F18 M20 I am not sure if I should give up on my relationship or not? tl;dr
This is my first time posting on Reddit, so please bear with me.
I’m 18F and my boyfriend is 20M. We started talking in 2024, stopped, then reconnected in May 2025. He asked me to be his girlfriend in August, so we have been together for about 8 months.
For most of our relationship, things felt healthy. I love him a lot, and we have not had any huge fights until recently. But over time, a lot of situations happened that made me feel insecure and like my boundaries were being pushed.
My boyfriend is very social and has a lot of friends, while I am more introverted and only have a small circle. Early in the relationship, I became uncomfortable with his boundaries around female friends. For example, he went to his female hairdresser/friend’s house to get his hair done and stayed there from around 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. It was just the two of them, and even though I did not say much at the time, it made me uncomfortable. Another situation happened with a girl from a band we saw at a show. She viewed both of our stories but only followed him. I mentioned that it felt weird to me, and later he started sending me songs she was featured in and messaged her. I know these things may not sound huge by themselves, but I had a bad gut feeling. ( these were before we were together officially)
Eventually, we talked and agreed that neither of us would have close friendships with the opposite gender for a while until I felt more comfortable and could trust him again. Later, I found out he was messaging his best friend’s younger sister, who is also 18. He had told me he was not close with her, but the messages made it seem like they had more of a friendship than he admitted. Nothing was directly cheating or flirting, but I felt hurt because we had already set a boundary, and I did not understand why she was an exception. Around this same time, he had a trip planned with his sister, but two days before leaving, he told me his sister was bringing a female friend and they would all be sleeping in the same hotel room. I was not comfortable with that, especially because they would be drinking. I ended up buying him a separate hotel room.
Over time, I became more insecure because of all these little things building up. I eventually asked him to unfollow girls on social media because I felt like my boundaries kept being crossed. I know I did not handle everything perfectly. At one point, I even told him to choose between our relationship and his best friend, which I know was wrong. I apologized and told him I did not want him isolated from his friends I ended up confessing that the root of the problem was that I did not trust him and I would rather rebuild trust than make him choose.
Then things got worse. Around month 8, he gave me a promise ring, but later that same day, he told me he had cheated on his first ex with me. I did not know he was in a relationship at the time. I had always told him cheating was a huge dealbreaker for me, so finding out I was unknowingly involved really hurt me and made me feel guilty. He also admitted he had been lying about his financial situation. At the beginning of our relationship, he paid for dates, bought me things, and even got me a very expensive designer bag for Christmas, so I assumed he was financially comfortable. I had asked before if he had debt, and he said no, but later I found out that was not fully true. The debt itself was not the issue. The lying was.
Later, there was an argument involving his best friend’s sister again. My boyfriend had told me his best friend understood why I was uncomfortable, but when my boyfriend asked if the sister would be at an event, his friend responded with, “She still tripping about her?” I asked my boyfriend to defend me because I felt disrespected, but he refused. We had a horrible argument, and he said really hurtful things like “this is pathetic,” “this is insufferable,” and “I regret the day I messaged you back.” He later said he only said those things to get a reaction from me because I had stopped replying. After that, I found out he had lied about how the conversation with his best friend actually went. His friend had not really been understanding like my boyfriend made it seem. I also found out that my boyfriend and the sister were closer than he originally told me. They had talked more often, and she had been around more than he admitted. This hurt because for months he made me feel like I was overreacting for not understanding their friendship, when he had not been honest about it.
Then I found even more. I saw that his previous wallpaper on his computer was photos of his second ex. That pushed me to ask to go through his phone for the first time. I found messages showing he had lied about defending me to his friend. He had actually planned the message with his friend and told him to ignore it because “his life was on the line.” I also found old messages where he cried about his second ex to his friends and talked about how much he loved her. This shocked me because he always made it seem like she was a horrible partner who cheated and did not treat him well. I also found out his friends and family were much closer to her than he had told me. That hurt because I had been trying hard to become closer with his friends and family. I am shy, but I watched videos on how to be more social and tried to make an effort because I loved him and wanted the people in his life to see that.
I also found disrespectful comments about me from his friends, including his best friend’s sister calling me his ex’s name and saying other backhanded things. I found messages showing that before we officially dated, he was talking about other girls in ways that made me feel embarrassed and hurt. His friends even called one girl his “wife.”(the hairdresseer) What hurt the most was that I saw so many messages where he said nice things about his ex and other girls, but I did not find anything sweet about me. His explanation was that he was overcompensating with his ex because she did not give him love, and that with me, he never felt like he had to prove anything. He said the things about other girls were him trying to look cool to his friends and get their validation. He also kept saying he hates his friends and does not know why he acted that way.
Yesterday, I was extremely upset. I stayed up until 5 a.m. crying and feeling sick over everything I saw. He came over after work, brought me a Switch 2, wrote me a sweet letter, apologized, and said he is going to therapy and already has appointments. He said he blocked all of his friends and is serious about me and will treat me better. But I told him I do not want him to isolate himself from everyone. I just wish he had defended me, been honest with me, and spoken about me with love and respect the way he did with other girls. I am glad he is getting help, but I am still very hurt and I do not forgive him yet. Right now, I am trying to distance myself a little. I took down things in my room that remind me of him, and I am trying to text him less just in case. I feel torn because I do love him deeply and it is hard for me to build emotional connections with people. I do not want anyone else, and I want him to change. But I am also scared that I am staying because of my feelings, not because this relationship is actually healthy.