The messages were on my boyfriend’s phone, in a conversation with his best friend. He was talking about how hard it would be to turn down the chance to have sex with someone else. Then he wrote that he would do what his heart wanted that weekend. I read them and found myself wondering whether I was even allowed to be upset.
I hadn’t found proof of an affair. As far as I knew, nothing had happened. That distinction mattered to me, but it also left me arguing against my own reaction. Was I making too much of words because I couldn’t point to anything beyond them?
We’re both nineteen and have been together for four years. Lately, we’ve been going through a rough patch. I’d had a strong feeling that something was wrong, which was why I checked his phone. It wasn’t something I’d really done before. I went looking because I was uneasy; finding those messages gave that uneasiness something specific to attach itself to.
I understood the sexual meaning of what he’d written. He was presenting the possibility of being with another woman as a temptation he might not resist. The weekend message made it harder for me to dismiss the conversation as a vague boast. Still, I didn’t know whether he had a particular opportunity in mind or was just talking big to his friend. I couldn’t turn either possibility into a fact.
When he explained himself, he said he had only written those things because of how I treated him. That was the part that pulled our existing problems straight into the messages. Instead of hearing what he meant by them, I was being asked to look at what I had done.
I know our relationship hasn’t been going well. I’m not pretending otherwise, and I don’t think that being hurt makes every complaint he might have meaningless. But I struggle to see how being unhappy with me explains talking about taking a chance to cheat. Those are different things to answer for.
I’ve tried talking to him about the rough patch. It feels as though what I say goes in one ear and out the other. Now there’s something else I need us to talk about, and his explanation has sent us back to the problems we weren’t managing to discuss in the first place.
I still don’t know what to do. Before I found the messages, I wanted him to hear what I was saying about us. Now I need an answer about what he was saying to someone else.
