Dear Jessi:

A summary of what you shared in your various posts since May this year: you, at 32,  are in a relationship with a man, 49, an engineer. When he was 30, he “got married to an older woman.. this woman looked like his mom”. They got divorced and he met “younger prettier girls”, including a woman (let’s call her W) in August 2016, when he was about 45. Some time later, he met you, a woman who is 17 years younger than him. Currently, you are in your early thirties and he is almost 50.

You are “good looking, great body”, working “super hard in the gym, lifting heavyweights”, and your boyfriend is aware that “people comment on how great my personality is, how much they want me.. what an amazing body I have”.

Some time ago  you found out that he made a google search on W,  and you asked him about this woman. On about 10 occasions since then (last being February of this year), he told you that W is a “Beautiful, supermodel looking.. a diva and was always flirting with everybody.. all these rich men driving expensive cars.. after her”. He met her in a “luxury building residential in the beach”, where she had “this great management job.. like the project manager”, and he worked there on the building maintenance as an engineer. They added each other on Facebook.

He told you that at the beginning of 2017, they “went out, drank some wine, danced and bam, she ended up in panties and bra, and him in his boxers, just kissing in bed.. so they fell asleep and no sex.. he couldn’t go further because they had promised each other that they would wait a little longer” because she was still hurt from a breakup of a previous relationship. He gave you “intimate details about how sexy or beautiful her body looked like in panties and bra ..’she has an amazing body, I can tell she worked out a lot in the gym”. He also told you that he literally begged her to be with him, tha “she was his queen.. the only woman he wanted to be with, marry and have children with”.

You discovered recently that he has an album of her on his mobile gallery, and three folders of backups of pictures of her, including sexy pictures, and snapshots of all their WhatsApp conversations stored in a hard drive. You also found out at one point, that he took a woman he dated after he met W to the luxurious building where he met W, and you realize now, that he took you there as well, before you knew about W.

My input today: what I realize today after re-reading your posts is that you are much younger than him, you are close to 30, he is close to 50- that’s a two decade difference.

It seems to me that his behavior can be explained by the following:

1. He feels insecure about being with you,  a much younger and good looking woman who gets the attention of younger/ more successful men. He doesn’t want to lose you to those men, so he talked highly of W, exaggerating her physical and professional attributes and success, so that you will feel less confident about yourself, physically and professionally. He exaggerates her physical attractiveness so that you will feel less physically attractive. He exaggerates her professional success so that you will feel less successful than her, and he exaggerates her success with men (rich men chasing her, bringing her flowers), so that you will feel less confident about your success with men. He wants you insecure so that you will not replace him with a younger, better looking, and/ or more successful man.

2. He really was (and may be, still) infatuated with W, the evidence being that he has her pictures and conversations in his hard drive with three backup folders, and that he took a previous date and you to that building where he met her.

3. He is immature/ impulsive, sharing with you about W having been his queen, and so forth, not realizing it is cruel to do so.

4. Clearly, to me, he told you part truths part untruths about W and his relationship with her. If you hired a competent private investigator, you could find out the whole truth, and that could be fascinating. It just occurred to me that if you approached W yourself, maybe she will share with you her side of the story.

* There is possibility, however remote, that he is devious: that he planned it so that you will find his collection of W’s photos and conversations so to lower your confidence (see #1, above) and that he lied to you (intentionally exaggerating her attributes and his infatuation for her) for the same purpose. But I don’t think this is probable.

anita

• This reply was modified 4 years, 4 months ago by .