This has been bothering me for a while, and I honestly need some outside perspective because I don’t know what to think anymore. I feel like there’s a lot going on, and I might be ignoring some pretty obvious red flags.
My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years, but we’ve known each other for over 7 years, including some on-and-off periods before these past 4 years. He’s in the US Army, and I’m Swedish, so we’re in a long-distance relationship.
I’ll try to keep this as short as I can, but please bear with me. Also, I want to make it clear that this is not everything that’s happened. There’s a lot more to the situation, but these are some of the incidents that have been bothering me the most.
It started last summer (2025), when he told me he needed to turn off his location on Snapchat and Life360 because of work. I rarely checked his location anyway, so I didn’t think much of it at the time.
Around the same time, though, he started acting differently. He became more distant, argumentative, and generally weird toward me. I assumed it was because of work stress, so I didn’t pay much attention to it initially.
Then I started noticing that a lot of women who lived in his area were appearing as suggestions on Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and pretty much every other social media platform. Some of them started following him, too. I didn’t bother checking who he followed because he follows a lot of people.
At some point, I also noticed he’d logged me out of his accounts and changed his passwords. I wasn’t regularly going through his accounts, but I did try to check whether he was following these women after I started noticing the pattern.
I tried to brush it off because I’ve never considered myself a jealous person, and I didn’t want to be the girlfriend who constantly suspects her boyfriend of something.
Then, after the summer, he suddenly became extremely affectionate and loving, almost like someone had flipped a switch. I remembered something I’d learned in a psychology class about how people sometimes overcompensate with affection when they feel guilty about something. I’m not saying that’s necessarily what was happening, but the sudden change made me wonder.
In the fall of 2025, he flew me out to visit him. For the first time in my life, I actually asked him to open his Snapchat in front of me.
It was full of conversations with women, but conveniently, all the conversations had been cleared.
He insisted there was nothing going on, so I tried to let it go. I know I might sound naive, but he’d paid for my trip, and I didn’t want to ruin our time together by turning the visit into an argument. I wanted to enjoy being with him, so I pushed my concerns aside.
Fast-forward to earlier this year.
He told me he was going to Red Lobster with his friends to celebrate a birthday. I went to bed but randomly woke up around 4 a.m. and decided to text him to see if he’d made it home.
I sent him a simple “Hi, wyd?” on Snapchat. Under his name, his location showed that he was at Hooters.
Now, I know that simply being at a place like Hooters doesn’t automatically mean someone is cheating. But I’m a fairly traditional person when it comes to relationships, and honestly, I don’t like the idea of my partner going to places like Hooters or Tilted Kilt when he’s in a relationship. I find it unnecessary and disrespectful to the relationship, especially when there are plenty of other places to go. That’s my personal view, and it’s something I feel strongly about.
What bothered me even more was that he’d told me he was going somewhere else. We’d also established a boundary around this kind of thing years ago, so it wasn’t as if he didn’t know how I felt.
I didn’t confront him immediately because I didn’t want him to think I was stalking him or constantly monitoring his location. I wasn’t even looking for him; his location simply showed up under his name when I texted him.
Eventually, so much time passed that I felt awkward bringing it up, so I let it go. Again.
Another incident happened one morning when he texted me and sent me a video from a bar. He was playing one of those basketball arcade games, and he panned the camera around, but the video conveniently only showed him.
I asked him why he was there alone and not with his friends. He told me something along the lines of, “They’re talking to girls. I don’t do that, especially when I’m out. I already have you.”
I thought that was a little strange because, in my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with hanging out in a group and having fun without flirting with other people.
Then I had breakfast and started scrolling through Instagram. One of his friends had posted a story, so I watched it.
And there he was, playing beer pong with two women alongside his friend. Two guys, two girls.
I was annoyed because he’d made it sound like he was alone while his friends were busy talking to women, yet he was clearly hanging out with them. I wasn’t necessarily upset that women were present. I was upset that what he’d told me didn’t seem to match what was actually happening.
I kept quiet because the story disappeared after about a minute, and once again, I didn’t know how to bring it up.
Now we’re here, and this is what prompted me to write this post.
He’s out tonight and told me he was going to Chili’s to eat with a friend. Later, he told me I should go to bed because he was going to have a few drinks there before heading home.
Well, his Snapchat location now shows him at Tilted Kilt.
And honestly, I’m just tired of feeling like I have to question things. Again, I understand that being at a certain place doesn’t automatically mean he’s cheating. But between the locations, the different stories, the cleared conversations, the sudden secrecy, and the other incidents I haven’t even included here, I’m struggling to understand why he keeps telling me one thing when what I later see seems to suggest something else.
And to reiterate, these are not all the incidents. There is a lot more that has happened that I haven’t written here, so please don’t take this as the complete picture of our relationship. I just wanted to include some of the main things that have made me start questioning everything.
What’s confusing is that he can also be incredibly loving and affectionate. He’s very protective of me, even though I rarely go out and mostly spend my time at home, working or doing my hobbies. Sometimes he makes me feel very loved, which makes it difficult to reconcile that side of him with the things that have been happening.
I don’t want to accuse him of cheating when I don’t have concrete proof. At the same time, I don’t think I should have to catch him doing something worse before I can acknowledge that the repeated inconsistencies are affecting my trust in him.
He wants me to visit him again in December, but honestly, I don’t feel comfortable going anymore, at least not while things are like this. I don’t want to spend the money, travel internationally, and put myself in a situation where I’m constantly wondering whether he’s being honest with me.
I love him, and we’ve been together for a long time. That’s why this is so difficult. I don’t want to throw away a relationship over assumptions, but I also don’t want to keep making excuses for things that don’t sit right with me.
I’m looking for honest advice from people who might have experienced something similar, especially those who’ve been in long-distance relationships. I genuinely don’t know if I’m being naive, if I’m overlooking something obvious, or how I’m supposed to approach this conversation without it turning into an argument about me checking his location.
At this point, I’m struggling to trust him, and I don’t know what to do next.
TL;DR: I’ve been in a long-distance relationship with my US Army boyfriend for 4 years. Since last summer, he’s become more secretive, changed his account passwords, had cleared Snapchat conversations with women, and repeatedly told me things that don’t seem to line up with what I’ve later seen on Snapchat or his friends’ social media. He’s also been at places like Hooters and Tilted Kilt, which I’m personally uncomfortable with because I’m fairly traditional and consider that unnecessary and disrespectful in a relationship, especially given the boundaries we’ve discussed. I’m not claiming he’s definitely cheating, but these incidents, along with many others I haven’t included here, are making it difficult to trust him. He wants me to visit in December, but I’m no longer comfortable doing so. I don’t know if I’m being naive or how to handle this.
