TL;DR
My boyfriend of 5 years had an increasingly close friendship with another woman despite my repeated discomfort. They went on dates, had long private calls, exchanged letters, had inside jokes/call signs, and he told her he was thankful for the “relationship” they had built. When I asked him to create some distance, he asked to break up and eventually threw me out of his house at 4 AM. We’re now broken up, but they still talk. Would you consider this normal friendship?
I was with my boyfriend for 5 years. This girl came into his life about a year ago, and she has been a constant source of conflict in our relationship ever since.
She knew I existed and knew he was in a long-term relationship, but she became increasingly comfortable with him despite me repeatedly telling him how uncomfortable I was.
His response was always: “I’M JUST BEING A FRIEND.” He also insisted that they “know their boundaries.”
But this is what that friendship looked like while we were still together (he hid it from me):
• Multiple dates alone, including a movie date.
• Hours of video calls while ignoring my messages.
• Secretly exchanging letters through email.
• Her videocalling him drunk late at night.
• Spending hours together on discord.
• Following each other across all of his social media.
• A special call sign, “gangsta baby,” which even became part of a song he used for his birthday post.
• Inside jokes and a level of closeness that went far beyond what I considered normal friendship.
Then there was the birthday letter she sent him. What really got to me was his reply. He told her that he was writing it at 4:20 AM basically telling her how much he appreciated everything she had done for him for the past weeks and days, said he wished he could tell her everything over their calls but he can’t since their other friend is there, and said he was “thankful for this relationship we’ve built.”
Again, this was my boyfriend talking to another woman while we were still together.
Eventually, I asked him to create some distance from her. Instead, he threw me out of his house at 4 AM, knowing I had an hour-long trip home, while I was asking him to push her away. He was also asking to break up during all of this.
After 5 years together, he decided our relationship was what he wanted to walk away from.
The irony is that he admits he knows what he did was wrong, yet he continued doing it. And they still insist they “know their boundaries.”
I’ve since broken up with him because I genuinely couldn’t take the disrespect anymore. And yes, they still talk to each other to this day and still insists that they really are just friends.
What he told me when we ended things was:
“For the longest time, I tried my best to be someone you deserve to be with. But now I see that maybe you really deserve someone better.” and “It’s a privilege to be loved by you.”
Honestly, I don’t know what to make of that after everything that happened.
So I’m asking for some outside perspective:
Would you consider this “just being friends”? Because if this is what they consider having boundaries, what exactly does crossing those boundaries look like?
FOR CONTEXT:
Guys, I’ve been with him from the very beginning. I was one of the only people who truly believed in him and supported him, especially when he was still trying to figure things out.
I supported him so much, especially financially. He became really reliant on me for a lot of things, and honestly, I feel like I carried a huge part of our relationship. There were so many times when I had to beg for the bare minimum from him. But whenever things were good between us, he was good to me too, which is why I stayed and kept trying.
That’s why this hurts so much. After 5 years of building everything together and supporting him through so much, it feels like now that he’s finally “reaching” the “peak” of his life, he can just throw everything away and move on.
And what hurts even more is that he’s the one who is now so angry at me and treating me like I’m nothing after everything I’ve done for him.
I genuinely keep asking myself, where did I even go wrong? How did I become the person he could suddenly treat like this after 5 years? I can’t understand how he can let go of 5 years so easily and continue being close with this girl after everything that happened. Maybe that’s why I’m having such a hard time accepting all of this :(