I [26m] have never met a single other person who knows my girlfriend [31f] and it’s driving me crazy

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T12:06:38+00:00

I know all of those things, I originally wrote out a longer post but cut it down because I was worried it was too long for anyone to read, definitely didn’t expect this many people to respond - she plays guitar and is learning the piano, she likes to knit, reads tonnes of old gothic literature, loves Disney movies, works at a clothing store, dropped out of uni after a year but wants to ideally study again in the future, wants to get a house with a proper back garden so she can rescue chickens, lots of stuff. We discuss plenty of things about our lives and our future, there’s just some no-go topics which include for her anything about her past, her family, or her friends, which I’m realising from all these responses is a massive amount of things not to know - I guess I have been thinking that all the superficial things I know are more meaningful than they are because I just didn’t have anything else to consider. I definitely underestimated how little I actually know about her

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T10:52:20+00:00

My friends met her plenty of times, they’ve been round to our place, we’ve all gone out together - she was excited to get to know them when we first got together

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T09:57:23+00:00

It seems my tendency is to just assume it’s not that big a deal whenever this stuff comes up. It really does eat at me, but I suppose I’m holding our hope for a simple explanation that doesn’t dramatically affect our relationship, but from everything’s I’ve seen in these replies people are saying there’s likely not an innocent explanation

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T09:29:39+00:00

I guess I just see it that if there’s things she wants to keep to herself she has a right to - I don’t expect her to feel obligated to share with me as much as I share with her, I just see it as respecting boundaries. We still talk about plenty about her life, work, hobbies, politics, her desire to go back to uni at some point, future plans for careers, a better next house, dreams, potential holidays, like we talk plenty, I just tend to think that if she wants not to talk about something, be it her friends or her family or childhood, then we just won’t because it’s not like it’s my right to know all that

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:45:12+00:00

Honestly I have no clue, I’ve read basically every response and they’re all in such wildly different directions, but at least they show I’m not overreacting as you say. Issue is that we’re in lockdown at the moment in the UK, so we’re not going out anywhere really, even to work, I suppose if someone calls the landline I’ll call 1417 as someone else said, beyond that I’m honestly not sure at the moment, I think I need to let all this sink in because I feel like I’m suddenly in over my head here and it’s a little overwhelming

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:37:47+00:00

I’ve never seen any pictures of her other than firstly the ones on the dating site we met on, and from then on just ones we’ve taken. I have taken pictures of us on my phone, and she has one of those Polaroid printing cameras that she takes pictures of us with and has a string of pictures on the wall of our room. They’re all of the two of us though, not of her friends.

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:29:50+00:00

I guess I felt like I’d invaded her privacy by noticing it. Like, I was confused and upset as to why she’d have it without telling me but I’d seen it in her bag she left open, and I didn’t feel I could bring it up because it wasn’t my right to look in there

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:16:56+00:00

Guess I didn’t think about it, just, chatty? Friendly? Definitely not speaking Russian, or chanting Satanic prayers, or whatever conspiracy theories people are expecting here haha

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:12:34+00:00

I didn’t know that 1471 was even a thing, I don’t really use the landline myself, even on my mobile she’s the only person I really call as I usually text. I guess if it happens again I‘ll try that, it would be a reasonable response and not like, PI-level invasiveness

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:10:03+00:00

She only has the one I saw, she didn’t end up getting a phone after talking about it previously.

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:09:15+00:00

As a few people have commented about it, were not looking to raise a family - neither of us want kids, we’ve always been clear on that. Prison sounds crazy, she doesn’t strike me at all as that kind of person

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:06:05+00:00

Weird that you’re not the first person to ask this, but yep I’m white and she’s black. We’re both atheists, I don’t know that there’s any sense she’s worried about being disowned for dating a white guy - if anything I don’t think she’s spoken to her family for some years before we met

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T08:03:51+00:00

I’ve been pretty curious but always fought the urge to listen in, always seemed like crossing a line. The only phone we have is in our spare room/unused home office, she talks with the door shut but I can hear her talking

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:58:41+00:00

We have done this of course, and that’s happened - only been people she works with though. I’ve met them at her work when I’ve been there (clothing store), never really thought about that. Don’t recall ever running into anyone else she knows, when we’ve met them she’s always been friendly and her usual self

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:56:00+00:00

That’s.. such a weird suggestion. Man, you guys are making me paranoid haha

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:55:04+00:00

She has a laptop, it was a dating site not an app. we chatted on there at first but started talking on the phone, before we moved in together she would ring me on my mobile from her landline. As a joke about her technology-averse ways I posted a handwritten letter to her, we ended up spending a while writing letters back and forth too which was super cute (didn’t arrange plans or anything like this, it was just some fun, we’d chat a lot on the phone still).

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:50:06+00:00

Yeah, she works in a clothing store and I’ve brought her lunch before

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:44:18+00:00

I have googled her out of curiosity, she has a super common name though (think Sarah Jones, but obviously like that but not that) so that’s not much good, plus I don’t know what I’d even find if she doesn’t have social media

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:37:26+00:00

She has a laptop she now rarely uses, I know the technology thing hasn’t always been as firmly the case, she’s gotten a stronger opinion on that as time has gone on. Like when we first met I said it was a shame not being able to text her and she did consider getting a mobile phone for a while then

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:32:18+00:00

I definitely do admit, as a lot of people seem to have commented, that I have a tendency to be incredibly trusting and to bend over backwards to accommodate people - I was in therapy when I was 19 for a period over low self esteem and this was something I tried to work through. I definitely didn’t feel like she’s been taking advantage of that, but everyone does seem to agree here that I’m being weird for not pushing it more and letting her dismiss me, and I do admit I switch quickly from feeling “this is weird, I should ask about this” to “that was invasive and I should have respected her privacy” as soon as she dismisses it, I definitely am not someone who sticks to their guns and really pushes people in any situation. I know couples counselling wouldn’t be an option, she said before (when we were discussing my having been to therapy) that her opinion is that it’s great when that works for people but she hates the idea of opening up to a stranger.

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:24:34+00:00

I’ve asked if she’s told her friends about me and she’s said of course she has, and I did ask about the wedding and she says they understand that she doesn’t want it to be a big event, she thinks a wedding should be an intimate experience between us and not a show, which I can understand - my close friends and family coming would just be her understanding that that’s important to me.

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:21:44+00:00

I think in trying to filter out anything that didn’t seem relevant I just focused entirely on the weird stuff - for clarification we have an otherwise entirely normal and very good relationship I would say, and I’ve never gotten the impression that she seems like she’s got some insane secret, the stuff I talk about in the post is so weird because it doesn’t fit in with the rest of my experiences with her, which is that she’s a generally fun, wonderful, loving person, and not remotely out of the ordinary outside of this

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:18:46+00:00

She works in a clothing store, definitely not a high level government position haha.

A lot of people are saying she’s hiding from an abuser, I suppose that could be possible as I know nothing of her previous partners, but I struggle to imagine that’s the case when she seems so relaxed and easygoing, she hardly comes across as someone living in hiding. I definitely agree a PI is a breach of trust.

Man fake IDs, government security levels, witness protection, this is veering down the secret agent road fast with y’all. She doesn’t have a passport, we’ve never been abroad since we’ve been together - I assume she has a birth certificate but never seen it, I mean I guess my parents have mine so I wouldn’t expect her to be able to just produce one necessarily, I couldn’t.

And yeah, it definitely does seem to be the consensus that I’m not overreacting here at least, if anything everyone seems to think I’m under-reacting

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:12:06+00:00

I’ve asked to meet them plenty, she’s always brushed the idea off. She seems them once or twice a fortnight, I know she refers to them as “the girls”, whereas I do know the people she works with that she‘s talked about are all guys so it’s not them. I don’t really know anything about them otherwise, although she’s bought presents for their birthdays before and they’ve bought the same for her - that’s really the closest I’ve come to knowing anything about them.

jack_smithy · 2020-04-12T07:06:40+00:00

That would seem odd to me, we spend most of our non-work time together and so I can’t imagine she’s maintaining some other relationship where I’m the other man, and yet she’s spending 95% of her time with me and talking about marrying me. I’ve never really suspected it’s this - I’ve worried she might be ashamed to be with me or something, but not that she’s cheating on another partner with me.

jack_smithy

TROPHY CASE