How Can I Cope with My Boyfriend’s Odd Sexual Behavior?

Reader’s Question

I’m having a lot of anxiety trying to cope with the behavior of my boyfriend of 6 months. Our relationship has been rocky from the start, namely because of some habits he acquired being single for many years and having low self-esteem issues brought on by reconstructive surgeries he had on his genitals.

In my opinion, my boyfriend has developed unhealthy ‘friendships’ with people he’s met online and people that he has slept with in the past. These friendships involve very intense and crude sexual talk with these girls. I have found evidence of this via text messages and online chats and have confronted him several times. He said he has low self-esteem and is working on it. I chose to stay on the condition that I see improvement and that he no longer lies to me about who he is talking to.

Well, over the last month or two he has improved. But recently we’ve had a couple heated arguments (about communication) and I noticed some dirty text messages on his phone again. Last week, he neglected to tell me that one ‘friend’ was in town and he was trying to meet her for lunch. I only found out when I saw the messages on his phone. He said telling her he was going to meet her for a ‘quickie’ was a joke.

I’ve been in and out of counseling myself for many years and can see the signs of a problem. I feel like his self-esteem issues override the fact that he knows how upset this makes me. I am in love with him though and really don’t want to leave him because I somehow hope that we can get through this issue when everything else is right in our relationship.

I find that going to work and planning trips without him send me into complete anxiety because I’m afraid that time away from me will give him too many opportunities to fall back into that pattern of conversation with these girls. I have a trip coming up and the anxiety has gotten worse. I don’t know how to handle this problem. How do I cope with the anxiety?

Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply

Sometimes we ignore nature’s most wonderful ways of tending to our well-being. Anxiety can often be your body’s “signal” that there are things you should be apprehensive about in a situation. Instead of wanting to drown it out and continue on your present course, you would do well to pay attention to it. Sometimes, persons engaging in behaviors that produce a sense of helplessness and end up feeling depressed make the same mistake. Rather than addressing the self-destructive behaviors, they opt for a “pill” to feel better and then keep doing as they’ve done before.

You indicate you are therapy-wise. I suspect from your boyfriend’s comments about the nature of his self-esteem problems that he might be also. In any case, it seems you are trying so hard to “understand” his behavior that you’ve forgotten how serious it is and how likely it is that furthering a relationship with this man while he still exhibits his problem behaviors will lead to further heartache. You also attribute blame to his years being single and his self-esteem issues — while not holding him accountable. On top of that, because you attempt to monitor the situation, you’re the one who ends up distressed.

You indicate that you have been in therapy. My guess is that the therapy did not adequately address why you would put yourself in such positions in any relationships or why you would opt for some way to quiet your nerves while still putting yourself in harm’s way. Before it’s too late, I would respectfully suggest that you re-enter counseling but not with your boyfriend or for the purpose of dealing with his behavior. Rather, approach the counseling from the standpoint of learning more about yourself, how to take good care of yourself, and how to establish and nurture healthy relationships. Your boyfriend’s problem — whatever its nature — is his own responsibility to address. Even though he says he’s “working on it” the problem remains, and you have invested more energy in dealing with it than he has. This is a red flag for at least one of the issues you’ll need to address in your therapy.