Q

My boyfriend of 3 years is the jealous type and sometimes takes it too far. A month ago, he went through my phone and came across a chat with a friend of the other gender, with whom he was already apprehensive with. The chat was purely platonic but [contained] a bit of humor and when it took [an inappropriate] turn, [I] discontinued it. Now it’s a month later, i’ve apologized every way i know how and he is brushing me off and being cold and distant toward me, not to mention about two weeks ago i found compromising chats on his phone too from two ladies. I let him go, eventually because of the lack of response. Was I right in [breaking up] with him?

A

You’re basically saying that your jealous boyfriend found a text exchange between you and a guy who he’d always felt threatened by. The text exchange started off mildly flirtatious and at one point turned blatantly flirtatious, at which point you ended the discussion. And, I’m guessing, you ended it without straight up calling the guy out on being inappropriate. Because you didn’t imagine your boyfriend would read it.

For a month you’ve tried to apologize for it and your boyfriend remained cold and distant. Finally, you broke up with him. Both because he was unforgiving and because he appears to be a hypocrite since you found flirty text messages on his phone. And you want to know if you were right…

Your side of the street has a lot of baggage on it, Mama. 

If you ‘apologized’ the same way you wrote this question, I can understand him not feeling fully understood and / or that you lacked remorse. The language that you used in this question is so vague that it required me to summarize my understanding of it. Which is generally not a sign of innocence. Plus, I’m still unclear about much of what happened, like how much of the flirtiness came from you, how egregious the flirt was, and how your boyfriend felt after reading it / what his reason was for remaining cold and distant.  

What I do know is this: You tolerated a jealous guy for 3 years. You tolerated him violating your privacy and looking through your phone. And you responded to this violation by doing the same thing to him, which makes me wonder who the hypocrite is. 

At the end of the day, two wrongs don’t cancel each other out. They result in two people who have a lot of work to do on themselves. I suggest you use this time to go into therapy and drill down on what your role in the problems were. 

Here’s what you shouldn’t do: Blame him for being a jealous partner and plan to pick a better partner next time. Because if you don’t identify your role in this mess and you don’t learn from it, you’ll have the same issues in your next relationships. That, I can 100% promise you.  

Writer’s Demographics
Female, Heterosexual.