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My cell phone has been a source of contention. Actually,  it's part of her jealousy thing. Anyway, she went dark -- she took my cell phone in the car to make a call for me (dangerous to cell while driving) and she saw my friends name -- a girl who is just a friend. I told her it was totally non-sexual and had been for about a decade.

Anyway, later, I wrote down the numbers of anyone female and stored them on dropbox (these were ex-gf's, just friends, and anyone else with a girl's name) and deleted them from my phone. We broke up after that, for some other reason(s).

I felt, as I was deleting, like I was harming myself in some way, though. Like I was ditching my friend for this girl, it seemed wrong. I wondered how it would go -- more concessions? She's very religious, so I think the way it was supposed to be was that I only had male friends and she only had female friends and then we both had work associates.

Once, she asked me how often I deleted messages on my phone. Later, I thought this was an odd question, but now it makes sense! She wanted to check out my phone to see if there was someone to be jealous of.

BTW. She was the only one for me at the time so the jealousy was totally unfounded.

Anyone else cutting people off to please BPD and then simultaneously feeling like they've betrayed some part of themselves by doing so?

In a healthy r/s, am I allowed to have nonromantic female friends?

I used to do this quite a bit. Even now my H makes remarks about other men that I know. He used to get so angry any time I added a new guy on FB but didn't tell him who he was, what are history was like, and why I was adding him.

Lately, I do not give in to this. I know that I am doing nothing inappropriate. He knows it too but he just gets to feeling insecure and begins to worry about me being unfaithful. IN those times that he makes little comments here or there, I ignore the comment and speak to what he is really talking about. It seems like at times when he puts in those little jabs its as if he is trying to get me to bite onto something off topic (especially if he isn't finding a reason to dysregulate when he wants to).

I have to give him a lot of credit though. This week I left my phone at home while at work. He got home WAY early from work. I expected questions about text messages and fb posts, but when I got home, he told me he responded to a text for me that was waiting on a response and that was it. I don't know if he even looked through my phone. If he didn't, that's just wow, really really big for him. Heck, it's really really big that even if he did look through my phone that he didn't get ideas in his head about any texts.

 

My very first boundary enforcement ever (that I learned from here) was to take back my cell phone and email accounts.

Wife went nuts when she figured out the impact of this.  I held firm.  Big big extinction burst and then "poof" it was like she never cared about it.

This process took a bit over a month if I remember right.

FF

 

Oh, , and the funny thing was that then my wife made a big deal of locking her phone and keeping her password for gmail.  Like it was going to crush me.  We used to share them freely.  I almost never looked.  She would regularly snoop.

Anyway, she told me this in a "haha!" way.  I just said "ok", and went about my business.

FF

To date I haven't locked my phone.  We've discussed it many times and I've told her I think it's a betrayal to snoop through the phone.  I did it with my ex (was 98% sure what I'd find) and have told my w that if I was wrong then I would have been the one damaging the marriage.

She'll ask for my phone, wanting me to hand it to her.  I refuse, state where the phone is, but I'm not going to give her any type of indirect approval by handing it to her.

If I ever caught her snooping, I'd lock it.  But so far I haven't had to take that step.

BTW: I was replying because I always get the "haha" type statements. 

Her: If you're going to have a female friend, I'll call David

Me: OK

Her: You don't care if I talk to David.

Me: No, I'm sure it will be fun to get caught up... .I trust you, and expect you to use your best judgement.

I'm not sure if invalidating is the correct description... .It sure isn't what she wants to hear... .