing it. Instead, you have to ask yourself why you keep choosing to stay in a relationship or situation where you are not valued.
Life is truly too short to spend time on people who don’t respect you, love you or do the work that is necessary to nurture a relationship. You deserve to have the kind of love that you give to others and someone who shows you day in and day out that they truly want to be with you.
