[19M/20F]1.5 year LDR — girlfriend developed feelings for another guy, how do I handle this?
I’m 19M and my girlfriend is 20F. We’ve been together for 1.5 years and we’re currently in a long-distance relationship.
She took 2 drops for her studies and during those 2 years she basically didn’t have many friends. I was there for her through a lot of it. I used to motivate her to study, encourage her to go outside, try to make her feel better whenever she was feeling low, and just support her however I could.
Recently she got admission into Chandigarh University. Obviously she’s started meeting a lot of new people and has made quite a few male friends.
I never really had a problem with that. I know engineering colleges have a lot of guys, and I don’t want to be controlling or tell her who she can and can’t talk to.
The problem started a few days ago when she told me she’s started developing feelings for one of the guys.
She told me she hates that she’s feeling this way and feels guilty about it. From what I know, the guy himself hasn’t really done anything wrong. He seems pretty chill and apparently sends photos/videos to most of his friends, so that part doesn’t bother me.
What’s bothering me is that she knows she has feelings for him, but she still talks to him every day in college. They joke around, laugh together, etc. She also keeps mentioning him to me.
I know she can’t exactly control what she feels, and I’m not blaming her just for developing a crush. But I’m struggling with the fact that she’s continuing to get closer to someone she already knows she has feelings for.
I’m honestly really confused about what I should do. I don’t want to become the boyfriend who tells her to stop talking to a guy, but at the same time I don’t know how I’m supposed to just ignore this.
I also feel kind of scared because I supported her through those 2 years when she was mostly alone, and now that she’s finally in college and meeting new people, I’m worried that our relationship might start becoming less important to her.
I just want to know what other people would do in this situation. If you’ve been through something similar, what did you do? Did you try to work through it or did you eventually leave?