Jealousy over long-distance boyfriend?
My boyfriend and I have just finished our freshman year of college, and have been dating for 4 1/2 years now (since just about the beginning of high school). Last fall we went off to separate colleges about eight hours apart. It was really really difficult at first to the point where I'd cry myself to sleep every night, but by now it's manageable if I keep myself on other things throughout the day.
There's one problem though that I can't get out of my head, and I honestly don't even know why it's making me so anxious and insecure. My boyfriend has always had his fair share of female friends and I really didn't mind at all back when we went to high school together, obviously because I knew them and I felt very secure in his love for me. Now that we're long distance though, every female friend he brings up in our conversation makes me a little more anxious, a little more insecure, and at first I was able to control these feelings by telling myself that I was overreacting--my boyfriend has always been extremely caring and loving and he has never for a second given me any reason to believe he would cheat on me.
There's this one girl though... Let's say her name is Jenny. I first noticed her when I noticed her posts on his Facebook wall, and he started bringing her up in conversation saying things like, "Oh, Jenny and I sang that song at karaoke!" or telling me they'd gone to lunch, which made me a bit jealous obviously, but I knew it was groundless and dismissed it. But then they started getting more and more familiar with each other, to the point where she'd post a picture she took of him on her Facebook and call him the "ugliest guy on the planet, and who would wanna date you?" which annoyed me for obvious reasons, and stuff like this on a daily basis, where they would have fake 'arguments' about which one being more ugly or stupid or fat, which sounds strange but I think is her way of flirting with him. Other people would post stuff on his wall too like, "You and Jenny are always at it," and "Wow, you guys are like a married couple," and he stopped mentioning her to me.
One day a couple weeks ago though we were Skyping and she came into his dorm room and randomly sat on his bed and he asked her what she was doing and she just said, "My room's stuffy and I needed some air." She then just curled up on his bed like she was going to take a nap and went under his blankets, and my boyfriend just returned to our Skype conversation without saying anything. Even though I felt like not saying anything either, I was really uncomfortable and so I asked him if he was okay with her sleeping in his bed and he said, "Oh yeah, she does this all the time," which I didn't know anything about. Even though I was still uncomfortable I tried to let it go at this point. But after a while she got up, said she was cold, and raided my boyfriend's closet without asking him, grabbed one of his jackets, and put it on. At this point I didn't know whether she was actively trying to make me jealous or if she was just really insensitive. She said something along the lines of, "Your jackets are really comfy," which meant she'd done this before. I had to go to the bathroom (and also sort out my head) so I left for a little bit, and then when I came back my boyfriend was talking to Jenny, and because I wasn't in view of my webcam yet I stood there for a bit listening to their conversation. Jenny was asking my boyfriend whether I was the jealous type, and he said, "Nah, not really, we trust each other," and then she 'jokingly' strokes his hair and says, "Would this make her jealous?" At this point I'd had enough and I go in front of the webcam and she takes her hand away, and tells me that my boyfriend has a super-comfy bed but I shouldn't be jealous of her because she would never date his ugly mug, they're just friends. Which was offensive on like three different levels.
Another thing was when I was visiting him one weekend and we were pretty hot-and-heavy making out in his room, she just barges in (we had just enough time to crawl under the blankets and pretend we were sleeping) with the room key she borrowed from my boyfriend's roommate. My boyfriend told her to get out at first but she sat on the end of the bed and so he just stood up and talked to her for like twenty minutes while I was hiding under the covers because I wasn't wearing a shirt (he had all his clothes on still). Apparently she wanted him to come out with her and her friends and climb up this hill with us to see the view, and when she saw me she was like, "Oh, I forgot she was coming this weekend! She should come too!" like I wasn't just lying awkwardly right there. She never once directly talked to me. My boyfriend finally got her out of the room but five minutes later she knocked on the door again really loudly asking us to come out with them, and then fifteen minutes later again. The one time that she actually talked to me that weekend was to say, "He's so annoying and ugly, why are you dating him?"
My boyfriend said "she can be annoying sometimes, and insensitive, but we get along well so I don't wanna just cut that out of my life." I don't know though... It's not that I don't think my boyfriend is going to cheat on me exactly, it's just that I don't like that he allows this kind of behavior and that he's around this girl who thinks it's totally okay to say and do stuff like this--and that other people will see that he's okay with it (a lot of people at his school who don't know better just assume that she's his girlfriend). I don't let guys onto my bed because I feel like it's an intimate, personal space, and the fact that she just sleeps on his bed whenever she wants (once, apparently, she barged into his room at 1am and fell asleep there for four hours so my boyfriend had to sleep on the floor) just makes me really really upset.
Whenever I bring this up though, I feel like a super-controlling, insecure girlfriend, and that's something I've never wanted to be... It's obvious that they're good friends and besides all the annoying bits, they're actually pretty similar and it's easy to see why they get along so well. But still, we're long-distance and I feel like the anxiety is tempting me to play mind games with him, like trying to make him jealous, or something.
Any advice on how to talk to him about this? And does anyone have any opinions on where her actions could be coming from, and what she could possibly want from him? And why does he let these things happen? I know he loves me, but still, it makes me sad and anxious.
My boyfriend keeps pressuring me to shave down there?
And... I really don't want to.
My boyfriend and I are just going into our sophomore year of college, and we've been dating for four years. We just recently started having sex last fall when we entered college, on the few days that we saw each other since we're long-distance.
He'd been telling me that I should shave ever since the end of high school, but only occasionally and not enough to make me feel overly uncomfortable. Recently though he won't shut up about it. Since we're long-distance, every phone call we have, he says, "So when are you gonna shave?" like it's a done deal, and it's beginning to make me really self-conscious, especially when I ask him why I should shave and he says that bare is sexy, hair is gross. The last time we had sex, I was so self-conscious that I had to keep my dress on while we had sex so he wouldn't see my "hairy" vagina. Recently I've completely refused to let him give me oral, because I know he would rather go down on a shaved vagina anyway and I don't want to suffer the humiliation.
The other complaint he has is that he doesn't like pubic hair getting in his mouth when he goes down on me, which is understandable but hey, I get pubic hair in my mouth too when I'm giving him blow jobs (which I love to do) and I just spit it out and go along with my business.
Whenever I give him reasons I don't want to do it, like (1) I'm just plain uncomfortable with it, (2) I don't know how to do it safely, (3) I've talked to my friends and those who do it always complain about the upkeep and how itchy and painful it can be... He just brings up the statistics of guys who prefer shaved to hairy, tells me that he's read articles and that it's much healthier to have it shaved, also makes sex more pleasurable, and that it's actually really easy and not painful at all to shave, etc. etc. and it's beginning to make me angry. It also seems really unfair to me to have to worry and stress over the upkeep every single day if we're long-distance and we're only going to see each other and possibly have sex once every four months or so.
I know it doesn't seem that important, but it's something that's really been bothering me, so thank you for reading all the way through. So how do I bring up how uncomfortable I feel with my boyfriend? Is it really beneficial to be shaved down there, and how do I stop feeling self-conscious about this?
Why do I hurt myself to get back at others? I don't know what's happening to me.
For as long as I can remember, whenever I'd have fights with people (especially people who love and care about me, mostly my family) and I'd feel really angry, I'd just stop eating. I wouldn't even get hungry during this time, like my anger was enough to feed me. I'd just be really numb and lose a ton of weight, hoping maybe then they'd be nicer to me. This wasn't always that bad because we would usually make up in a few days and I'd start eating again.
Yesterday though, and just recently, things have gotten so much worse. Last night I found out that my long-distance boyfriend went to and slept over at a girl's house after he got drunk at a party and didn't contact me for hours. He texted me this in the middle of the night and I was so anxious and jealous and sad that I pretended it was perfectly fine on the phone to him, I trust you, etc. etc. but after I hung up I cried for hours and drank half a bottle of cough medicine just to see what would happen. It was like I couldn't control myself, like the only way to make myself feel better was to hurt myself really bad so he'd feel bad for what he did, or what I thought he did.
He knows I've been depressed lately, which made it worse. The cough medicine was pretty weak stuff, I guess, because I just got really dizzy, got a headache, my fingers went numb, and fainted a couple times before waking up in the morning drowsy but perfectly fine. When I woke up and I realized I was okay, I got so upset that I went downstairs to drink more of it but then ended up in front of my computer typing this. I have not contacted my boyfriend since and part of me wants to cut off contact for a few days so he thinks I've died or something.
Please help me, I have no idea why I'm like this and why literally the ONLY thing that makes me feel in-control or better about a situation is to harm myself to guilt others. Yesterday night I was so miserable about what happened on top of my already existing depression that I felt there was no other choice, and I'm scared I'm going to actually kill myself doing this sooner or later, which sometimes I feel like I want but other times I realize that it's crazy.
Thank you for your time, anything would be greatly appreciated.
Boyfriend completely broke down, made me feel worse, when I told him I self-injured?
He knows that I've had problems with self-injury before, but I guess he never thought I'd do it again. It's a long story, but something happened and I (without even really thinking) drank half a bottle of cough medicine to hurt myself/see what would happen two nights ago, just so I wouldn't have to think. I got really dizzy, fingers went numb, and fainted a few times, but was able to sleep and woke up in the morning drowsy but otherwise okay. I have a few bruises on my legs and shoulder area where I fainted and hit the side of my bed/stairs, but otherwise, completely fine. I've been pretty depressed for a while, and I'll go into more detail later, but there was a trigger two nights ago, and I was anxious and sad and scared and responded awfully to it.
I told him about what happened today, and at first he was just listening silently but then he completely broke down, started hysterically crying and yelling at me, saying "If you cared about me, you would never do something like this!" and "If you love me, you'll stop right now!" and I was grateful that he cared but he made me feel so guilty about doing it which made me feel worse than I already felt with my existing depression. I think part of the reason he broke down is that we are long-distance and will be for the rest of college, so he feels like he can't take care of me. I tried explaining that it wasn't his fault at all, and that I was trying to fix myself, but he didn't even want to ask me about the reasons behind why I self-injure, he just kept telling me to stop because I was being selfish, and that I was making him sad.
I'd been having a pretty okay day (one of the better ones since I've been depressed) before he'd called, but after that phone call I felt the worst I'd felt in ages. He called just a few hours ago, and I tried again to explain myself and tell him that this was kind of like an addiction, and I was trying to stop, but then he started crying again, saying he couldn't trust me to be safe at all anymore, saying that he would never have peace of mind, etc. etc. so that I ended up being the one who was comforting him.
I'd known my boyfriend was an emotional guy but I never knew that he was this emotional, and now I don't know what to do... I love him but talking to him on the phone with him crying like that makes me feel so guilty that it just makes my depression and desire for self-injury worse. I don't know if we should take a break (I suggested this and he said no, he'd go crazy worrying about me), or what I should tell him, or how I can explain this to him in a way that he'll understand. Please, if you have any insights, I would be very grateful to hear them.
Sorry this is such a long question, thank you for reading.
Boyfriend told me he masturbates to his female best friend...
Am I wrong to be upset about this?
I honestly don't think I would be as upset if we were physically together, but we are long-distance and will be for the next three years of college, which makes me already feel a bit insecure. This female best friend of his goes to the same college as him and even lives on the same floor as him.
We were talking and joking about how often we each masturbate, and he asked me if I ever masturbate to other guys and I said no, not really, and then I (without really thinking) asked him why, do you think about other girls? And he looked at me with this incredulous expression on his face like, "Well, obviously," and said yeah he usually masturbates to other girls, not me. I was a bit irked and jealous at this point, but I tried to laugh it off and said, "What, like porn stars?" which I wouldn't have minded at all really, but then he said no, mostly his female friends and stuff that he feels like he has an actual chance with. Without me even saying anything further he told me that most of the time he masturbates to his best female friend, that he's known since before we started dating, and who he still hangs out with every day.
She's really pretty and confident and I'm pretty insecure, so this makes me nervous. He hangs out with her a LOT and they even get drunk together. It scares me even more because we only get to see each other once every three months or so, and I know he gets pretty sexually frustrated.
Should I talk to him about this, or is this none of my business? It's not really something I should tell him not to do, and I feel kind of weird and helpless right now.