Dear Jack, let me state this from the onset: It’s not going to work! I mean your girlfriend’s concoction. It’s an incondite relationship and she’s being most unrealistic; she’ll end up losing both ways. Chasing two rats at once is chasing none.
From your mail I see she used to date this other guy. But because of SS genotype scare they chose to call it off. Only they didn’t REALLY call it off. The liaison transmuted into “brother-sister” relationship; they’re like “twins watching out for each other”. He watches out for guys like you. He actually believes you’ll hurt her. He feels protective towards her, like an umbrella in a typical insurance cover advert. Her core is her oblation for the coverage. And she likes the feeling. In fact she’s ENJOYING it! It’s why she proposed the uncomfortable triangular arrangement. It’s some form of sharing formula – the mathematisation of her affection in pie chart configuration.
She’s a malady of affection. She’s afflicted him and the neurosis is on to you. She and this ex have found an acceptable way of being together but not together. They chat frequently – the fact of this frequency was a secret until you went into her phone records. On principle, I condemn that by the way. You don’t go into people’s phone. The fact that you found incriminating evidence doesn’t justify ransacking someone’s digital privacy. It’s a violation, not just of your partner’s privacy but sundry others who trusted in the confidentiality of her phone record If your name is not Snoop Dog why are you snooping into other people’s phones?
Where were we? Oh yes, your girlfriend! She wants you chummy chummy with her ex boyfriend. I’ve seen that before. A lady wrote me her boyfriend insists she must be friends to and attend to the needs of his ex! Apparently your girlfriend’s vision is a managé trios – a three-way passion intersect of yourself, herself and her ex! And to underscore the precarious arrangement her ex doesn’t like you. That’s understandable. If not for the genotype issue you wouldn’t be on the radar. In his reasoning you’re a 2nd Division under-qualified alternate. You’re an inheritor – a beneficiary of the technical disqualification of another man. He’s still the landlord, deciding which tenant occupies the upper ventricle of her heart, and for what duration. But for this SS thing… It’s enough to make a man bitter. She’s still his. And he knows she still likes him. That’s how the three of you became an unreal cocktail of contending emotions and protectionism.
Your girlfriend is with her ex in thought, text and confidentialities. If she’s in a fix she’ll call him and not you. She’ll inform you as an afterthought. They’re in a civil passion. A civil passion is a quasi relationship that is everything a relationship but in name and sex only. This ex still regards them as exclusive, hence the “we’re twins” routine. In this relationship two is a company, three is a crowd; you’re the crowd. Your girlfriend wants to eat her cake and have it. Only magicians can do that. You’re dating a magician! Seems she’s watched too many movies, read too many novels. Barbara Cartland? You know the “one true love” thing? Your girlfriend is living “her one true love” themed life. It’s a popular romantic notion, only such ideas tie down lives to memories gone by! Memories are regurgitated histories – cuds of thought from the past. Those novels are escapes. It’s why we read them – to escape life’s harsh realities. They’re fantasy – soap opera concoctions fermented in the mind laboratories of writers. But when life begins to imitate art and not the other way round one must pause, take a moment, think.
I wonder if she’ll take it if the shoes were switched – if we flip things around. How would she feel if you maintain a close relationship with your ex or another woman? When her ex gets himself a new girlfriend is when the drama begins. You’ll see fits of jealousy and foolishnesses. He ain’t seen woman problem! No woman wants her man closer to another woman. A woman finds that emotionally incongruent. And no man wants to find himself on the sideline in his own relationship. Side chick and now side dude?
The fact that you chose to go through her phone means there’s a trust issue in this relationship. Or it may mean YOU have a trust issue. Confirm which is which. Without trust there can be no fiduciary relationship. It’s an inconcinnity to want to marry someone you don’t trust. Marriage is a covenant of faith. Without trust there can be no faith. When partners become phone hackers, why, that’s a Mr & Mrs Smith scenario! You know the movie Mr & Mrs Smith? The one in which every woman’s villain Angelina Jolie starred, with Brad Pitt? Pistanthrophobia is fear of trusting people due to past experiences in relationships gone bad. It’s kind of like saying your partner is guilty until she proves herself innocent. Of what?! Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat. (The burden of proof is on he who declares, not on he who denies). A trust issue puts a partner under constancy of accusation. Nobody wants that. It’s disturbing! And painful. There ought to be presumption of innocence in a relationship. Love believes the best of the other person.
And what are you doing dating someone you don’t trust? The party is a primary consumer of your intimacies. If parties are so suspicious of each other they shouldn’t be in relationship. It’s the most organic form of intimacy. This thing can’t work and it’s time you and your girlfriend face the fact to avoid bitterness. Sit down with your girlfriend and tell her. Graciously concede her to her ex. They’re together. Your withdrawal solves the problem for everyone.
Unfortunately it will only confirm her ex’s suspicion of you. But that’s okay.
Your mentor, LA.
© Leke Alder 2014