TL;DR:
My boyfriend has a female coworker/friend he’s known for about a year who often asks him to hang out one-on-one, including walks in another city, despite them already seeing each other in group outings every weekend and living near each other. I’ve never had issues with his female friends before and I’m not trying to forbid him from seeing her, but this specific dynamic makes me uncomfortable. Whenever I express my feelings, it turns into me being called jealous or controlling, and I feel like my discomfort matters less than his desire for freedom. Am I overreacting?
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My boyfriend has a female coworker/friend he’s become close to over the past year. In general, I’m not a jealous person and I’ve never had issues with his female friends before. We’ve been together for 5 years and I’ve never tried to control who he talks to or hangs out with. He usually hangs out with his female coworkers but but always in groups or just for coffee/lunch and simpler things.
The problem is this specific situation.
This girl often asks him to hang out one-on-one, and now she asked for a walk together in another city (Rome, 40 minutes from they city they both lives). What makes me uncomfortable is that almost every weekend there are already group outings with the whole friend group doing basically the exact same thing. Sometimes she even skips the group outings but still asks to see him alone instead, which honestly makes me uncomfortable.
I should also add that I’ve never even met her. They’ve only known each other for about a year through work, and they also happen to live in the same building (she initially often asked him for dinner at her house also, and it something that even If made me very uncomfortable, I never pretend him to not accept). That’s another reason why I struggle to understand the need for planned one-on-one outings in another city just to “go for a walk,” when they could easily see each other casually in their own city or already spend time together otherwise.
My boyfriend insists she’s just a friend and he would never do anything inappropriate. She also has a boyfriend but he never meet him in 1 year of living almost in the same place. He doesn’t want to feel limited in his freedom. I actually do trust that he wouldn’t cheat on me, and I’ve never told him “you can’t go.” I already know he would still go anyway, and I’m not trying to forbid it.
What hurts me is more the way my discomfort is handled. The moment I try to explain that certain situations make me uneasy, it immediately becomes about me being “jealous” or “controlling,” and we end up in huge arguments. It feels like only his need for freedom matters, while my emotional discomfort is treated as a burden.
I also don’t really understand the need for these very specific one-on-one outings when they already spend time together in a friend group constantly.
Am I unreasonable for finding this dynamic uncomfortable?
And how do you protect yourself emotionally in a relationship when expressing discomfort is automatically interpreted as control or jealousy?