facebook chats

designbydan

I've been with my gf for nearly four years now,

We met at the start of college and now we're in our final few weeks.
I've noticed that for the past month or so I've started chatting an awful lot with some of the other girls from college on facebook, also with one or two other girls from outside of college.

One girl in particular I spend all day, (nearly every day now) chatting to.
We talk about anything and everything and I do flirt with her along with some others that I'd know from before college.

I've always been a flirty kind of person anyway, But I've never cheated on anyone and I don't plan to, most of the girls I would be chatting to also have boyfriends so it's not like anything would ever happen, and I'm not on Tinder or any of those sites either, I've no interest in them.

I'm not hiding anything from my gf, she can see who I'm chatting to and never seems to mind, although I guess I'm more flirty when she's not there (right in the room with me) if I'm honest. I talk to the guys from my college as well and I kinda just consider it the same. We both believe in having male and female friends but...

Really the only reason that I'm starting to think this is an issue is because I had a dream about one of the girls the other night.

So I felt guilty about chatting to her so much, I wasn't sure if I got that dream because I was starting to get feelings for her or if it was just due to the frequency of our chats lately and the (sometimes) nature of our conversations.

a little background on my gf and I
I love my gf there's no question about that, and I'm not looking to cheat on her whatsoever.
We have a (I think) healthy relationship and are in a good place right now, some troubles in the past (she cheated on me in the first year) but we worked through everything and came out stronger in the end.

I guess after that long ranty post (sorry) my question is , should I be feeling guilty?

Do I need to just stop talking to these girls or am I doing nothing wrong?

Taltos

One way to approach this is to imagine for a few minutes you finding out your girlfriend was chatting to all these guys on facebook.
Now, picture her flirting with them and increasingly spending more and more time chatting to one guy in particular, who she then admits to having dreams of a sexual nature with.

Now - how do you feel?
Figure you have your answer there. Emotional cheating is still cheating OP, either stop it or be honest with yourself and admit that maybe you need to ask why you feel you are doing this while in a relationship.

To be frank we get so many threads here from posters who are distraught when they find their partner has been doing what you are doing. Do a quick search - the betrayal they feel is all too real.

desbrook

You don't say the dream was sexual but I find it really interesting that it took a dream to make you feel guilty about chatting to other girls and in particular this one girl. We've all had weird dreams and 99% of them make no sense, they are random . Why bother then to sit up and take notice when you get one dream and assign it real meaning ?

I'd be much more interested in what your actually doing and your definition of "flirty" when you mention chats . I think you mean sexual . However no matter what the definition I'd just ask the question would you have a problem with your gf reading back over your message history for the last two weeks ? If you delete it after every session I think you are answering "Yes" by default .

I really don't blame you or think you are a bad person for wanting to be with other girls or being tempted . Just be honest with yourself and your girlfriend if that's the case. IMHO it's madness having a four year relationship from the late teens into your twenties . A good few of my friend did it alright only in one case did the relationship last in the "real world" post college.

Tokyo

I think that one of the by-products of the internet age is that because it's so easy to chat online to just about everyone nowadays, we tend not to attach the same level of importance to spending the day -online- with somebody that we would have 20 years ago. Having female friends is fine, as is a quick catch up now and again, but when you are spending all day every day chatting to one particular girl, something's not right.

Take facebook out of the equation for the moment. Imagine that you were physically meeting up with this girl in a bar or coffee shop every day. Chatting from when the coffee shop opened until it closed. Having conversations of a somewhat intimate nature (which you have implied), barely available to your girlfriend because you are always chatting to this girl, and dreaming about her when you can't meet her. Would you feel that your girlfriend had the right to feel cheated on then? I imagine that you would.

I actually know plenty of women who would consider what you are doing even worse than jumping into bed with a girl. One friend put it best when she said that it would hurt a lot if her boyfriend would sleep with a girl casually, but it would hurt her MORE if he cared for her, had an emotional connection with her and used her as a shoulder to lean on when he needed to talk something out. In short, the emotional tie that you are establishing with this girl is something you should really only have with your girlfriend.

It's good that you recognise this as an issue at least - a lot of people wouldn't. Really you only have two options - cut ties with this girl you are so invested in and put your efforts into your relationship, or end your relationship if you want to be free to pursue other girls to the level that you currently are.

ladygirl

I agree with the above advice 100% also I would advise

Never send anything in a private message that you would not be willing post publicly.. If you are - your already cheating on your girlfriend...

designbydan

ladygirl wrote: »

I agree with the above advice 100% also I would advise

Never send anything in a private message that you would not be willing post publicly.. If you are - your already cheating on your girlfriend...

Thanks for the replies guys/girls.

Just to answer/clarify a few of the questions,

I'm not sending anything that I don't mind her reading, she has my password and could read anything she wants at any time, and I never said I deleted stuff after either, it seems in some of the posts that people just assumed I was doing more than I wrote

Most of the people I mentioned including myself are mature students, so no worry about rushing into a long relationship and being very young.

The dream I had was not sexual, if it was it wouldn't have bothered me as much as that's natural and hardly cheating, it's only a dream like... In my dream the girl in question was acting like my girlfriend, which had me thinking about it the next day, that's what I was feeling guilty about, which lead to posting here.

I never thought of myself as emotionally cheating until that dream, as I don't discuss my relationship woes with these girls as frankly there's not much to discuss, we're pretty happy , but some of those girls did talk about there woes to me, so I suppose it could still be seen that way.

I never mentioned that I pay more attention to Facebook or any other woman than I do my gf, as somebody said, ...she's the priority in my life and gets all the attention I can give .

We both study something that has us sitting in front of a computer all day, which is what affords me the time to be able to even chat to people all day long. As Facebook is always open in the background .

In regards to how I'd feel, she did cheat on me before and that felt terrible, but personally I don't consider just chatting to be cheating, she does chat to other guys on fb but I'm not sure to what extent, if she'd told me she had a dream about them I might get a bit worried, but sure that's exactly the reason I'm questioning myself in the first place.

Again thanks to all those that replied,
I've decided just to cut the chats out anyway, as it's taking too much time from college work regardless of any effect on my relationship. But I take on board what people have said and I'll think more in the future about how how what I'm doing May look to other people, thanks again