I will preface by saying we’ve been dating for close to 6 years and things were relatively fine in the past. I will admit that I have had some jealousy issues when he spends a lot of time with his online friends, but we’ve talked about it and everything’s been fine for quite some time now. Recently we’ve made a mutual online friend around 6 months ago with whom we are very close to, and we hung out on Discord together almost daily. Sleeping in group calls was a regular thing, and saying platonic “I love you’s” to each other was also very normal in our friendship.
That one mutual friend also had cute nicknames for all of us, myself included.
But this past month or two my partner and the friend started talking in our group less and privately more. At first I would ask why they were being more distant and the answer I mostly got was that they had more similar hobbies and interests that I don’t share so they didn’t feel that I would want to take part in the conversation, and over time no one really talks in the group chat that we share anymore. My partner really likes to be in voice calls, and I used to see him stay in the vc channel and we would ask if anyone else wanted to join. As time passes the invites for others to join stopped, becoming them only appearing together out of the blue. Over time group vc stopped altogether, and they started only private calling.
I’ve mentioned to them that I feel left out when they leave me out/don’t invite me when they call, even though again we are all mutual friends. I would ask them why they didn’t say anything in the group and they’d say the calls “weren’t planned” and they “just figured you would join if you wanted to.” I would also ask them to invite me next time they called and despite me communicating very clearly, they never did.
I’ve been curious/paranoid and asked my partner if he’s online if he’s talking to a friend and the repeated answer would be “no, I’m busy doing something else.” Notably there was one particular day where I kept asking him throughout the whole day if he’s free and wants to hang out on call and he repeatedly said he can’t talk and when I asked him if it’s because he was on call with someone else that day he always said no just for me to find out way later that he was in a call with that friend for a whole day. The call lasted for a day.
Eventually the “I love you’s” i mentioned earlier started becoming more infrequent when the friend talks to me. They also stopped using cute nicknames with me while both of these things kept going when they were talking with my partner. The level of intimacy and affection they show each other is something I haven’t seen from my partner in some time. The closer they grew together, the more distant both of them became to me. My partner insists that everything they do together is platonic and heavily downplays my paranoia about potential cheating, though I never outright said he was, and only expressed my frustration about their intimacy and exclusivity for each other.
I very conflicted on what to do or feel. would this be a deal breaker if this happened in your relationship? any advice on how to move forward?
TL;DR My partner got really close to a mutual friend and started spending more time with them and lying to me about the time being spent.