# just need to talk -- have you ever accepted SO's behaviour?



## mountains (Jul 13, 2012)

I am with a man who has some kinky things that he is into. He likes to roll play being a dom or being a sub, both things, with strangers through texts and messages. I confronted him about this a long time ago and in the end I went with the whole "I don't care as long as it doesn't affect our relationship" which I told him meant him not sneaking around.

It's been 4 years, he still messages people. I do not know if he has ever cheated though I lean towards no. Not because I am blind but for a few reasons. First, he was emotionally destroyed by a girlfriend that cheated on him, his feelings about cheating have always been very negative and he still gets angry when he says her name even though it was 20 years ago. Second, I had asked him when this first came up if he wanted to meet people etc (I was offering permission) and he said no, that he just wanted to message them. Third, he has terrible social anxiety so bad he still has panic attacks when we go somewhere that he has been many times before. I had to initiate our first kiss, I can not see him showing up at a strangers house for sex. He wants to have a threesome really badly and I have thought that could be fun too but everytime we get to the point of actually doing it he gets too anxious.

All that being said if he felt he needed to be dominated, or to dominate, a stranger, I actually would be okay with it. I have pretty liberal views when it comes to sexuality. I would never be able to tolerate my partner having an affair or having casual sex because I feel like those are replacements for me and I just couldn't deal with it. But in this context this is not a replacement for me, this is something outside of me that I can not provide. -- and btw I'm not interested in people replying that I should not be okay with that. This is my own personal value system and not what this post is about.

My biggest problem is the lying and sneaking around. If I try to talk to him about any of this he yells and gets so loud that I stutter and/or start crying and no conversation actually occurs. We did have a couple of calm conversations at some point in this relationship where I learned that the reason he sneaks around is because he is embarrassed.

So I know why he sneaks around and lies, even though I have told him the messages are okay. But I want the lying to stop because it's a barrier between us. I can't look something up on his computer because I see his sext messages and he will know I saw them and panic for example, also he constantly hides his phone from me and gets very protective of it if I reach for it to check the time. I want this behaviour to stop and I don't know how to achieve that. I've already told him many times that I am okay with these messages but he still tells me that he doesn't send them. It doesn't seem there is any way to change his behaviour.

Other than this I am happy. We have a good relationship, we have achieved things together I couldn't have achieved alone, and we love each other very much. But it's starting to affect me. I am starting to feel distant from him. I don't think anyone here can give me a solution, what I really need is to talk to someone (or some people) because it's hard to keep this inside.

Have you ever accepted your partner's behaviour? How did you cope with it?


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## GusPolinski (Jan 21, 2014)

Well, you pretty much gave him permission to do whatever (that's how he saw it, anyway), so he probably didn't view it as "cheating" when he started.

Well now he's hiding his phone and doesn't want you reading his messages to others.

What do you think that means?


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## MattMatt (May 19, 2012)

He needs counselling. Seriously. That's my professional opinion, for what it's worth.

Taken as a whole -social anxiety, panic attacks, unable to get beyond an incident that happened over two decades ago, need to express himself sexually to strangers, etc- your chap seems to be struggling.

He needs to be checked out for a range of conditions, including a possible autistic spectrum disorder.

I can't -obviously!- diagnose by Internet, but there's certainly something not quite right that really should be addressed as soon as possible.

None of the above precludes the possibility that he might be cheating on you physically, so please do bear that in mind. STD tests might be a worthwhile option.


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## sixty-eight (Oct 2, 2015)

MattMatt said:


> He needs counselling. Seriously. That's my professional opinion, for what it's worth.
> 
> Taken as a whole -social anxiety, panic attacks, unable to get beyond an incident that happened over two decades ago, need to express himself sexually to strangers, etc- your chap seems to be struggling.


:iagree:
also, for the lying and secretive behavior.

i might be way off base here, but I was talking to another tam friend about how maybe our fantasies directly relate to our deficiencies. For example: my husband never wants to have sex and doesn't seem to like it that much, and my fantasy is that he initiate enthusiastically early and often. a common dream on these forums. Your husband has social anxiety, and dreams of confidently dominating. I wonder if he got help, if his need for secrecy and/or domination might diminish relative to his anxiety. The odds are that the counseling won't hurt, anyway.


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## mountains (Jul 13, 2012)

Thank you all for your replies.

Yep he has psychological problems. I tried to get him to counselling before but he has phobias about doctors and there were panic attacks and I dropped it because he started making progress on his own. How he is now is a hundred times better than when we met. But life is still hard for him. Really hard. He has OCD and he has PTSD which has been diminishing over the years. When I first met him though if I knocked on his door he would go into a full blown panic attack so I had to get my own set of keys and then announce myself when I was in there. Similarly one time early in the relationship I woke up early and got out of bed and he ****ing panicked, yelled at me with that fear that a toddler yells with when scared, for leaving him alone and not telling him I was getting up. I have also thought about him being on the autism spectrum. I understand his character really well because I myself have anxiety and was in counselling for 5 years to get better and I fit the profile for highly functional autism. In a way I both enable and also counsel him because I remember what worked for me at what time during those years.

Although it would be hurtful for him to become this gregarious guy with no social issues who asked for an open relationship, I would be happy for him that he was able to heal that part of him because I see how much his fear of social situations hurts him. But this is not about relationships, this is about sexual kink, it's a psychological thing. It has taken years for him to trust me enough to be himself, he wouldn't want to have a relationship with anyone else. Also he didn't just start, he has been doing this since he was a teenager. When I confronted him about it originally he was mortified and we broke up. He came back to me not even a week later and talked. I am the only person to ever know this deep secret of his, the only person he ever trusted enough to tell. He does it more when life is harder than when life is good. I understand that this is filling a gap and because he is not replacing me I have accepted it and told him that sending messages is okay.

I have been thinking about this all day and I realized something. It is not the action that bugs me. I already know that if he was like "look at this chick I'm roleplaying and pretending to be a young guy and she is an older woman" I would be like "that's sexy!" but he is embarrassed for me to know he has these desires / thoughts / kinks. It is not the action, it is of course the lying that bothers me. But why? And I realized today that it is because, due to my own anxieties, I am personalizing it. I am letting my emotions make this about me. I am wondering if he is lying when he tells me he loves me. Which is silly because we've just entered a really great place in our relationship and out of the blue he gets starry eyed and tells me "I love you so much". But that is where my upset is coming from, that is why this is bothering me. Because he is not sharing his whole self with me and I can't cope with that, for some reason. I think it is exactly because we HAVE entered this really great place recently. My insecurities are up, worried that I will lose this great time, not trusting that things really are this great. It's a cycle, he cycles, but things have never been this calm consistently for this many weeks before, since we had a major change in where we live and my job.


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## MattMatt (May 19, 2012)

mountains said:


> Thank you all for your replies.
> 
> Yep he has psychological problems. I tried to get him to counselling before but he has phobias about doctors and there were panic attacks and I dropped it because he started making progress on his own. How he is now is a hundred times better than when we met. But life is still hard for him. Really hard. He has OCD and he has PTSD which has been diminishing over the years. When I first met him though if I knocked on his door he would go into a full blown panic attack so I had to get my own set of keys and then announce myself when I was in there. Similarly one time early in the relationship I woke up early and got out of bed and he ****ing panicked, yelled at me with that fear that a toddler yells with when scared, for leaving him alone and not telling him I was getting up. I have also thought about him being on the autism spectrum. I understand his character really well because I myself have anxiety and was in counselling for 5 years to get better and I fit the profile for highly functional autism. In a way I both enable and also counsel him because I remember what worked for me at what time during those years.
> 
> ...


Not a doctor, a specialist in ASD work. He may be more comfortable with that.

My wife wouldn't tell her doctor anything. But an ASD expert? That was different.


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

Even if he thinks that cheating is wrong, that will not most likely stop him if he wants to cheat. Most people who cheat will say that it's wrong. So him saying that he's against cheating proves nothing.

He has sexual desires that apparently you cannot meet. He wants them private because he's uncomfortable about them. Surely you understand that if a man's wife does not meet his needs that he has the right to get those needs met by other women. Why would that upset you? Why would you feel a need to intrude in that part of his life?


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## carmen ohio (Sep 24, 2012)

mountains said:


> I am with a man who has some kinky things that he is into. He likes to roll play being a dom or being a sub, both things, with strangers through texts and messages. I confronted him about this a long time ago and in the end I went with the whole "I don't care as long as it doesn't affect our relationship" which I told him meant him not sneaking around.
> 
> It's been 4 years, he still messages people. *I do not know if he has ever cheated though I lean towards no.* Not because I am blind but for a few reasons. First, he was emotionally destroyed by a girlfriend that cheated on him, his feelings about cheating have always been very negative and he still gets angry when he says her name even though it was 20 years ago. Second, I had asked him when this first came up if he wanted to meet people etc (I was offering permission) and he said no, that he just wanted to message them. Third, he has terrible social anxiety so bad he still has panic attacks when we go somewhere that he has been many times before. I had to initiate our first kiss, I can not see him showing up at a strangers house for sex. He wants to have a threesome really badly and I have thought that could be fun too but everytime we get to the point of actually doing it he gets too anxious.
> 
> ...


Dear mountains,

During the early years of my marriage (which is now in its 43rd year), there were a number of aspects of my wife's behavior that bothered me. I accepted them (albeit with some degree of complaining) because the benefits I received from being with her easily outweighed what I perceived to be negative about our relationship.

As I became older, and I would like to believe wiser, I realized that most of the things that bothered me about her were the result of differences in the way the two of us had been raised and that I was wrong in assuming that my way was right and hers was wrong. Once I realized this, I ceased to be concerned about these things and stopped complaining about them.

As to the remaining aspects of her behavior that continue to bother me somewhat, I have come to realize that I have at least as many behavioral traits that I know bother her but that she puts up with. This makes it rather easy for me to overlook the few things she does that annoy me.

Now, all of that being said, nothing that my wife has ever done has given me reason to suspect her loyalty or faithfulness, and all of her behavioral traits that I have alluded to are well within what most westerners would call the normal range.

Your H's behavior, on the other hand, is eccentric to say the least, and therefore your challenge is greater than mine. I would go so far as to say that the first thing you should do is revisit your decision to _'accept'_ his behavior. I would not tolerate my spouse keeping secrets from me and, IMO, neither should you. Nor would I tolerate being verbally abused, which sounds like what he does to you when you raise concerns about his habit of hiding things from you.

If you decide that you can't accept certain aspects of his behavior, you will have to come up with a plan to get him to change. Asking him to change is unlikely to work and therefore you will have to implement some carrot and stick system encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. Another thing you can try is individual counseling. Try to get him into IC and seek counseling for yourself.

If you find you just can't get him to change the way he behaves and you also can't learn to accept what he does, then your only recourse will be to separate. However, from the way you've described your problem, it sounds like that kind of a decision is far off. 

A question: since you don't suspect your H of cheating, why did you post in the Coping with Infidelity section rather than in the General Relationship Discussion section?


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## mountains (Jul 13, 2012)

EleGirl said:


> Even if he thinks that cheating is wrong, that will not most likely stop him if he wants to cheat. Most people who cheat will say that it's wrong. So him saying that he's against cheating proves nothing.
> 
> He has sexual desires that apparently you cannot meet. He wants them private because he's uncomfortable about them. Surely you understand that if a man's wife does not meet his needs that he has the right to get those needs met by other women. Why would that upset you? Why would you feel a need to intrude in that part of his life?


Well actually if you read my posts you would know that I agree with you. Our partners can not meet all our needs no matter how badly they want to. There are things that I need in order to function psychologically healthily and to feel good about myself that I must seek from other people, exactly as he does. The difference is mine are not sexual and his are and we are conditioned as a society to think this is wrong. I don't think it's wrong. These people do not replace me. He would never have interest in going for bike rides or cuddling on Saturday morning or taking a family nap with them. They don't replace me. Similarly I can't fill the role they play for many reasons, partly because I'm not interested in sending dirty messages all day. 

The problem for me is the sneaking around. But it's something we can address again later when I am more calm and not associating personalized feelings with it. I was right that I was personalizing it... We've had a really stressful 2 months, I mean the worst stress I've ever experienced with one thing after another, something new every couple days, for like 10 weeks. It was really terrible. And during this time he stopped initiating sex and I knew why -- we were both barely holding onto our sanity and our family/friendship. Sex was one too many things. He still was complimenting me and saying that I got him hard etc, it's just the touching stopped. So after more than two months of this, and now that we are in a good place again after a job change and a move to a new home, I was starting to really feel unwanted sexually...so naturally knowing he is sex messaging with people was causing me to be insecure.

Friday I told him I wasn't hurt because I understood the reasons but I needed him to start initiating again before this becomes our habit. He was calm and positive and we had a brief conversation and he said he hadn't even noticed that he wasn't anymore. That night we had a late night and just crashed in bed but the next morning (yesterday) one of the first things he said to me was "I'm sorry you haven't felt wanted" and then last night he initiated and we had the best sex we've had in a while and today I don't feel so bad about the messages.

So I think the approach I am going to take -- because truthfully I hate the sneaking around and I would prefer if he was not ashamed by this kink of his. I would LOVE it if I could be included somehow to whatever level made him comfy. We talk about sex and are both kinky so when I originally confronted him about it he did include me and we sent messages to people together but it just wasn't my thing. So I would like if he is still doing it for me to be included in some way. It can be his private thing but I mean, I'd love to be able to have it enhance our sex life than him hiding it. And if that can't happen I would at least like him to stop hiding it from me. I know. You don't need to hide it or deny it, I know and it's okay. Hiding it just causes unnecessary anxiety for both of us. So I think the approach I am going to take is one day when he is being super neurotic about his phone I am going to use that as a segway into this conversation like "you don't need to hide your phone baby, I know you send messages and I already told you it's okay..." and then go on and tell him how much being sneaky affects me.


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## mountains (Jul 13, 2012)

carmen ohio said:


> Dear mountains,
> 
> During the early years of my marriage (which is now in its 43rd year), there were a number of aspects of my wife's behavior that bothered me. I accepted them (albeit with some degree of complaining) because the benefits I received from being with her easily outweighed what I perceived to be negative about our relationship.
> 
> ...


This was a wonderful reply, thank you. I posted here because I felt the people in general would certainly jump on this and call it cheating and I wouldn't have been able to find a supportive audience. But also being betrayed is being betrayed and he betrays me by not being honest about this.

What you have said about acceptance is how I feel also. Which is why I have never asked him to change but rather asked myself what I can accept. The yelling and abusive language I do not accept but it is related to his anxiety and so we have worked together for many years. This is basically the only thing he still gets loud about, probably because it is the deepest fear/anxiety he has. I have worked hard with him, for instance acknowledging "thank you for staying calm" or "you did a great job with that guy! You didn't lose your temper at all  " I've had to (privately) explain to his mom about anxiety and that he has it and what it feels like to him. He grew up having these reactions and not understanding. I also had to teach him about anxiety. He's almost unrecognizable emotionally to the person I first met -- it's really great how far he's come. So this one last thing, definitely he should not get loud and yell but it's hard for him to control when his panic is triggered.

Within the range of acceptance though it is my right to tell him I don't accept certain things. So my line has been "it's okay if you get loud, as long as you're not mean to me" and that kind of acceptance has really helped him grow and he gets loud way less often than he ever did before and he is never mean anymore. In this situation that line of thinking would be let him be himself and have these kinks but in order to also meet my emotional needs don't hide them. When the time is right we will have this conversation (soon I'm sure but not until it comes up and is the right time).

Thank you for sharing about your wife and acceptance.


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