There weren’t any recent messages in the archived chat. I kept scrolling anyway, back to July, when my boyfriend and I had broken up for a few days. By the time I confronted him about what I found, I was questioning a friendship I’d already tried hard to accept.
I’m 25 and he’s 24. We’d had a terrible argument that July, and I ended the relationship. A few days later, I decided to forgive him, and we got back together. That was the reconciliation I thought we were both returning to: the two of us, trying again after something had gone wrong.
Then I learned that he’d met up with another woman on the day we split. He said she’d been in his life for a long time. She was a friend, and he’d needed comfort. When I asked whether they’d ever had sex, he said they had, two years earlier. Whatever had been between them hadn’t worked out, he told me. They were only friends now.
I wanted to be able to believe that. Having a past with someone doesn’t automatically mean you’re still trying to have a future with them. I also didn’t want my discomfort to turn into an accusation simply because another woman knew him before I did. So I tried to trust his explanation, even with the timing of that visit sitting awkwardly beside it.
The archived conversation caught my attention when I glimpsed his messages. I went looking through it afterward. I snooped; that part is mine to own. I didn’t find a current exchange. What I found was from the argument in July, during the same brief breakup he’d explained as a time when he needed a friend.
When I challenged him about those messages, he said he’d been vulnerable. He felt that nobody really understood him then except her, because she’d been around for so many of his ups and downs. He didn’t think what he’d said was wrong. Then he admitted he might have considered something with her if he and I hadn’t got back together.
That admission changed what I understood by ‘just friends.’ We were broken up when he saw her. I can recognize that without feeling reassured by the rest. I’d been trying to accept a friendship with some sexual history behind it. Now he was telling me that, if we hadn’t reconciled, he might have considered more with her.
His explanation also left me in an uncomfortable position: the woman who’d been arguing with him, hearing that another woman was the one who understood him. I don’t know what she wanted. My impression is that she has feelings for him too, but that isn’t something I can establish from his admission. Nor does an old conversation prove that anything is happening now.
Still, we got back together, and she remained in his life. He sees no wrongdoing in what he said to her. I’m left trying to understand a friendship that sounds different after his explanation than it did before I opened the chat. He says they’re only friends now. I can’t make myself hear that the same way anymore.
