My girlfriend asked what it would mean for me if she met up with her former friends-with-benefits partner and they had sex. I told her I would leave. We had started that conversation because I wanted reassurance, and somehow I was now spelling out what would end our relationship.
I'm 23 and she's 28. We've been together for three months. Before we met, we spent almost two weeks sexting. Then she traveled to Canada, we met in person, and we had sex. Ten days later, she made our relationship official. There was a clear change between being interested in each other and actually being a couple, at least as I understood it.
Before that first meeting, she'd had a casual sexual arrangement with a man she'd known for about three years. She told me she hadn't seen him for two weeks. Their friendship went back much further than our relationship, and knowing they'd slept together didn't mean I had evidence that anything was still happening.
A couple of months ago, I asked her for reassurance about him. She said they'd already talked about why they weren't meeting anymore, and she'd explained that there was someone else. That someone was me. It sounded as though she had told him the sexual part of their relationship was over because ours had begun.
Then his name came up in a few conversations, and a few days ago I asked again. I wanted to know whether she was still seeing him for sex. She said no. But she also explained how good a friend he was, how maturely he'd handled their conflicts, and how they worked in the same field. Those are reasons people stay friends. I could understand what she was saying without feeling reassured by everything that followed.
She described him as the one man she respected and said they had a deep connection on a soul level. Hearing that from my girlfriend hurt. I had asked about their sexual history and whether it was really in the past; now I was hearing about a bond that sounded unusually important to her. The way she spoke about him left me wondering where I stood.
I don't know why she asked how I would react if they hooked up. She didn't tell me it had happened or that she planned to do it. Still, it was an uncomfortable hypothetical to hear while I was already anxious about this particular man. My answer was clear, even though the rest of the conversation left me unsettled.
What I'm less clear about is whether I can be comfortable with their friendship even if there is no sex. Her saying no matters. So does the earlier conversation in which she told him about me. Neither detail makes my discomfort disappear, and I don't want to turn that discomfort into a claim that she's cheated.
In a couple of weeks, I'm supposed to fly out to see her. I don't want this to ruin the visit. But I'm now questioning whether I want to continue the relationship, with a trip coming up that was meant to bring us together.
