Rachel,

Men often don’t handle their emotions well, and blame others for their pain. He sounds as though he is externalizing his guilt, or seeing you with grey tinted glasses. Honesty is important in relationships, and he was deceptive to you. Your intuition told you something was off, and you went exploring to discover the truth. And you did. Yes, the boundary thing wasn’t the best choice, but a smaller thing than his choice.

Said differently, his actions carry a greater weight of tresspass against the union, in my opinion, and his poking at you is perhaps his way of trying to keep the heat off of himself. Why was he so scared that he hid from you? Why is he so entangled with the events that he lashes out at you?

I can appreciate your desire to fix things, take the blame, and so forth, but you can’t fix what are not your broken bits.

If you two can come to a mutual agreement such as “I promise to be more respectful of boundaries, and not snoop, if you promise to not withhold that which is important.” then perhaps this road bump can get behind you.

As far as his poking, he’s clinging to the mistake, and in his pain, reopening the wound over and over. Consider a little mama bear self protection. “Hey, your poking will take you all the way to the bottom of a swamp if you let it, your lack of forgiveness for my mistakes are your issue, not mine.” Its not yours, sister, remember that. His lack of forgiveness is his burden, its not because of some character flaw you have. Don’t buy into his bullshit, his “pain vomit”… it doesn’t help either of you.

Namaste, dear sister, may you both find a deep and rich forgiveness, and in that forgiveness, find one another again.

With warmth,
Matt

Hi Rachel,
I can relate. I think Matt hit the nail on the head here. Your partner is deflecting. I was in a similar situation where I started to catch my boyfriend in little lies here and there. One particularly vulnerable night, I snooped into his Facebook account and found he had developed a fixation (I would call it an “obsession”) on a girl half his age he had met at a bar one night. I confronted him and he continued to lie over and over about it and then would “drip feed” me the truth. Months later he would then claim he was “honest” after I dragged little kernels of truth out of him through repeated conversations. Anyway, for months, he would not admit he lied. Then later on he admitted he lied but said he “didn’t mean to or want to” and that it was because of the way I approached things that made him lie. His lying was a “reaction” to the way I confronted him on issues. I found the whole ordeal very invalidating. Like you, I understood my breach in violating his privacy, but I firmly believe we need to trust our intuition. Something didn’t feel right and that’s why you looked at his phone. Like Matt said, he needs to take accountability for his role in it. The bottom line is that no, you shouldn’t have snooped, but I agree that your partner’s infraction was far more serious.

I am likely overstepping a boundary with my final point, but please reconsider actively trying to have a baby with this man until your relationship is on more stable footing. The proverbial biological clock keeps ticking, but you owe it to your future child to provide a loving and healthy home.