Hello, sorry if this is long and scattered.
I (21F) recently learned my partner (22M) is friends with two people he was briefly intimate with. The first girl (lets call her DJ) - they only kissed, and the other girl (lets call her Mary) - they hooked up. After learning it was just a kiss with DJ I felt better and kinda got mostly over that but then I hyperfocused on Mary. He reached out to Mary around 2 weeks ago to check in (i initially thought this was with DJ) and told me they jst caught up and I trust that but i keep interpreting that as her being important in his life which is not a bad thing since they are friends, i just dont like it. I trust my partner and dont worry about resparking or feelings on his end but i am plagued with the image of him with Mary, thinking of them being intimatre, not only that night but probably in conversation and flirting building up to that moment, and I think that although i know this was a one time thing and in the past, her still being in his life now makes it feel present. To him, what happened was a blimp in the bigger image of a good friendship which i can understand. I do think people can go back to being friends after hooking up, but as much as I can understand his perspective, I cant get over how it makes me feel. I feel sick and I wished I never asked anything.
Weve been together 6 months but they have been friends for many years, meaning years of memories - so I get a little insecure abt that too. I know he loves me and is choosing to be with me now but i feel so sad, so fucking sad. He did say he would end 1-1s if it made me more comfortable but I dont want this insecurity to make him end a friendship, especially if its planotic on both sides. BUTT I did relapse and stalked their socials and saw she was really active in all his accounts and so now my mind leans more towards the her possibly having some feelings still. I cant ask him to end this long friendship bc it doesnt feel fair and its not even guaranteed to make me feel better.
We communicated about this and I told him it might be retroactive jealousy and since the advice online says to not feed the obsession with information, he suggested giving it two week and trying not to rehash it. I think this could help and its only been 3 days but its been a really hard 3 days. I still have hope I can maybe feel better at the end of the 2 week period but i do feel a little alone. As understanding as I try to be (cause i do trust its platonic), I simply dont like it/ am uncomfortable and nothing he says can really help. Im exhausted and feel like im in a lose-lose situation because the only solution really is for me to get over it which means feeling like this for an unknown amount of time. I get consumed by the thoughts and almost feel comfort in the sadness, but i dont want to feel this, its horrible, and i really care about him and want to build something sturdy and i worry this feeling will rot in me and resurface in a mutated form. I am really mean to myself and to make it worse we are long distance which is why i feel like the sadness is giving me the bootleg comfort that i need from a real hug. I already kind of indirectly showed i was thinking abt it but we didnt address it.
side notes
- i know i shouldnt have asked questions and that this might mean i dont trust him fully but i felt a lil hurt cause i felt like his responses were a bit vague because i would only get what i thought was important details if i kept asking. or on insta like learning about DJ visiting him in october (he said they talked in oct) and when i brought it up i think he clarified they didnt sleep in the same bed and it was a platonic trip, but then i torture myself and start questioning if i hear/remember what he said right or if hes witholding bc he sees how its affecting me. idk
im so tired but i dont want to give up. please lmk what u think and how i can get past this. im desprate