My (27f) partner (33m) went out with his female friend (33f) alone drinking all night and it made me uncomfortable

TLDR: My boyfriend went out drinking into the early hours of the morning with a female friend I don't know what I should do.

Hello Reddit, I (27f) have a partner (33m) who we will call Ben and I have been with for over 2 years. Ben has a friend (33f) who we will call Steph. Ben and Steph had become friends before he and I met. According to Ben, he and Steph would often hang out at each others houses a few times a week. Often they got drunk together, sometimes do some weed or coke. It's definitely a different lifestyle to me but that is besides the point. Apparently, nothing romantic has ever happened between the two of them. Around the same time I started dating Ben, Steph also met a man. We all got together for a double date, and eventhough I tried to be warm and welcoming to Steph all night (because I knew she was an important friendship of Ben), she didn't want a bar of me and only engaged in limited conversation with me all night. It was very obvious and even Ben noted this. After that, Steph moved in with her new man, and she suddenly disappeared from Ben's life.

About 5 months ago, Steph suddenly is single and wants to be hanging out with Ben just like she used to do. She also doesn't want to make the effort in being friends with me and would rather Ben and Steph hang out just the two of them. I am obviously uncomfortable with this as we had recently moved in together and Ben had become very serious about our relationship and future plans. At this point, I had learned a few things about Steph (she would often cheat, or had often slept with male friends who were in relationships) and I had a changed opinion about how supportive I would be of their friendship.

It took some time, but I grew more open to the idea of her coming back into our lives as I realised it would be unreasonable to be so controlling of my boyfriend. Ben would do small catch ups with her and was open about their friendship. Eventually, I said I was comfortable with him going out on the town with just Steph and having one of their old drinking nights. The only condition I had was to please be back by midnight, I wanted him to show me I could trust them together. Ben said yes and would send me a courtesy text once the night grew old to tell me how he was travelling.

Eventually, the night rolled around. Ben kissed me good bye around 6pm and went on his merry way. I watched a couple of movies, made myself dinner, and made it a night in with the dogs. I didn't hear a peep from Ben and when 11:30pm hit I sent him a text to ask what time he was aiming to be home. Ben later replied that he was still drinking. Again, I asked what time he thought he would be home, and got the same response. After 12:30 I eventually said it was making me uncomfortable that he had crossed a boundary with me and was being so blase about it. I went to bed and Ben turned up back at home after 1:30am and slept in a separate bed.

The next day I was up early and was doing my normal life-admin in the house until around 12pm. Ben had been up for hours but had locked himself in our spare bedroom downstairs. I confronted him about what he did the night before and told him it crossed a boundary with me as he knew very well that I didn't feel fully comfortable with Steph. This broke out into a big fight and it's left me feeling clueless where to go from here. The argument opened up a can of worms where Ben stated that this fight made him not want to ever consider marrying me in the future, have kids, or every consider taking it to the next level and saving up for a house together (this was something we had been discussing recently). This obviously broke my heart and now I am at a cross roads with how I should respond to the situation. After all this time I had built up being more comfortable with Steph and I felt that he had recklessly broken that trust. On the other hand, I know that I can't control who his friends are and can't ask him to cut her entirely out of his life. Reddit, I can always count on you for your words of wisdom. Any advice?

Submitted February 06, 2021 at 01:46AM by goodboyhans https://ift.tt/39WHkw8