Boyfriend still had online dating profile...??

[VertRougeBleu]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions and points of view. I wanted to update y'all on what happened...

I went over and I directly asked him why he still had his profile up. He immediately got flustered/the saddest face I'd ever seen on him and said that he didn't know why he thought it was ok, but that he did it because he was insecure. He said that he felt better about himself when other girls would check out his page. I asked him if I wasn't enough for him or if I wasn't giving him enough attention and that's when I realized that, although not entirely my fault, in a way I had helped this problem happen.

He said that he didn't know what I wanted out of the relationship and that I was really hard to read. He said that he felt like I kept him as a secret since I rarely invited him out to meet my friends or to my house. My ex of 6.5 years hated going out with my friends so I stopped inviting him out at all. I wasn't used to inviting my guy out at that point, and it never crossed my mind that it mattered since my ex was the exact opposite of my current boyfriend as far as social activities are concerned. My house is in a really remote part of town, and there is not much to do there and I also don't have the internet anymore - sometimes we stream movies, etc. so my house is kind of lame. I told him this and he understood why I didn't do it and realized that it wasn't because I wasn't into the relationship. I didn't realize how that seemed to him, and it is my mistake for not seeing that. I told him that if he had a problem or wanted to know where we stood that we should talk about it - and he said with our relationship he was trying to be better at communication since that's one reason his last relationship failed. Additionally, he said that his most recent ex girlfriend didn't take the relationship seriously and they never really defined what they were. She ended up sleeping with his best friend. So now I see where his insecurities come from and why he thought I might not be taking it seriously.

I also told him that I felt exactly the same was as far as being kept secret. I also never really go out with him and his friends and I wasn't sure where we stood entirely. He said that he didn't know when to bring up the relationship talk or define what we were because those conversations can always be so awkward, especially if you find that one person doesn't want what you want. I told him I had the exact same thought and I never wanted to bring it up out of the same fear. He also said that since I had come out of a 6+ year relationship that he wasn't sure how fast or slow I wanted to go or if he was just an "in the mean time" guy or if I was serious. So it turned out that we were both equally confused about where we stood, were poor at communicating our needs/wants, and that he dealt with it differently in a way that didn't sit well with me. He does realize and see that what he did made me uneasy and makes me feel like I'm not enough and has promised that he will never do that again. On my side, I have promised to invite him out and to treat him like I'm taking him seriously now that I know that that's what he wants too.

I asked him where he saw our relationship going before this happened/blew up and he said that he wanted me to meet his parents. He also said that he was hoping that at some point soon that I told him what I wanted, because he had already made a spare key for his apartment to give me.

I told him that we need to make sure that we check in with each other all the time to make sure that this doesn't happen again and that we both get better at communicating so that the relationship doesn't go to crap like our last ones with this problem. He agreed and was relieved to know where we both stood.

So we'll both be checking in with each other at the end of the week all the time to make sure that anything bothering us is out there and to make sure we're being clear with each other because we both feel that we have something really special between us and don't want to ruin it.

Thanks again to all of you, I'm so glad you are here to help. =)

[VertRougeBleu]

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[ellie]

Hooray. Good for you!