Anxiety Support Group
Anxiety is a physical condition marked by intense and persistent feelings of distress, fear, angst or dread. General anxiety caused by routine day-to-day stresses usually passes quickly and is experienced by almost everyone at one time or another. However, such feelings that linger over time and are very difficult to cope with, and which lack a clear cause, may indicate...
i'm not even sure where to begin because i have such anxiety but also numbness at the sametime so i'm not sure how to feel.
my boyfriend and i have been togther for a year. everything has been great, we never really fight, just disagreements here and there but thats about it. a few days ago, the relationship kinda fell apart in a way, let me explain. my boyfriend went to go take a shower and he left his phone on the night stand, i never go on his phone unless it's for music or GPS, i've never had a reason to go onto his phone but aways i went on his phone and went onto snapchat, just to take cute pictures of myself, just trying to be a cute girlfriend. when i was finished i went to go see if my pictures saved onto his camera roll cause i wasn't sure if he has that set up (snapchat linked up to his camera roll) i saw that they were saved but then i noticed some pictures. these pictures were nudes...not of me...and screenshotted of snapchat. i started shaking and crying right away. i kept skrolling and the pictures just kept getting worse. there were also pictures of these girls 'Only Fans'. after about 10mins of looking through his phone, i heard the water shut off so i quickly shut off the phone and put it back. my plan was to act like i'm okay and go through more when he's sleeping and take pictures with my phone but as soon as he came into the room, i just started crying again.
he asked me what was wrong and i explained to him what happened and what i found and this is the conversation we had:
him-i know it looks bad but i'm not cheating on you!
me-really cause it really feels like you are. you don't have to touch them to each
him-i swear i'm not! these are for a friend. he asked me to add these girls on snapchat and screenshot their posts and send it to him but i swear i'm not cheating and that these aren't for me
after he said that i barely heard a word, i just sat there. i sat looking at a wall for 3hrs. i couldn't even look at him, i felt disgusted, sad, angry and numb all at the same time. i just wanted to get up and leave for a while but i couldn't because my car isn't working so i had no choice but to just sit and stare. we both couldn't sleep and he was so stressed about that he made himself sick.
little by little i asked him questions like i asked him how long and he's been doing it for 3 months, if he found them attractive, he said no etc...
the next morning i got up super early and took a shower and i came out and he was up waiting for me. i pulled out my clothes and i was still so disgusted that i couldn't change in front of him so i grabbed my clothes and went into the bathroom. when i came back out, he asked if he could join me on my errands, i said it was okay (i'm not sure why) before we ran errands, he took me out for breakfast to my favorite place, which means i know he really feels bad because we never go out for breakfast and the place i like is very pricey, but anyways, at breakfast we talked and i said i forgave him because after a year of dating he's never ever given me a reason not to trust him but at the same time i should've known, looking back i notice different changes when he was on his phone like the phone tilt, the lowering in brightness but i just assumed that it was private conversation between him and his friends from his hometown (he's like the big brother to his friends so they go to him for advice etc..) but yeah, i just assumed it was that cause like i said, i have had no reason not to trust him.
it's been a week now and i'm still trying to act like i'm okay and that everything if fine but everything isn't fine, everytime he goes on his phone, i get such anxiety and then i start to hover over because i'm scared of this happening again and now i really don't trust him and he's trying so hard to make things right and make everything better but it isn't working. i just don't know what to do. i love him so much and i just don't want to throw away a year but i'm scared now and i'm afraid everything is going to fall apart.
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I did the dumbest thing today. I charged my earbuds, unplugged the block and put the block in my little bag instead of the earbuds. I wasn't happy about that when I got to the gym. What a dummy!
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Years ago, I won a mirrored armoire from my job. It's in my bedroom but I rarely stand in front of it. Yesterday, I had to have a dexascan done so I had to change into a gown. There was a full length mirror in the changing room. I'm aware that I gained 5 to 7 pounds over the last year from cheating on Keto but I didn't know what it looked like. It was a reality check.
Breakups are really hard but staying with someone who you can’t trust can be soul destroying. I hope I’m wrong. Good luck figuring this out.
Here's the thing about this 'trust' and how you're working through it. It doesn't matter what he did-it was done.
You've spoken about it, and it's still bothering you to the point it affects how you see his actions.
That is normal reaction. The question is, what exactly do you want to resolve here?
Without checking his phone, you would not have seen the pictures. That is an action you did, not him. This choice has unintended consequences.
The combination of your choice and his choice have brought up 'trust'.
The trust in your well-being that this is not acceptable means that you will have to figure out how to move forward and put the phone back into 'normal' choice.
A. Check his phone regularly and hold him accountable for pictures taken now and in future.
A-1. Has he removed all those pictures from his phone on his own?
B. Looking at women is normal. Keeping the pictures on the phone is normal, if they are friends or celebrities that he likes.
B-1. However, this is an unintended consequence in that the pictures are offensive to you.
C, His getting sick over your reaction seems to be an unintended consequence of the pictures.
C-1. How do you want to feel?
Your well-being is your choice.
Best wishes as you find your better balance.