Long-Term  Can a man get over a fetish and date someone without it?

Architecat

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Apr 26, 2017
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Summary of situation - Man with a fetish for blue eyes and encasement tries to date a woman with brown eyes (who enjoys encasement). He seems to be lusting after co-worker with blue eyes, was emotionally cheating on brown eyes with her, continued contact with her and admits to masturbatory fantasies after confronted about emotional cheating.

Brown Eyes wants to know if this is something she can and should work through with her partner, or is this relationship doomed to end with her being dumped for a blue eyed girl?


Hey, so I'm having some issues with my relationship lately, and I'm hoping that people on here will share offer advice and outsider input.

August 2015:
My bf and I met as roommates - started off as friends, hung out with each other a lot. I thought he was cute (not my usual type, but cute) and he thought similarly about me. One thing led to another one night after a few drinks and the sex was amazing. So after a few weeks, I told him that I really liked him, but that I was looking for a relationship and not really interested in anything casual, did he want that as well? He said yes (hesitantly as he was in the process of graduating from the school where I had just started meaning that we wouldn't be living in the same city a few months from then). So we started more officially dating and I found out how that he has a really kinky side involving tights, body encasement, and remote vibrators as a sexual fantasy that he likes to act out (this is fetish 1 and not an issue in our relationship).

December 2016 and January 2017:
He goes away for the holidays and takes a post-graduation trip abroad. He still texted and called me, including on New Years, to talk with me. Once he got back to the states, he invited me down to his parent’s place to hang out (I live in the cold Midwest and his parents live in tropical paradise). His parents weren’t thrilled to meet me; apparently, he caught them by surprise by inviting me down and that he had a girlfriend. Overall, it went pretty terribly – I was nervous about meeting his family so soon and worried that they wouldn’t like me as I’m from a very working class family and he is not, they were apparently surprised and felt left out of his life (I think). They have since seemed to warm up to me, and I genuinely enjoy hanging out with them, so all is good now on that front.

March 2015:
We were doing long distance (he now lives 5 hrs away), we are talking everyday, texting several times a day, going to visit each other at least once a month. He relationship requested me on Facebook, etc., then, in May, I went down for the summer to intern in the city where he now lives.

May 2015:
We kept dating, however I discovered that despite the implications of the FB relationship request, he had immediately after moving he had set-up an online dating profile, had messaged and gone a date with a girl from that site a week earlier. He claimed that he had gone out with her because he was uncertain about us (I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to move to his city for the summer because I hadn’t found a job at that point). He said that as soon as he went on the date he realized that he had made a mistake. However, he also mentioned, when asked why he knew it was a mistake, that the woman had turned out to be curvier than pictured and he didn't find her attractive.

I decided to forgive him as he made the case that he had been lonely and as we had only been dating for around 4 months at that time, so he wasn't certain that things would work out. I figured, "fair enough, new city with few friends, life changing transition from school to work, etc." we dated the whole summer spending pretty much everyday hanging out together. I thought everything was fine, we'd hit a little hiccup but worked through it and all was well.

August 2016:
Then enter J. - new co-worker of his and looks more or less exactly like every girl that he's ever mentioned of being ideal. She's petite, blue eyed (I’ll get to the part where I learn it’s a fetish later), ivy league degree. He didn't mention any of this, just that he had a new coworker named J. and that she went to Yale. Also, that she had had a famous prof. and he was jealous of that. I found out what she looked like by going to one of his company dinners. I showed up (invited by him) and he told me that unlike he had expected it was a sit-down affair at a long table (not an open bar) and he wasn't sure that I would want to stay as I was the only non-company person. He asked if I wanted to stay, and as I wanted to meet his colleagues, I decided to grab one drink with them. We went over to the table and he was sitting across from J. Prior to her joining the firm, he had never really mentioned coworkers to me. During the dinner he talked to her a lot, seemed very attentive in conversation and less physically close to me than usual.

After we left, based on her appearance and his demeanor, I said to test the depths of my intuition, "That's your dream girl isn't it?" and he responded: "I think she's out of my league." He claims he meant this in the she has an ivy league degree and not in the sense perceived, however I don't believe him.

November 2016:
A few months went by, he started mentioning her more and more, so I got very suspicious, started asking pointed questions, then eventually (super suspicious) I went through his phone and found out that he was texting and fb messaging with her at least five times a day (admittedly he was texting me roughly the same and he frequently texts people a lot), as well as talking in the office (five days a week) and going out to lunch with her several times a week. Additionally, he had been lying about going out with her after work to social events and generally hiding the extent of his contact and relationship with her from me for about 3 months at that point in time.

We had a huge fight. I completely lost my temper and broke his phone... and screamed, and cried. I said “we were broken up” and he said “ok”. I said something along the lines of "that's how little our relationship means to you?" to which he said "no, but that he agreed with me that he had behaved terribly and that I should dump him." But as I looked at him, realized that I would be losing my best friend, playmate, and one of the most intellectually stimulating people whom I have dated, as well as a cute man, so I grabbed him and told him "that I didn't want to lose him, that I was sad and angry about his actions."

We had a very long talk about it, several long talks, and he apologized. He said "that he didn't really think of flirting as a big deal because he hadn't ever gotten anywhere with it in the past", that he had told himself "as long as nothing physical happens, it's not cheating" and had hidden it from me "because he knew given my initial reaction that I was threatened by her and would be suspicious given the prior online dating actions, so he didn't want to upset me by telling me about their friendship", my response was to point out that he had gotten me to date him with similar flirting, therefore it obviously worked. He agreed to cease being so friendly and flirtatious with her, however he insisted (as they were coworkers and he was worried about his job) to talk to her about the situation first before ceasing hanging out with her.

I don’t know how the actual conversation went, however he told me that it went like this:
Him –“I ended up bumping into her in the building lobby just now and we talked very briefly in the elevator a minute ago.
I told her "I'm sorry for the weirdness over the weekend, but I haven't been honest with M. about how much we've been texting and hanging out, and that made her freak out."
She said "I don't see what the problem is that you come hang out with me and my friends."
I said "She saw you as a threat from the moment she met you, so when I hid how much time I had been spending with someone I'm attracted to, she got really really mad."
*Show her the phone*
“Her: "Oh my god"
Me: "Yes, out the window. So I need to just keep some distance."
Her: "I mean I sort of get where she's coming from but I sort of don't."
Me: "I get it though."
Her: "This kind of sucks."
Me: "I know. This isn't how I wanted things to go, but now you know."
Her: "Is she still in finals?"
Me: "Yeah all week."
Her: "I'd hate to go through this kind of thing during finals."
Me: "She feels so much better now that we have cleared the air and made up."
Him – “She did not react when I mentioned I am attracted to her. She seemed to be more concerned about losing someone to talk to at work and how much it sucked for her than either yours or my feelings or actions.
Overall I think that went well. She does not resent me, she is disappointed to lose me as a friend, but she does not seem to have a problem with me putting up walls. and her apathy towards my attractions makes me think I probably was in the friendzone but I can't tell for sure”

It sounds to me like he was making it an issue with me, so that he could play me off as the overprotective gf, etc. however, I’m not sure if I’m reading to much into it.

So, once again, I’m hurt and disappointed, but I’m like: ”ok maybe this it. We’ve dealt with online dating and he has not done that again. Maybe given that he has told me that he hasn’t dated a lot in the past and that his other long term relationship was an open relationship, maybe these are just instances of him being lonely and acting impulsively.” We are very close and talk daily, at this point over a year into the relationship, we’ve formed a lot of good memories (going to shows, cuddling in bed, actually hanging out with his parents and getting to know them, dinners out on the town, and just general fun). We had plane tickets for Christmas to go back to my home so that he could meet my family and for us both to spend New Years with his parents. Given all the other implications: Wonderful birthday gifts and visits, the long, intellectual conversations, meeting his parents and relatives (we had done Thanksgiving at his uncle’s place), the future plans for Christmas and New Years, etc. I felt uncertain about his intentions towards me and towards J., hence the decision to stay and try to work through this.

December 2016 and January 2017:
It’s awkward – we decided not to cancel our travel plans, I’m still hurt and upset, and not sure if we’re making the right choice. He is not very enthusiastic about meeting my family. He is always pleasant and polite, but he is quite as outgoing as usual. My family is not generally impressed as unlike past boyfriends, his effort to get to know them is underwhelming. I’m disappointed, but I tell myself that “he’s just feeling shy”, “that I have never really seen him around people that he’s never met”, also as my parents live out in the suburbs there really isn’t much to see or do. I remind myself how horribly things went with his parents the first time that I met them. He leaves a few days before me to have some time alone with his parents, then I head out there.

Things go much better with his parents this time; they aren’t surprised and caught off guard by my visit, I’m no longer scared of them hating me for being working class. It wasn’t a perfect visit as we were still fighting about J., but much better than the first time.

We go back to his place after his parents, and I hang out in NYC for the next 3 weeks. We seem to be getting back to our normal selves – we spend lots of time together just chilling and enjoying each other’s company. At the end of January I leave to go to school, still worried about our future, but hopeful that past mistakes can remain that way.

April 2017:
Fast forward to this past weekend, nothing seemed to weird except that he is still very protective of his phone and all of a sudden started wanting to work out/get fit. So I’m at his place for the weekend, while he’s out on Saturday, I decide to snoop (I know it’s so wrong, but I genuinely thought: “this time there will be nothing because he has decided to stay with me and I’m just fretting over past actions”). I was wrong. I didn’t find flirting exactly – I found emails in which he encouraged her to come to his company soccer game saying “you could be the star athlete”, her inviting him to her going away party saying “I forgot that we aren’t friends on facebook” and him responding asking when it was, him wishing her “a safe trip and asking her to send lots of pictures”). When I confront him, I learn that there is more. He messaged her via. Instagram asking how her trip was going so far. She replied and they messaged back and forth so much that I couldn’t even read all the messages before I started feeling completely sick. I asked him why he still did this? Why he hid that he was still friends with her? Why was he still hiding things from me? He responded saying that he had stopped flirting with her, but had kept talking to her on a weekly basis at work, and had made a concerted effort to hide this from me because he knew that it would upset me. I then asked if he was attracted to her physically still, and he say said yes. I asked if he jerked off while thinking about her, and he replied that yes he did about twice a week (he claims to fantasize about me daily, but I’m sure that I believe him, I’ll get to why in a moment). So I start trying to get to the bottom of why given that he repeatedly gives me signs that he is not only happy in our relationship, that he says I’m the “perfect girlfriend”, and after a year and a half, we still have great conversations and great sex - why on earth he is still essentially flirting less extremely, reaching out to her when she away, and generally doing things that he feels a need to hide from me?

His response is that his second fetish is for blue eyes (mine are brown) and that she has pretty eyes. That he doesn’t want to be that shallow so as not to date me because I have a different eye color, but that he really does fantasize about blue eyed women (note – he’s a gamer and literally all of his characters are women with blue or green eyes). That he thinks about other fantasy women (with such eyes) while we’re having sex and when he gets himself off, and that he doesn’t see this changing in the future. However, given how much his relationship with her bothers me, he agreed to stop talking to her for good, and leave his fantasies in his head. It worries me that he is still conversing with her and hiding it from me, and worries me a lot, because when I first found out about fetish 1, he mentioned liking to take it slow to ease girls into this. That he found that he had better relationships with people who got to know him well first, etc. Hence, I can’t help wondering if that’s what’s happening here – that he’s making sure to remain “that sweet guy who got her a cookie and made her a card for winning at bocce ball with the overprotective gf” (note he’s never made me a card nor did he put in that much effort before we started dating).

We had a couple more long talks in the days since this weekend, hence the need to get it all out on paper and to process what is going on, and hopefully get some good advice from people patient enough to read all of this. In these conversations, it came out that not only does he have this fetish for blue eyes, that he “finds me attractive, but that our relationship for him is less about physical attraction and more about the total package” “that he finds my body and hair attractive and that if I had blue eyes, he probably wouldn’t have done any of this” “that for him, while he sexually fantasizes about other women, the only woman in his fantasies of the future (going on vacation, planning fun nights out, etc.) is me” “ that he hasn’t known how to express this before without making me feel unattractive, but that it’s really the combination of personality, interests, intellect, and less so looks – that he finds attractive about me”

He was right of course that I was sad and hurt that he doesn’t find me to be gorgeous, but I feel similarly that our relationship is far more than physical, and that at 5’5” and prematurely balding, he’s not exactly the tall, dark, handsome guy that I pictured in high school. However, I don’t fantasize about other men, I don’t pursue or flirt with other men, and I don’t hide things from him. I feel like I have met the first person in seven years with whom I can really be myself (in all my weirdness) and I don’t want to lose that. But how can I trust him again? How can I trust that he isn’t just hanging on to our relationship because he’s worried that he’s “friendzoned” with J. and not sure of his dating prospects given his kinks, etc.?

So right now I feel like shit. I’m supposed to move down and into his apartment in about 3 weeks. J. is out of the country for the next few months (according to him), and we’re supposed to live together for the summer. I don’t know what to do – on the one hand, I want to keep trying to make things work because I feel like we have something special, and on the other hand, I feel like if I stay then I’m a fool.

What are your thoughts? Can a guy overcome a fetish for a physical feature that his partner is lacking and have a healthy, faithful relationship? Do you believe him or do you think that he’s leading me on until something better becomes attainable? Are these normal struggles of long distance, long term relationships? And if you have gone through something similar with a partner, how did that end?

Thanks!
 

ProblemSolving

Tribal Elder
Tribal Elder
Joined
Jan 15, 2013
Messages
467
Hey Architecat,

Long distance relationships are pretty much doomed over the long term. Sex once a month? Must be torture for the both of you. The fact of the matter is, this guy is actively trying to bang other women behind your back. He may or may not be successful, but best believe, he is trying.

I don't know about you, but there is no way to earn back trust after that. You'll always be worried about his fidelity. If he was a stand up guy, he would've flat out told you: "Look babe, this long distance thing isn't working for me. I'm a horny guy. I need sex more than once a month. Either you move down this month, or we open this relationship."

But this guy didn't do that. Instead, he pretended that everything was fine while at the same time trying to bang other girls. Totally weak.

Even if you move down, he will still try to score with other girls. I would advise dumping him or hop on the dating site and start lining up a replacement. How did you know he was on an online dating site anyway??

If you don't have the balls to dump him yet and you still want to try to "make it work", then cut way back on the texting and communication. Make him work for your attention. You shouldn't even be initiating any communication at this point. Right now , you are way more invested in the relationship than he is which is why he's exploring his options and you are not. Go hang out with some guys from school, it will do wonders for your peace of mind. Your guy is hanging out with his crush from work, so you should hang out with some guys you find attractive to even the playing field.
 
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