Proving you are Innocent

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Visitor's Question:
I'm a consultant and travel alot. I have a long distance relationship with someone for about a year and a half, and we planned on getting married.

About two months ago, I went on a business trip which kept me away for about two weeks. I went down to see her when I got back. When I was on my business trip I got genital crabs, from the hotel loby bathroom, two other guests also complained, and I got a letter from the general manager stating this. After all the proof I have she will still not believe me. She has called off the wedding, and won't see me anymore. Why won't she believe me, is there anything I can do?

Our Suggestion:
Trust is one of the most important things you can have in a relationship, and it's a really hard thing for some people to build up. That's why you see so many problems with insecurity and jealousy - people just assume they aren't good enough and that their partner will leave them if given half a chance.

In most cases there isn't any 'proof' that the partner can't be trusted, it's just really the insecurity talking. But in your case, if your partner was feeling insecure all the time with you being off 'having fun' in strange and exotic cities (from her point of view), to have this case of crabs handed to her was sort of validating the fears she's had all these years. It's sort of an "Aha! I was right!" and it's almost relieving because now she feels like she wasn't stupid all those years for being worried. In fact, she probably feels vindicated.

I'm not saying this is really rational, I'm saying it happens :)

Now for the hard part. It's pretty much impossible, if your partner is unreasonably jealous, to PROVE to her you are innocent. And in your case it's doubly impossible because something has happened which she feels is PROOF. However, it's not like you got something ONLY transmitted through sex. We're talking about a lice problem here! Ever see lice infestations spread in a school? These things spread faster than the common cold. Crabs are VERY commonly spread through toilet seats and even bedding:

http://www.sexhealth.org/std/crabs.shtml
http://www.indiana.edu/~kisiss/questions/0118mm01.htm
http://www.hasslefreeclinic.org/Infestations.html

3 million people a year in the US get crabs. These things are highly contageous. If you got head lice, would she think you were rubbing heads with someone else? It sounds like she's ignorant about what crabs ARE, just latched onto the "hey, I have proof!" and closed her mind.

Send her information on crabs. You already sent her the letter from the hotel saying they knew they had a crabs infestation! So it's up to her to be rational about this. She has never had any indication (I hope) that you've actually cheated. So all of this is in her mind, and with her ignorance about what a crab is. The only thing you can do is help educate her about crabs. But it's up to her to realize that her jealousy all this time has been unfounded and to be secure about the fact that you would not cheat on her. That is NOT something you can ever prove.

It's not a good sign if she's going to be so insecure that any little bump in the road is going to send her running Despite your serious commitment to each other, she quickly cut all contact as soon as this issue arose without being mature enough about it to talk it through with you and listen to your side. I bet she didn't even bother to look up crabs and realize what they were. If she can't even weather something like this, it would really not bode well for her surviving the normal ups and downs of a marriage.

So if you work this through, maybe she will have learned a lesson about trust and can work on her insecurities. But if you don't work this through, maybe it's just as well that she had this 'run away!' problem now before you were married. If she did this after you were married, it would be ten times as messy. So maybe this was a warning sign to you that the marriage wasn't really one you wanted to be in. You'll probably know for sure when you prove to her that crabs are lice. Hopefully she knows what lice are! The way she reacts will pretty much show where her maturity level is.

Good luck either way! It's not an easy thing for you to have gone through, both physically AND emotionally.

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