u/Callinar

Edit: this time my girlfriend and I have been together for 7 months. I was trying to express without overexplaining that we have known each other for a long time without going through the whole history, but this was misleading and led folks to claim I was making this up, instead of just shortening the post, so im sorry. We have dated twice in the past as well, once was roughly 10 years ago, for 8 months. The other time was 2 years of dating, and it ended in 2023, 3 years ago. I didn’t mean to upset anyone or bend the rules, I was just trying for brevity. It won’t happen again.

My girlfriend, we’ll call her Ashley, and I have been on and off for a long time. She’s always been insecure about other women, including my platonic friends and my friend’s wives and it has been a big source of friction. I try to reassure her to some extent but when it starts to be the 3rd time about the same thing or person, I start to get exasperated. But I think this may be the final straw for me.

I was laid off last July and I work in the tech sector, where prospects are shrinking. To keep myself afloat I’m taking a lifeguard job, which I did in high school and college. Going in I knew most of the people I worked with would probably be much younger, but that doesn’t bother me - I remember working with older guards when I lifeguarded as well. I just figured the age disparity would be kind of funny.

When I talked about going in for training this weekend, she said “no cute girls!” I rolled my eyes (we were on the phone so she couldn’t see this) and was like yes no cute girls. Throughout the training I kind of laughed and was like “wow they really are all high schoolers” and talked about some of the things they said.

Last night after two early 10 hour days of training I was looking forward to relaxing in bed and playing a game with her online. She asked about my day and I talked about how training went. She asked “why do you keep talking about their ages?” And I was like uhhh I don’t know I just think it’s funny, and she mentioned her coworkers ages all the time because she works in retail which also has younger coworkers. Then she asked “were there any cute girls” and I said “they look like children to me. I’m not attracted to high schoolers.” She also asked “were there any guys at all” and I was like yeah the training class was mostly men, only 3 girls. She said “yay!!!” as if it would be more threatening if there were more 17 and 18 year old girls around me.

She sensed that I was uncomfortable about this line of questioning but she kept going, asking what I would do if they asked for my instagram, and I was getting annoyed, because I didn’t want to go through an interrogation after a long day, I just wanted to relax and hang out with her and sleep. So then she started to get mad that I wasn’t just reassuring her. Her words were “you know im like this, that im insecure, why is it so hard to just reassure me, it makes me feel better. I just want this to last forever and I get scared that someone will come between us. You get crushes and things can just happen, just reassure me, you shouldn’t get mad / annoyed.”

I did say all those reassuring things, I just also was upset about the implications she was making. She keeps claiming that she sees things on instagram about men cheating at work and falling for other people and said “well you’ll just be around them all the time in swimsuits and I just want you to keep boundaries and not get close to anyone.”

I don’t think I should need to play out a hypothetical inappropriate / flirting scenario with her that she saw on instagram to reassure her that im not going to cheat. Especially, in context, that another person has never come between us. I have dated other people when we weren’t together, and we have broken up before over her insecurities. We’ve never broken up because of another person. I have never dated someone much younger than me. There’s no historical basis for her fears. She also refuses to get therapy, saying she’s “tried it before”… she used betterhelp for a couple months with a quack therapist.

Is this not essentially a huge accusation she’s making and grounds to get out now? I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. And she basically told me that it’s not going to stop happening. It’s also not enough to just reassure her occasionally about this, I have to feel neutral or positive about providing this reassurance on demand and without limit.

tl;dr: im starting a job where i work alongside high schoolers. My girlfriend expressed fears that I wouldn’t keep appropriate boundaries and might develop a crush on them and expected me to reassure her without feeling negative about these fears in any way.