This sort of situation is fairly common and I suspect that somewhere, deep in their guts, the guys always know what’s really up:
I’ve been dating this wonderful girl for about 6 months and love her very much. She broke up with her ex over his cocaine abuse last March and every now and then he will call her high late at night and used to knock on her windows without being invited over at 3 am. She is a caring person and explained how the last 2 months of their 6-month relationship entailed of her having to babysit him. She has continuously expressed her anger towards him and his behavior and never have heard her say a single good thing about him. Last night she was in the shower and I was using her phone for Spotify in the house and opened her messenger on accident and as I went to close it noticed her most recent message was with this ex of hers. I shouldn’t have read her messages but of course, I was curious and saw that while I was out of state for Christmas, she messaged him “merry Christmas, I’ve been thinking about you recently” the conversation led to them saying they care about another’s well-being ect and eventually meeting up for lunch/dinner. I don’t know how I can bring this up to her or where to go from here, I feel terrible reading her messages but don’t know what to make of her meeting up with her ex without talking about it
First off, the fact that his girlfriend’s relationship with her ex ended badly and the fact that she has never said a nice thing about him doesn’t mean she doesn’t still have feelings for him. In fact, it’s entirely possible that the reason she seems angry with her ex is that she has strong feelings for him and she’s upset that he ruined their relationship with his drug use.
Furthermore, the fact that the ex calling her and creepily showing up to knock on the window at 3 AM is evidence he still has strong feelings for her as well. You can be sure she understands that.
So, the fact that she initiated a meeting with him using a loaded line like, “I’ve been thinking about you recently,” seems fairly significant. Then there’s the fact that they met up in person and most importantly, that she didn’t tell her boyfriend. Did they have sex? There’s no way to know that for sure, but the Magic 8 Ball is pointing to, “most likely.” Additionally, she also definitely knew what it would look like to her boyfriend if he found out that she was secretly meeting with her ex, yet it was important enough to her that she did it anyway. What does that say about the value she places on her current relationship vs. the one she had with Stalky McCokeEx?
Of course, if her boyfriend confronts her, she’s going to deny that anything happened. Instead, she’s just going to claim that she was worried about her ex and was such a caring person that she had to check on him. There’s even a possibility that’s true. But, there’s a much higher possibility that it’s false and now, he KNOWS that she’s spending time with an ex and isn’t telling him about it.
If you asked her, she’d deny lying, but she did something she shouldn’t have done and she withheld information from him that she should have been willing to tell him about. The reason that looks shady is that it probably is shady.
He could try to talk it out with her, but if so, he’d need to let her know that this is potentially a relationship ending big deal and she’d have to be willing to take steps to regain his trust. That wouldn’t be a fun conversation and it might not solve anything ultimately since she’s burned all the trust the two of them had to the ground. The alternative to that is sticking his head in the sand and hoping for the best. As we all know, that’s usually not a great strategy.
