Being made to feel insecure

[gettingtired]

Partner made a comment to make me jealous (well that’s what I’m assuming he was doing). I’ll try to spare details; he was repeating something about someone which he had told me before but this time included how someone’s girlfriend always flirts with him.. I made a comment acknowledging this which he then jumped on and started asking me why I was now in a mood and how since he had mentioned the girl that my whole mood had changed. Is this gaslighting? 

The problem is I remember a couple of times in the past, subtely with words, trying to make him feel lucky to have me (childish I know but I was naive/insecure) so am I just as bad?
I was quite shocked when he made that comment about this girl flirting. It just reminded me of all the times in the past I’ve felt very insecure about him and other girls and it stirred up those feelings again. 
Although I don’t believe he’s ever physically cheated, early on in our relationship when we were very young he met another girl at (detail removed by Moderator) and started speaking to her almost everyday online. He was defensive when I’d get upset about it and looking back I believe he lied about why he was friends with her. Why would you be chatting to a girl you met somewhere everyday when you already had a girlfriend? He even lied once and told her he wasn’t doing anything when actually he had been out on a date with me. I’ve no idea why he ever did that as she lived way too far away for him to have ever pursued her so maybe it was just an ego boost. I guess I forgave him but I could never forget it. 

So in the early years I felt very insecure and didn’t fully trust him. I was always made to feel it was my own insecurities that were the problem though (by him and by my own family) hence why I stayed and hated myself. I would go through his search history obsessively and find he’d been looking at certain girls regularly. I even saw once he had checked on one girls social media before we went out to see if she was going to the same event that we were. I think I became mentally unwell always frantically checking and worrying. 

The strange thing is over the years his behaviour sort of stopped apart from one girl I knew he probably fancied at work (again he was always looking at her on social media) but she was in a relationship and eventually he left that job and hasn’t been in a job with women since. But then everyone has had a bit of a crush on someone before, right? Or no? Also, his social life has become much less over the years so maybe that’s why I’m less bothered. I don’t know. He’s also not a typical ‘player’ in the slightest. You know.. the typical guy who chats up women and flirts or is sleazy. In real life he comes across as normal, funny, down to earth, not creepy etc. 

I’ve only had one previous love interest before him (we weren’t even officially together) in school who taunted me about another girl who was really into him whilst I was with him. He ended up ditching me for her. Then sneakily tried to get me back (detail removed by Moderator) or so later whilst he was still with her. Texting/calling me and offering me lifts, telling me not to tell his girlfriend. Stupidly I went along with it grateful for the attention although we never got together. Shortly after I met current boyfriend. 

I genuinely can’t imagine being with a man who doesn’t have interests in other women to some extent. Do they even exist? Maybe I just attract that type of man. I hate sounding like I’m desperate and needy or obsessed but I don’t know how much of it was my own insecurities or how much was men just making me insecure through their actions though. Sorry, rant over.   

[KIP.]

Your past experiences can make you feel insecure but in a loving respectful relationship you should be able to talk about these insecurities and reel reassured and loved. What abusers do is find a weakness and exploit it. It’s extremely damaging and destroys self confidence and the way to dominate someone is to destroy their self confidence. The taunt you said probably came from anger or frustration but his behaviour is a pattern of abusive corrosive destructive deliberate acts. Lying to you is typical abuser behaviour and you can bet if he’s lying he’s hiding something. My ex was busy with work and I thought not a player. Turns out I couldn’t be more wrong. We do not know these men at all and he is not who you think he is. These insecurities keep us hooked into an abuser. Looking for validation from an abuser never works.

[Hawthorn]

He was trying to provoke a response so he could have a go at you and tell you how you’re feeling. Its triangulation, trying to put you off balance and make you insecure, and he’s trying to bait you into into an arguement by telling you how you feel. He’s also invalidating your emotional world by telling you how you’re feeling rather than letting you feel your own feelings and express them in your own way.

The behaviour might have stopped, it might not. Either way it served its purpose of making you insecure and paranoid, and do things like checking his social media that gave him another reason to blame you for things not being right in the relationship. Never his fault, always yours. Not his sneaky creepy DM-ing other girls, but your insecurities that were causing the problem.

Men are as different from each other as women are. Abusive men are all cut from the same cloth, yes, but normal, non-abusive men dont behave like this. In a happy, non-abusive relationship you dont become blind to those you find attractive, but you dont pursue it in any way. You enjoy looking, you maybe enjoy chatting or some flirting depending on your personality, then you come home to your partner and you dont rub their face in it. You dont exchange messages or follow them on social media or meet up with them. There is trust and respect in a functional relationship.

Not only has your abuser betrayed your trust by messaging other girls, he continues to make you question whether you can trust him. And he’s doing it deliberately.

[Lifeinterrupted]

Hi gettingtired.

His behaviour is not ok. At best, it is completely disrespectful of you, and your relationship. It’s not an acceptable way to behave in a healthy relationship. At worst, it is just another form of abuse. As Hawthorn said, this sounds like triangulation; a tactic designed to make you feel insecure and like you should be grateful to be with them (so you overlook bad behaviour, putting them even more in control).

My ex used to do things like this all the time. It is extremely damaging to your self confidence and makes you question your own reality. ​If you haven’t got much experience of what a healthy relationship looks like (I hadn’t as my ex was my first), you start to believe that this might be normal or even acceptable.

It wasn’t until I escaped that I realised how bad it was, and that he had in fact cheated on me several times. While I was with him, I didn’t want to see it and was so gaslit that I ignored all my instincts. In hindsight it was obvious
and then I found things out from other people. I finally moved on and found a healthy relationship, I realised that not all men do this and it really wasn’t normal or OK; it was actually just a way of making me feel smaller and more powerless.

[gettingtired]

Thank you everyone.
My own family thought I was being incredibly jealous and didn’t like my behaviour. So I felt awful feeling like everything was happening because of me being insecure. I hated myself.
I do believe you about nice men out there, I just can’t imagine me ever being with one. Maybe where it’s just so ingrained in me.

[Author]

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