My girlfriend’s sexy finsta and visible nipples are now bothering me, which also bothers me!
Q:
My girlfriend is very body positive and sex positive and I love that for her. But I also feel uncomfortable with some of it.
Like, she has very dark nipples and often wears completely see-through shirts without a bra. Not just to queer parties or at night, but out to breakfast or to the park. She’s had a sexy ‘finsta’ for a while and I follow it and when we were first dating, I obviously liked what I saw on it. But I thought she’d stop when we became exclusive a few months ago. At first she did but then she posted a sexy pic on it last week and I felt immediately awful.
We got into a fight about it. It’s just her friends who follow it (one of those friends is an ex) but something about it just bothers me, and then I am bothered by being bothered. Like I am being a territorial possessive man instead of a cool body-positive sex-positive lady. She says I just have hang-ups from going to Catholic School.
Do I have to get over this and if so, how?
Kayla: Do you have to get over this? Not technically. Do you have to get over this to stay in this relationship? Probably so! There’s nothing inherently wrong with your girlfriend’s behaviors, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with your discomfort. It just might mean you’re not the most compatible. You’re allowed to set boundaries in a relationship (ie. that you don’t want her to use a finsta) BUT those boundaries don’t automatically become the law of the land. If she doesn’t agree, she can keep doing these things, and that doesn’t mean she’s violating your boundaries. It just means you’re not on the same page about relationship rules, which ultimately means it might not be the best fit.
Summer: Oh, when you described a dark-nippled GF who loves wearing translucent clothing, that sounds like me. But my girlfriend and I never go to ‘the park’ so it can’t be us.
Anyway dearest not-my-partner, I get that you’re in a complex position of navigating your partner’s bodily expression alongside your personal interests. As the translucent shirted GF, I want to first tell you that you’re not a bad person for feeling some discomfort when someone else’s bodily boundaries don’t fully match yours. We’re all allowed to feel some way about that. It’s a matter of how we react and perceive those whose boundaries don’t match ours.
I think that there’s truth in the idea that you’re holding some less-than-stellar views about women’s bodies. I wouldn’t be so blunt as calling you territorial possessive like a man, but I can see how these viewpoints might be informed by how we perceive the need for ‘modesty’ in women, and women’s sexuality.
The hard questions you have to ask yourself here are whether your discomfort is more accurately traced to your personal autonomy being violated by her actions, or your views on how a woman ‘should’ present herself in the context of a committed relationship. Being a little discomforted by a partner posting sexy stuff in the presence of their exes isn’t unreasonable, especially if there’s a pre-established boundary being crossed. That’s something worth discussing and exploring. But disliking the way your girlfriend dresses or conducts herself now that she’s in a ‘proper’ relationship? That might speak to some inadequately addressed sexism.
Also, screw Catholic school. It sounds awful and I’m glad you survived.
The road to acquaintance hell is paved with good-friend intentions!
Q:
Hello! This is gonna sound extremely convoluted, so bear with me. A newish friend, I’ll call her Grace, was excited about a person she met on Raya that she was messaging with, I’ll call them Jack. I asked to see a pic of Jack, she showed me a pic. I recognized the pic as the partner of someone I’ll call Jill. I’m not close with Jill but definitely know her, and some of my friends are close with Jill. I follow both Jack and Jill on instagram and vice versa.
Anyhow, so I reached out to one of Jill’s close friends to confirm that Jack and Jill are indeed still together and also monogamous. At this point it is about Grace for me. I don’t want this new friend, new to town, to be wasting her time on someone who isn’t actually available. I relay this info to Grace and Grace keeps talking to Jack, asks enough questions to make sure that Jack is pretending to be single on this app. Now that this is confirmed, Grace asks Jack “How do you think Jill would feel about this conversation?” and Jack goes immediately dark, deletes their profile on the app, all of that. But see I told Jill’s friend the truth about why I was asking about their relationship and so then Jill’s friend tells Jill about it. I guess this causes some drama because next thing I know, Jack starts DMing me on instagram like ‘that wasn’t my profile, someone must have used my pictures, why are you fucking with my relationship, I would never cheat on Jill, you’re a homewrecker, stay out of my business?’ I wrote back please leave me alone, I don’t know you, but they kept texting, so I blocked them. I don’t really know or care what the truth is here — whether Jack’s info was stolen or if Jack was cheating on Jill, either way we eliminated them from Grace’s dating pool. Jack and Jill are still dating, so maybe the info was stolen.
I do not want to be part of Jill and Jack’s relationship drama. But I feel weird because now apparently Jack is talking shit about me to mutual friends. It’s so messy! So far only one person has asked me why Jack is mad at me and I don’t even know how to answer, I don’t want to keep stirring the pot!
Summer: Ooooooh you caught a cheater in the act and they’re mad about it. That’s what it sounds like to me. Look, let me just say that you did the right thing by notifying Grace of your concerns and allowing them to play out. You did your research and enacted a measured response to the situation. You did well to look out for your friend and I’d be proud to have someone like you on my team.
So, the fact that Jack started DMing you to hurl excuses at you is pretty wild. The fact that they insta-deleted their app when called out is… not something an innocent person would do. It’s also not something a well-prepared catfisher would be able to prevent. Jack sounds like a clown who has no ability to manage a stressful situation and their current recourse is to badmouth you. That’s shitty.
Since this is interpersonal drama and like, no police are involved… Your only call is to try and endure the damage incurred on your reputation. I don’t think that’s fair to ask of anyone — to just sit there and take it for doing the right thing. I think you’re well within your rights to defend yourself by documenting what Jack has said to you, getting any screenshots/documentation of what Grace saw and taking them to your friends in defense of your reputation. They opened the conflict by harassing you directly after being called out on their own terrible behavior. You have the right to defend yourself socially in this situation.
Riese: Okay first of all lets be clear …. that was definitely Jack on the dating app. I don’t think someone whose pictures were stolen would start harassing you on instagram in that manner. That said, going on a dating app, even Raya, when you are not single, is a bold move, so I have a lot of questions for everyone involved in this scenario. I suspect that Jack’s day will come, and any social strife you’re experiencing now will be better understood down the road. You did the right thing to try and protect your friend. I’m sorry that this is happening to you and that a toxic asshat is now trying to make you miserable for exposing them for who they really were. If anybody asks I think you can say something like, “I was trying to protect my friend from falling for someone on a dating app who I recognized as someone who I thought already had a girlfriend, and asked a mutual friend to confirm if they were still in a monogamous relationship with someone else, which they did. Jack says the profile must have been someone pretending to be them, so I don’t regret doing that research. I can’t really speak to Jack’s reaction to it.”
It’s terrifying to know that people are spreading gossip about you that isn’t true, and it’s easy to believe that everybody hearing these lies believes them… but sometimes I do have to just pray people can use logic to see through the lies. I’d be shocked if anyone believes Jack, and more shocked if anyone who hears the story faults you for trying to protect your friend. If Jack was truly innocent here, they would be grateful you found someone impersonating them on a dating app, you know?
Submit your own advice questions right here!
AF members get the benefit of having your advice questions answered by the team. We do our best to answer every question, which is like, 99% of them — very rarely do they stump us. Questions remain anonymous!
You can send questions on any topic, at any time. Submit those questions into the AF+ Contact Box which we’ve also embedded here:AF+ Contact & Advice Inbox
