Hi

My boyfriend of two years has cheated on me multiple times ... and yes, I am still with him. I do love this man ... and I am honestly trying to work it out with him and rebuild the trust in some way. I believe ... at this point ... he feels the same way and is doing the same.

I have been told by several therapists, friends, etc. ... that one of the keys for rebuilding trust with him is to require total transparency on his part. Passwords to his email accounts, cell phone records, credit card statements, etc. I absolutely hate doing this, but I do see the value in it ... as far as providing me with some security and a sense of being 'safe' with him.

This man also has issues ... major ones ... with boundaries. He has snooped into my computer several times ... opened my private mail ... gone through my dayplanner ... read private emails to girlfriends or siblings without my permission ... all of it ... without ever finding anything ... not one thing ... that says I too 'cheated' or have been dishonest. I HAVE NOT BEEN ... but he seems to want to find something ... anything ... that proves I am also not trustworthy. That fact make me so sad ... but also the idea that my information ... my personal thoughts and correspondence ... has been 'raped', per se, by him also makes me feel vulnerable and exposed.

Now ... my question for the group is this. I have asked for total transparency from him .... and he, in turn, then asked the same of me. I have strong beliefs that every person has a right to privacy until they abuse it ... and he abused his right to privacy by cheating on me. He stands firm that I am clearly setting a 'double standard' here and it's unfair ... "my request for access to his information allows him to request the 'same' of me".

I HAVE NOTHING TO HIDE OF SIGNIFICANCE THAT DEALS WITH OUR RELATIONSHIP ... but I have correspondence to and from my sisters about THEIR own personal issues, a journal I keep on-line, poetry I've written that I do not wish to share with him *or anyone* at this point, etc. Am I being unreasonable in refusing him total access to my accounts, personal writings, etc.? He feels VERY strongly that I am .... and has even received some advice/counsel in forums that I 'must have something to hide' if I refuse him this request. I have tried to explain to him my feelings about personal privacy versus 'secrets' to no avail.

Any advice one way or the other as to how to proceed ... discuss this .... etc. with him?

This is a very REAL stumbling block for us right now ... and something I am struggling with like mad!!!

Thank you.

First off..he is NOT your H so the same rules do not apply. If you were H & W I would say that transparency goes both ways....no double standards.

Your boyfriend has failed the test drive several times. I think that rather than trying to figure out how to make a bad situation work, you should spend some time figuring out why you have lowered the price of admission into your life so far that you are allowing a lying, cheating man access to your time. You deserve better and until you figure that out, you won't get it.

He has not earned trust to be allowed access to that stuff or your life. Send him packing and work on you.

Agree with MEDC.


This says it all. A life with him is going to = lots of heartache.

Why don't you think you deserve more?

Who

Just curious,
Why do you feel in love with a man who treats you this way?
Don't you think you deserve more?

For what it's worth, Why would you consider continuing a R with a man who continually proves himself untrustworthy?



It would seem you have no personal boundaries worth fighting for!

I would recommend you move on and look for the right partner in life, rather than continuing down this endless spiral downward.

JMHO.

all Blessings,
Jerry

talktome, he apparently is not marriage material, so I would strongly suggest moving on. Honesty and fidelity are the very basic traits required to build a good marriage and those are missing from your relationship. If a potential marriage candidate fails to meet those basic tests, they are not a good choice for marriage. I suggest cutting your losses and selecting a more viable candidate for marriage.

p.s. you might feel "in love" with him now, but you won't for long with these huge problems. Those feelings you have today are doomed to extinction with such a destructive, untrustworthy person.

My best advice would be to accept reality.

He is who he is, not who you want him to be.

He doesn't WANT to live the life you want for him and with him.

Let him go and find someone who does want to.

noodle is right, find someone with whom you can ACCEPT AS IS, because you cannot change other people. If you do marry him, you will have no right to complain if he cheats on you, because you will be voluntarily marrying a cheater. That would be a terrible life to damn yourself and your future children to.

welcome back

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hello again.

I wish to thank everyone for taking the time to reply to my post; however, and I say this with the sincerest respect ... I did NOT ask if I should stay with this man or not, though that seems to be the only advice basically I got in regards to my post concerning 'transparency versus privacy".

I made a personal decision ... based on a lot of factors ... to stay in this relationship and attempt a reconciliation. I have personally experienced many good and positive qualities about this person and a sincere effort towards personal growth on his part ... and I feel, at this point, he is worth the effort. Many, many factors were taken into account before this decision was made ... and none of them were weighed lightly.

THAT being said ... I ask again ... well .... ummmm .... just read my original post and please, if you could, share with me your thoughts on 'transparency versus privacy'. OK? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Thanks again.

What is there to discuss about a non marriage in which the other person is not interested in being honest or transparent with you.

This looks to me like you are overinvested in a poor quality relationship and are trying to treat it like a marriage [which it is not].

Disagree all you like of course and feel free to keep on plugging in those quarters in the hopes of getting the occasional nickel back by all means.

When you are DATING the issue of transparency is completely unilateral. Either he meets and exceeds your requirement or he does not. If he does not you respect his choice and pick up your marbles to go play somewhere else.

This man hasn't made any serious committments to you and has demonstrated several times that he is not interested in exclusivity.

Trying to turn someone into the person you want them to be strongly suggests that the relationship is based on fantasy.

We DID read your original post! My response is that you are wasting your time and should MOVE ON. It would be poor judgment to continue with a failed dating experiment. Your bf is NOT marriage material so you have much, much bigger problems than "transparency" while dating. The titanic has sunk and you are concerned about the peeling paint in the girls bathroom.

Dating is a JOB INTERVIEW for marriage, this interview was a FLOP. MOVE ON, dear.

First, I'd agree with the rest of the folks - if he has cheated on you, he has shown his true colors, and I'd run for the hills. Many many folks here wished they had the same insight into their spouses before they got married - fortunately for you, you did.

But, that is not your question, so here goes:


He is absolutely right. You want a double standard, and that is not fair. If you want him to be transparent, you must be transparent as well. Otherwise you are a hypocrite. What's good for the goose blah blah...

AGG

Okay, here ya go:

"The Difference Between Secret And Private

Private matters are those traits, truths, beliefs, and ideas about ourselves that we keep to ourselves. They might include our fantasies and daydreams, feelings about the way the world works, and spiritual beliefs. Private matters, when revealed either accidentally or purposefully, give another person some insight into the revealer.

Secrets, on the other hand, consist of information that has potentially negative impact on someone else-emotionally, physically, or financially. Secrets, when revealed either accidentally or purposefully, cause great chaos or harm to the secret-keeper and those around him or her.

Private: I believe in reincarnation.

Secret: I have a wife and a mistress and neither knows about the other.

Private: I got terrible grades in high school.

Secret: I forged my medical degree.

The Difference Between Truth and Honesty

Truth is empirical, demonstrable fact. Your bank balance, today’s date, whether or not you’re married.

Honesty is about feelings. If you’re honest, you are open and clear about how you feel. You can be truthful without being honest and you can be honest without being truthful (the latter a little more difficult). The best relationships, stating the painfully obvious, are both truthful and honest. Trust is built on both truth and honesty, tempered by the proof of predictability and reliability.

Below are excerpts from one of the books on this subject.


Emotional Unavailability

From “How To Recognize Emotional Unavailability And Make Healthier Relationship Choices” by Bryn Collins, M.A., L.P.

An emotionally unavailable relationship occurs whenever one partner is unable to reach out and make a heart connection with another person, while the other partner feels as is it is somehow his/her fault and thus bears the responsibility to fix it by being perfect. Such a relationship seems easy to spot-until you are in the middle of it.

An emotionally unavailable partner does not want love as much as he or she wants control. Emotions seem unsafe; control lends an illusion of safety. If you are in a relationship, you expect the relationship to grow and deepen over time; you expect a heart connection to be made and maintained, and you operate your life on the basis of this expectation.

When your partner does not make the same emotional connection, the result is trauma and pain. Often the emotionally unavailable person has no awareness his or her own contribution to the relationship’s collapse. Nevertheless, at a certain point it is essential for you to cut the entangling ties and move on.

Excerpts from one of the Emotionally Unavailable types:

James Bond: Spies & Lies

He won’t tell you where he lives. She will give you only a work number. He’s evasive about his history, friends, job and background. A year after you marry her, you find out she’s been married before. A mistress shows up. You find bills for credit cards you didn’t know you had.

Secrets and the lies that support them make it very hard to make an emotional connection. In part that’s because the secrets create a wall. In part it’s also because the secrets take a lot of energy to maintain and that energy is stolen from having a relationship with a person.

James Bonds are secret-keepers who with hold information from people with whom they are in a relationship. Sometimes this is because they believe the secrets give them power or an illusion of mystery and excitement; other times it is because the revelation of the secrets will end the relationship and they won’t get what they want-the reason for keeping secrets in the first place.

When you get into a relationship with a James Bond, you may enjoy the mystery at first. It’s kind of exciting not to know when he or she will suddenly appear to sweep you into whatever passed for his or her Aston Martin or private jet and then just as suddenly disappear again.

As the relationship moves along, however, predictability becomes more important and desirable to you, but the James Bond has no interest in being trapped by your rational expectation of continuity in the relationship.

You begin to snoop. Bond leaves you alone in the car or the apartment for a few minutes, and your fingers stray to the glove compartment or desktop. You hate yourself for what you’re doing, but you can’t stop. Bills, letters, scraps with phone numbers-a flood of information without explanation. What you’re looking for are the missing pieces of James Bond’s life that you don’t get to know. The problem is that you have no threads to weave into a fabric of truth. All you have is scraps that have no clear meaning.

Or, worse perhaps, you DO find something; a breathless love letter you didn’t write, a sexy card you didn’t send, a photo that isn’t you. Now what do you do? Now you have information and a whole new conundrum. In order to confront James Bond with the information, you have to admit you’ve been snooping. Then Bond has the perfect out: he or she can get mad at you for snooping, and never have to own up to the rest of it.

The other thing that happens is that you lose trust completely. Being in a relationship with someone you don’t trust isn’t being in a relationship at all. It begins to undermine your trust in yourself as well and that undermines your self-image, which makes you more vulnerable, which undermines your self-confidence-you can see the descending spiral here.

Meanwhile, James Bond isn’t making any changes. The secrets and lies continue, surrounded by denials and protestations of honesty or indignation that you would even suspect him or her of not being completely truthful.

James Bond has difficulty with both truth and honesty, which makes trust impossible.

The sad thing is that even if he or she changes completely, it’s still really hard to build trust because of the history. So you get more and more suspicious and less and less trusting while James continues along the self-focused path of getting his or her needs met above all else.

When the situation (we can’t really call this a relationship) finally blows up-and these relationships almost invariably blow up rather than fade away-your ability to trust anyone blows right with it. The next person who comes into your life will be under the microscope, and that is a very uncomfortable spot for anyone. The new potential partner often departs to avoid being distrusted at every turn."




But seriously. RUN AWAY. You'll be glad you did.

-ol' 2long

THAT being said ... I ask again ... well .... ummmm .... just read my original post and please, if you could, share with me your thoughts on 'transparency versus privacy'. OK?

Ok...this is it...you want him transparent...YOU have to be transparent too. It matters not that you have not given him a reason to question your faithfulness.

You cannot scream invasion of privacy for yourself but demand that he have nothing private. You don't trust him, and it appears with good reason, but you are building your argument on a weak bed of sand ..."I get privacy...you aren't allowed any"...isn't going to wash.

If you are determined to stay with this cheater then set the example...and hush up about YOUR need for privacy. Lay it all out there for him to see.


Get ready for one helluva life. Good Luck...you are gonna need it.

committed

And puleeese, if you decide to marry a cheater, don't complain when he ................... cheats. You are a volunteer, after all.