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Suspicious of female friends
Dear Sally Ann
I have been dating my boyfriend for eight months and although he’s told me I am the only one for him and he wants me to move in with him, I can’t help feeling jealous and suspicious. He has many friends, who happen to be female, and also emails and phones ex-girlfriends - who he says will always be friends. My problem is he always calls them ‘gorgeous’ and ‘babe’ but calls me ‘mate’. I brought this up and he said he would make an effort not to call them that. How can I stop feeling insecure?
Em
On paper, you don’t have a problem. But your heart knows differently. You are at a transitional point in your relationship, the bit after dating and before a commitment.
Some people think it is utterly charming that a man can have a large amount of ‘friends who are girls’. ‘Oh’ they say ‘doesn’t it just prove what a well-adjusted bloke he is?’ Well, no it doesn’t. There are a few, honourable, exceptions to this rule but generally when a man juggles a few women at once it is because he is still playing the field. The odd email here, the odd text message there, phone calls – a pattern of bachelor thinking. Now, there may be nothing in any of it but if it’s making you feel awful then a pledge to stop calling these girls ‘babe’ etc. isn’t enough.
Do some serious thinking. Work out which ones you can live with and which ones you can’t. (You’ll know this automatically when you concentrate.) And then you have to work out a strategy for getting your own way. It could be that you move in with him and they fall by the wayside. If they don’t, you will have to tell him to change his behaviour or choose between you. Try not to nag him or be hysterical. He calls you ‘mate’ so he thinks you are his friend. Don’t disabuse him of this notion unless you have to.
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