Dark Thoughts

Today has been a right shocker for me. I'll start the story where it began, yesterday.

Jodie and I were invited to a picnic at the picturesque Araluen Gardens, south of the Perth metro area. We agree to go, though yesterday morning when it was time to be there, Jodie was still enjoying her night's sleep. Not wanting to push her into getting out of bed, I set out on my own, as I'd said that I would go. I'd never been to Araluen before and was relying on my roadmap to get me there, though when I pulled into the carpark at Araluen and looked at my phone I found that there was no mobile phone signal. Not to worry I thought, because I'd told Jodie that I would be gone for a few hours, and didn't know exactly when I would get back.

Anyway, the picnic was relaxing and enjoyable, and the day was fantastic. I got back into my car about 3 and a half hours later to drive home to my dearly beloved. About 10 minutes up the road my phone starts beeping with messages. The first asking what I'm up to. The second was a missed phone call from Jodie but there was no message left. The third made me quite angry "Fine, be an arsehole". OK. I'm an arsehole because I was on a picnic with my sister and some friends that Jodie was invited to but didn't want to come on, and because the picnic was out of phone range so I couldn't respond to the message.

I was fuming and had calmed only a little by the time I got home. I copied my photo's onto the laptop, grabbed a drink of water and went to bed to try to relax a little. Half an hour of fitful snoozing and I had calmed somewhat and went back into the house to enjoy my night with Jodie. I showed her the photo's I had taken and she seemed to like some of the closeup shots of the tulips. I left her browsing the photo's and returned to the living room to watch a bit of TV and unwind some more. Jodie returned a little later and we watched some TV before I made a curry. We had a shower and went to bed.

During our shower, Jodie told me that she'd sent me an email and hinted that I might be upset by it. I was starting to ponder this and was wondering what she'd send to me in an email that she didn't want to talk to me about.

Once we were in bed we got to talking about my friends that I had in Perth. I don't have that many that I actually catch up with these days and I talked to her about them for a bit. She asked me about a few people that I'd received emails recently. One is a workmate from Turkey who I've worked with on and off for about 6 or 7 years, and who was due to be in China about the same time my next trip was going to be. The other was a girl who I've known for many years and who had sent out a broadcast email about her new email address. The language of the email was interesting and referred to the adressee as "tiger" and signed off with Love Name -xx-. I can see that this is language that could be construed as suggestive, but that's not really the issue here. The big issue is that the said email was sent to a lot of email addresses using the BCC field, which hides recipient names. There was one email address in the To field.

Jodie had opened my email program and found this email while going through my computer and assumed that the email address in the To field was some sort of hidden email account of mine and sent off an email to it. I can see how this may have looked, but the email address wasn't mine and was simply one of the addresses on the broadcast list of my friend. Needless to say I never received the email and told Jodie as much when she emailed me this morning asking if I'd received her email.

Anyway, I sent her an email outlining all of my various email addresses and with a bit of an explanation about how BCC fields work as well as a copy of the headers showing a To field and an empty BCC field. Jodie admitted that she sent off the email when she was angry but that she didn't regret it because if I was cheating on her then she wanted me to know that she'd found out, but she did seem to acknowledge that perhaps the strange email address wasn't mine.

I tried to tell her that I wan't particularly happy at being called an arsehole (the reason I was angry the previous evening, which was why Jodie didn't feel that she could approach me.) or being accused of cheating on her. Anyway terse words were exchanged for quite some time before I did something, which in hind sight was really really dumb. I did an internet search for "jealous girlfriend" in the hopes of finding something about how to tell someone that you cared about, but thought was a little too jealous, that they were too jealous. Anyway, to cut a long story short I ended up sending a link to this page. I wanted to get the point accross that I felt that accusing me of being unfaithful and going through my phone and email was something that I felt uncomfortable about.

I don't mind Jodie going through my phone and email normally. I don't have anything to hide, but when something like this is interpreted incorrectly and she starts sending off emails to random email addresses, it does make me feel uncomfortable. I don't want her to start sending threatening letters to my friends or anything, so I thought I should say something about it. Well, perhaps I should have said something, but I definately shouldn't have sent that link.

My afternoon has been filled with expletive filled emails filling my inbox as I try to explain why I felt I needed to say something.

I'm left feeling unsure of our future together, because of this one thing. Jodie is angry and has indicated that she's not sure if she want's to stay with me. I feel terrible about all of this. I feel as though I've caused all of this, but I know that I'm not solely to blame. Maybe I am, I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm feeling a terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach at the thought of loosing Jodie, especially over something like this. It would have been a different matter if I had been cheating on her, but the fact is that I'm deeply in love with her and couldn't even consider seeing another woman. I am dedicated to her, but still I feel like I've fallen from grace and become the villain in all of this. I'm a bit lost on what to do, or how to respond. I sent her an email a while back that I was refraining from saying anything else because everything I try to say or explain seems to make her angrier. I feel like I should say something, but I'm afraid that it will be misinterpreted and fuel her anger.

I don't like feeling this way.