Nov 12, 2007 19:07
So, I come home today and begin my daily surf of the internet. I check all my usual sites, then pop onto Yahoo to empty the mailbox I keep on there. It's filled mostly with spam, but sometimes there's intersting stuff in there.
I fail to pay attention, though, and end up in my boyfriend's mailbox instead. He's got a yahoo mail account as well. If you don't sign out, you'll be signed in for days. I'm about to hit "back" on my browser, when I noticed the mail that's waiting for him.
Two of the messages are from AdultFriendFinder. This a matchmaking site that focuses on sex. WTF are messages from AFF doing in my boyfriend's mailbox?
I click on one of the email and find out that he activated an account there. I log into his account on AFF. It lists him as single, and looking for someone who's interested in a sexual relationship only.
Imagine my state by now, if you will. My heart's pounding so hard that I'm shaking with every beat. My hands are trembling so hard I can barely type, let alone correctly dial my best friend's phone number. My stomach was instantly revolting. It was demanding that I throw up right then and there. I felt terribly like I needed to take a poo. (My bowels act up when in a fear state. Years of living with an abusive stepfather)
The dime version of the story is that after speaking with my best friend(s), I ended up arranging to make up the test I was supposed to take tonight, and confronted my boyfriend on the AFF account. He said that he'd been looking for porn, and a link took him to a video on that site, but he could only view it if he made an account. So he did. He filled out the profile just to be dumb. He ended up not being able to view the video.
I gave him the benefit of the doubt. I want to trust him. I want to believe him.
I'm still terrified that I made the wrong decision. He asked me if I was going to be suspicious in the future. I would be lying if I'd told him no. I asked him if he was going to give me reason to distrust him in the future. He said no.
I justified my decision to my dad by way of saying that I wanted to preserve a level of trust in the relationship- since Joe had never given me reason to doubt him in the past, I could believe him now. I also said that if anything happened in the future that was on par with the level of shadiness and betrayal I'd felt today, Joe would be given an evening to get his shit out of the house and leave. I intend to stand by that.
My trust is just...battered, however. I still halfway don't believe him, and he knows that. I've got alot of strange impulses coursing through me right now. Part of me wants to call his mom and tell her what happened, and see what she thinks. Part of me wants to install a keylogger so I can log his passwords and keep an eye on him. Part of me still wants to throw him out. Part of me wants to dismiss everything that happened today and live my life. I'm trying to go with that last part. I'm trying to walk the walk about what I said about trust and benefit of the doubt. My mom seems to agree with me on that, surprisingly. My dad was more apt to believe him when he heard about the porn bit. I'm not sure, though, because although I'm not sure how AFF works exactly, it doesn't seem to offer any videos other than webcams (which makes me grind my teeth). Unless it was a video posted by a user. I dunno.
My roommate is of the opinion that if Joe were looking around for novelty, then I would have noticed other things by now. A sudden drop in sexual interest. Unexplained absences. I'm inclined to agree with him. There are things that set off my bullshit meter, but I'm so close to the situation that I don't have accurate perspective, and I have so many emotions and issues that they're almost certainly clouding the issue. As Richard pointed out, Joe's a fairly honest person. He's not good at long-term lies. He's pretty transparent. If there's any mystery to be unraveled, it will unravel itself in due time (typically within a short period of time.)
I feel exhausted. I wish today hadn't happened.