Email from a gay guy with trust issues in his relationship

Last week, a reader sent me the following email:

Dear GB,

I've been with an Asian guy for about 4 months. That's time we first met rather than becoming "officially" boyfriends. But from time to time he'll have a bit of a crisis because he can't get to trust me. We've talked about it a few times but it always seems to come around.

We had an almost break up last week and another serious chat at the end of the week. He was using my computer and came across my messenger logs and decided to read them. In there there are some early conversations when I told some friends I wasn't sure about the whole thing so he just assumed I just didn't like him and brought back all his insecurities, mistrust and the jealousy that comes with it.

This time he's asked for some specifics that he wants me to do.

The first one is that I remove all my pictures from any profile I may have in any dating website. I already updated my status a long time ago and make it clear I'm not looking for any fun and just interested in models for my photography or friends. I also removed any pics where I may have a top off or be in swimwear or similar.

He now wants me to take off the rest of the pics. As such I am not completely against it. I mostly want to use it just to find models really and my pic is not completely necessary for that. But although he didn't as such say, he wouldn't like me to actually contact anyone either, so basically chances of someone finding the profile, clicking on a picture-less one and volunteering as model are highly remote. So it's pretty much useless for that. Equally it also means I couldn't make any new friends. All in return for not objecting to me continuing with my male photography.

The second thing is about travelling. He has limited holidays, while I have quite a lot more. He uses most of his by visiting his parents so there is little left where we could go together. We're going on a couple of one week holidays but that still leaves me with 5 weeks more of holidays.

So, unless I can find an existing friend to travel with, I would have to travel on my own. Last year it was almost impossible to find anyone and only last minute for one week.

He wants me to go on any holidays either with a friend or nobody else, including meeting any friends I may have in any of the places but haven't met before (existing or new). For me it would me much easier if I could meet a friend in some of the places so they can show me around, give me some local advice etc. I'm not talking about taking them to my bed, I have no intention of doing that. I'm talking pure friends. Travelling to some places is not quite easy, especially where they speak little English. In the past I've always met someone locally and that's made all the difference for me.

To be honest, if I really wanted to sleep with someone else, and I don't, I could do it here with anyone using a faceless profile, the same on the holidays. Or I could just go to a gay place and meet someone there. So really it serves no purpose other than make my holiday worse as I can't meet a friend. He agrees with that but he wants to remove any situations where I could be tempted.

To me besides these two things there is also an underlying thing that he's never really trusted me and I can only imagine than even if I agreed now it would be something different later and this may have no end. And I also worried at some point I would also feel frustrated and unhappy with restrictions I consider unfair and unnecessary, a relationship cannot survive if there is no trust!

My friends think he's being unrealistic and needs to mature while apparently his friends completely agree with him. So it could be everyone is just supporting his friend and saying what they want to hear. So I thought why not ask someone who isn't a friend of either and has been in a Western+Asian relationship.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

It's true that I'm in a Western+Asian relationship, because boyfriend T is Asian. But although a few values seem to be common between Asian guys from different countries, I think that there are also many differences, so just because I've also got an Asian boyfriend doesn't necessarily give me any useful insight here. In particular, I don't think boyfriend T and myself have any trust issues, even though he knows that I'm not necessarily monogamous. (... and before anyone leaves a comment, YES, I'm happy for him to be 'not necessarily monogamous' too!)

In fact, the reader's boyfriend reminds me a bit of a guy I know who's particularly hung-up about finding a guy for a monogamous relationship. In the case of this guy, his attitude stems from the fact that while he was growing up his father slept around with many women, and the guy saw what a terrible effect his father's behaviour had on his mother. So one thing that the reader might do is try to understand his boyfriend more, and try and find out if there's anything in the boyfriend's past that causes him to be so distrustful.

Any relationship involves compromise. Given that the reader's boyfriend wants to agree rules which restrict what the reader can do, I'm wondering what the boyfriend is offering in return? One thing that occurs to me is that is the boyfriend could agree to spend less time with his family, which would help solve the reader's holiday problem a bit. After all, if the boyfriend wants this young relationship to develop into a serious long term one, then the reader should eventually become more important to him that his family. I'd say that a guy isn't serious about a relationship if he says "if you want me to be my boyfriend then you must do all these things" without being prepared to compromise on other things himself.

All long term readers of this blog will know that I'm not keen on monogamous relationships, and that I think that gay relationships should be constructed in a different way. For any two guys in a relationship I think the important thing is where their hearts lie, and how they treat each other when they're together, rather than what they do with their dicks and their orifices when they're apart! In that context, then of course I think that the reader's boyfriend is being unrealistic, especially because the reader could easily cheat if he wanted to.

However, given that these guys both want a monogamous relationship, one possibility is that there's something in the reader's behaviour that gives his boyfriend reasons to be suspicious about him. In fact I've had other correspondence with the reader that leads me to think that this might be true. Two guys in a relationship certainly don't need to do everything together, or have identical hobbies, but they should know about each other's hobbies and interests. So I think the reader needs to be more open with his boyfriend, and over time that will help build trust. As an example of this, in my case I decided early last year that I'd have to tell any new boyfriend that I'm a blogger, so I divulged that information to boyfriend T after I'd known him for a few months. Although I pretty sure that he's not one of my readers, if I hadn't told him then he'd have good cause to wonder why I spend so much time online!

Ultimately though, if these two guys can't agree a better deal, then it might well be best for them to split up. The reader clearly knows this, because he says that he may end up feeling frustrated and unhappy with the restrictions, and that in itself could end up killing the relationship. If the reader wants to try and save the relationship, then I think he needs to work especially hard to gain his boyfriend's trust and make him feel comfortable, because when two guys love each other then they should work to help each other over their difficulties. If that happens then the boyfriend should become a lot more comfortable, and happy to relax the proposed restrictions. In my case with boyfriend T, I think that perhaps I'm a bit too attentive, but the good thing about that is that it leaves him in no doubt that I love him and that he's always my top priority :-).

Does anyone else have any thoughts for this reader?