[kxc124030]

Hello, My boyfriend and I have been together for three and a half years. We have had our fair share of problems and we have been through many ups and downs. We are both 20 years old and are high school sweethearts (just to give some background info so you understand). My boyfriend has always been the guy that is friends with a lot of people and is very well liked by a large crowd, including women. He gets along very well with girls and girls love to be friends with him because he's funny and nice and things like that. He is always very friendly with girls and always has been. In high school before we dated or before I even knew him well he always had a ton of "girl friends" that he was just friends with, he seemed like a ladies man. But he has always been faithful in all his relationships. He loves me very very much and says he wants to marry me and spend the rest of his life with me. My problem is that I get jealous of him being friends with girls. Over the course of our relationship he has hung out with girls MUCH less and I'm happy about that, but he seems to think that he "deserves" to be able to have female friends (which is fine I don't have a problem with him being friends with girls) but he argues with me that he ought to be able to be close with a girl if he wants to and that I can't tell him who he can and cannot be friends with. I'm not trying to tell him that he can't be friends with a girl or whatever because I have male friends but the thing is that I don't desire to have a close friendship with any other guy other than my boyfriend/future husband. I don't understand why he even has the desire to be close friends with another female... I feel like he shouldn't want to be close with another girl besides me. Being cool with other girls is fine, but why does he need another female close friend when I supposedly am his best friend? Why does he need another? He recently has been getting very defensive about his rights to do whatever he wants when he wants to. I'm not trying to tell him who he can and cannot be friends with at all. I just wish that when I tell him that I am uncomfortable about how often he talks to a certain girl or seems to care about spending time with her that he would value my feelings and respect that I feel somewhat uncomfortable and be okay with taking a step back. But he isn't. He gets angry and mad over it and makes threats about how if in the future I can't deal with my jealousy then "our relationship isn't going to work out"... all this right after he tells me he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I have been in relationships in he past where my boyfriends have gotten close with other girls while dating me an then I ended up getting left or cheated on. I even had something similar happen in my relationship with this boyfriend; a girl who I considered my best friend was making obvious passes in many different ways at my boyfriend and he obliviously just assumed she saw him as just a friend, when everyone we knew thought she secretly liked him. She overstepped her boundaries and she and I are no longer friends, and my boyfriend was pretty much forced into not being friends with her either. He is still bitter to this day and still doesn't believe my ex BFF had feelings for him. I honestly believe that my boyfriend is oblivious to how girls act when they like a guy and he obliviously takes it as just being good friends with them. He is a naturally open and outgoing person and he sometimes comes across as flirty and it bothers me. Other people sometimes perceive him as being this way as well. He really doesn't do it on purpose and he doesn't even realize he does it, but when I tell him he does it he also denies it. He doesn't think he is being flirty because he believes that if he isn't trying to flirt then it can't be flirting-which I don't believe is true.
Obviously everyone can tell that I've got some issues... I really just would like to know people's thoughts about how I should handle this. Should I allow my boyfriend to continue acting kind of flirtatious (in my opinion) in his friendships with other girls (even though it isn't on purpose and they are not exactly pursuing him) and just get over it? Should I allow him to have the attitude that he can do whatever the hell he wants and basically disregard my feelings or opinions about how he acts around other women? Should I put up with his threat about leaving me? Am I over thinking his whole thing? I admit that I have a jealousy problem and I wish that I wasn't jealous. I wish that I didn't care how my boyfriend acted because I know that his intentions and heart are in the right place and he would never do something to hurt me or betray my trust or lie to me. I am really just bothered by his attitude that he isn't willing to compromise his actions or take a step back and look at what he is doing to see if what he is doing that is bothering me is valid. Please help me!!

[Fr_Chuck]

An adult will have good friends who are both men and women. It is perfectly OK and normal for friends from work to be just that good friends. It is what limits and as long as he does not take it from being more than good friends.

You are his girlfriend, and I assume live in girlfriend. And yes should be his best friend, but that does not mean his only friend.

You need to move out of high school mentality into real life adult world.

If you have been with him 3 plus years most of your other "relationships were Middle school, or maybe freshmen in high school, which has little to do with real life and not a comparison on how adults behave. Since at that age girls are often more controlling and demanding of attention.

Opinion, you are over thinking this, still acting like you did when you were 14 or 15.
Men will often firt, but it should be limited in front of you but it will still happen, that is just men. Sorry but you will have to get used to that.
Men will have women friends, they should not be spending alone time and nothing they do should not be excluding you.

You have issues and really need to perhaps address what and where you think this relationship is.