My (27M) girlfriend (24F) continuously says I microcheated
My girlfriend of three years and I have been fighting pretty bad for the past month. We’ve had issues before this, but this month has been the most on edge things have ever been and I’m not sure how or if we should even be moving forward at this point. I’ll say that we love each other deeply, and have talked in depth about having a life together. As tv relationship has progressed though, things have been getting worse. The most recent series of fights have been about how she feels I have been “micro cheating” on her. I use the quotes because I don’t totally agree with the term, and don’t really know it existed until this fight. She has had trust issues our entire relationship but has generally been very good at not bringing her previous relationship into ours. She does occasionally “search” my phone though but it’s never been that deeply. Until a month ago when she went through my instagram link history and saw a few other women’s vsco accounts. I admitted that I sometimes tap into attractive people’s accounts that are tagged by people I follow and briefly scroll their accounts. This hurt her very deeply, and I do feel regret for that. I’ve apologized to her saying I didn’t realize it would hurt her so bad, and now that I knew it was a boundary and so hurtful, I wouldn’t do it again. She told me that it has destroyed her trust in me and that she questions what else I would be capable of doing now. I told her it’s not fair to equate scrolling instagram to emotionally or physically cheating, but she still said what I did was micro cheating. I have been very apologetic, but she keeps bringing it up when we have an argument. She tells me that she can’t look at me the same, and she feels insecure now. The next day it’s like we are back to normal though and everything is okay. Until something else triggers it and then she brings it up. I don’t know what else to do besides suggesting couples therapy. If she feels it was truly that hard of a boundary to cross, then I think she needs to make that decision to leave. But she seems to want to stay, but use it as a weapon against me instead. I don’t want to sound like I feel I am the victim, but I’m not really sure what I did deserves this level of distrust. I also don’t think this is a reason to end the relationship but if she wants to continue with the relationship, then I think she needs to decide if it’s something she can truly forgive and put behind us, because it’s not going to be sustainable to keep bringing up in the future. Do you all feel like there is a path forward?
She doesn't get to retroactively turn you into a villain for something she never even tried to communicate in the first place. This is your girlfriend's responsibility to get over, and if she can't and continues applying disrespectful and unreasonable labels to you, then no. There is no path forward. This isn't something society expects in general (such as: most of society considers it cheating to kiss someone else when you're exclusive, so that would be something any reasonable person would think - I shouldn't do this, and if I want to, it's something I need to discuss ahead of time and make sure everyone is consenting), so it was on her to communicate if it was so important. Doesn't mean you two could have come to an agreement, it might have just revealed an incompatibility. But since she didn't communicate it at all and gave there no possibility of an agreement, she needs to let it go and communicate going forward.
But it seems unlikely she's going to be able to do that at this point. This sort of jealousy and manipulation is going to ruin all her relationships if she doesn't work to get a handle on it.