Does this count as my boyfriend emotionally cheating on me?

A little background on our relationship. My boyfriend and I met three years ago through our university, he was an international student from America. We started to date in our second year and still are, however; after everything with the Covid-19 pandemic, he decided to take a gap in his studies and also decided to return home for a while - therefore, we have been doing long distance for about nine months. I totally understand his decision to be with family after being separated for such a long time, especially with the constantly spiking cases and worry of more lockdowns. Surprisingly, despite missing one another dearly, it hasn't been as difficult as we initially thought to remain in contact and keep our spark, and in a matter of 4 weeks I will be flying to America to see him again for the first time in a while and I'm so excited!

My boyfriend has a friend that now lives a few states away from him, one that he has had for years. We try our best to connect with one another's friendship groups despite the distance, eg having a discord group with a mixture of my friends and his to ensure our relationship is as close to the 'norm' as it can be and due to this, I have grown close with my boyfriend's circle and have formed my own friendships with them - however; this particular friend of his and I have never gelled. I have attempted to interact with them in groupchats and spoke to them in groupcalls, but she only ever seems to react with emojis to my messages and speak to someone else without addressing me.

I really am under the impression she doesn't like me and am at a loss as to why, I mean, she's never actually had more than one conversation with me that I can recall which was very brief and she left it on read after a few minutes. What concerns me and what I am starting to believe is that my boyfriend confides in her whenever we have disagreements or arguments. We've never had anything too serious when it comes to rifts, rather misunderstandings and accidental hurting of feelings which usually comes down to us getting used to maintaining a relationship from a distance but I suppose when I have been at fault and when he's been upset, things can seem more serious than they actually are on reflection. I know I can feel that way, as I am a very emotionally involved person.

I know my boyfriend confides in her a lot with different issues that don't include our relationship too and he always has done which is understandable as he's known her for way longer than me, so it would make sense that whenever we have a tiff, she's the one to hear it. If our occasional negative moments are all she is hearing about me without our resolution to them, then of course she'd have some reservations about me - especially when we've never had that chance to grow closer. I think what bothers me though, is that this has always been the case even during my boyfriend and I's relationship: she always knows about situations and reasons why my boyfriend is upset before I do.

It sounds like childish jealousy, but I'm starting to get hurt every time he brings up that he's feeling low about something because I quiz him as to why, and he gives me a very brief explanation and adds "It's fine, I spoke to (her name) about it all for a while in detail and they helped me out. I just feel a bit...it's not a big deal, I didn't want to bother you." It makes me feel like a bad girlfriend and like he can't trust or talk to me, and I have voiced these concerns and he simply says I'm "being silly of course he trusts me," he just doesn't want to nag me when I'm busy continuing my studies. Despite reassuring me every time, I don't feel much better.

I was under the impression that he could not possibly emotionally cheat on me as his friend is a lesbian, however; speaking with my other friends about this, they have reminded me that there are so many connections that are not romantic, and either way emotional honestly and vulnerability is important in a relationship and things can get messy if I am the only one showing that. They voiced it as an 'emotional betrayal.' I'm not sure what has shifted in the past few months, perhaps it is due to him confiding in her before me more often, but something feels off in my gut about it all. Am I making his feelings about me and being silly? Am I overthinking or being to self-critical to myself, and criticising him? I can't help but feel selfish for being so upset that he never talks with me about his feelings, something he has expressed he struggles with, but somehow easily manages to do with her instead.

The more I think about it, I feel as though she is more important to him than I am; for example, he claims it is due to never having a chance to speak long with her compared to us but he will fully forget to respond to me in favour of speaking with her instead, he'll stop playing a game with me to start playing with her for hours and he has cancelled a virtual date with me several times to accommodate her feelings if she has been upset or wanting company. We are both are very open with our affection towards our friends, saying we love our friends etc, so I have never questioned him jokingly calling his friend 'his wife,' and he also has checked with me before if this is upsetting and I reassured him it did not. I fully believe that you can have many strong connections that are not romantic, but surely I should have a smidge more of priority and time from his side of the relationship, especially with us being longer distance and that is something we are not as used to compared to his and her's friendship? How do I even approach such a difficult discussion without creating a tense atmosphere for my visit really soon, should I even mention it?

Reply 1

Dunnig Kruger

I'm getting the impression that there's an element of you and him being in love with being in love. Or being in love with being in a relationship.
And that as a result you're both trying to shoehorn this relationship. Make it work because you both want the relationship to work.
Which is OK to an extent.

But it seems like you're both missing the main point. Are you both in the relationship because he is the right man for you to share the rest of your life with and you're the right woman for him?

I'm not convinced that this is the case.

The clues to this are you talking about tiffs and negative moments and disagreements and arguments. And it seems that he's not comfortable talking about anything and everything with you and baring his soul to you.

The trouble with being in love with being in love is that it's a bad foundation for marriage or a long term relationship. Because the shoehorning effort will wear off after a while. You really really need to be with the right person. And vice versa.

Your most recent arguments, what they have they been about?

Reply 2

Anonymous #1

Original post by Dunnig Kruger

Thank you for responding! Your response gave me a lot to think about.

Our most recent tiff was about this, actually. I approached him about feeling disheartened that he clearly is feeling down for whatever reason, obvious with the way his tone changes during a conversation, and refuses to tell me anything other than he's spoken to his friend about it and he's okay now. I let him know that though I understand wanting to speak to specific person about issues sometimes for whatever reason, I'm starting to suspect that he feels as though he cannot confide in me anymore, or talk to me about anything to do with his emotions because it is always this specific friend he speaks with, which ultimately causes me to be anxious and feel like a bad partner. I asked him if there was anything I had done to make him feel this way and he said no, and that was it. I didn't get much closure on why he talks with her more than me about his feelings, and was left feeling incomplete.

Previous upsetting moments are usually him forgetting planned dates in favour of others as I said in my bigger ramble than planned lol, which happens I suppose more often during long-distance and I totally get that, but it was probably the fourth time he had let plans with me slip his mind? I let him know that this makes me feel unimportant and forgotten about, and he got extremely upset about the fact he had upset me.

Reply 3

Dunnig Kruger

As a possible solution, whilst he's in America, each of you should become free agents.

If or when he comes to your country (the UK?) you both see how the land lies and if you want to get exclusively involved with each other again.

Right now, it doesn't seem to be the right thing to do to carry on this transatlantic relationship. Your out of sight, out of mind to him. And he's annoying you too much and not providing you with the attention you crave.

You both sound like nice enough people. But there's not the magic connection between the 2 of you that there should be.