TL;DR:

LTR of 5 years, self-esteem issues and 0 friends starts using Tinder, mainly in my presence. I'm chilling, but starting to think it's a message. What message is she trying to send and how would you react?

Longer:

Hey guys. I've been lurking for some time here at TRP, and I've started applying stuff. Currently, I'm in an almost 5-year-long LTR (the only girl I've ever been with and vice versa, we're both 23).

Been extremely beta since the beginning of our relationship, kind of evolved along the way and finally stumbled upon TRP. I'm handling it relatively fine right now, I understand base concepts, began lifting and all that jazz.

Just about the time that I discovered TRP, I landed my first job. I got a gym pass and a very good amount of money each month (thumbs up for outsourcing software from low-standard countries). Able to support myself and the girl, and then some.

Anyway, my confidence and looks went up in the past few months, and I've started getting attention from girls and my gf is aware of it. Basically, my SMV rose up and she knows it. She's been treating me better, sex is more frequent and stuff like that.

On the other hand, she is stuck at university, not making as much progress as she wants, has some confidence issues due to her looks. She doesn't really have good friends that she hangs out with, she's pretty much stuck studying and hanging out with me. Guess you can figure it out.

So, I'm an app developer and the other day we're talking about Tinder and stuff and she's like "Hm, I could give it a look hehe", which I ignore. She installs it and pretty much starts exploring, swiping and matching with some random guys who try to approach her with the classic beta shit. At this point, I'm not really paying too much attention to her and not giving a fuck, I'm just doing my shit on the PC.

Fast forward a few days, I figure out that she's still using Tinder to match with people from time to time. I figure out she likes the amount of likes she's getting and finds some confidence booster in it so that's why she's not responding to chat. However, we randomly end up in a conversation yesterday where I reveal that I'm winking to chicks that won't break eye contact on public transport. She takes it in a kind of a funny manner but is obviously hit by some insinuations of me actually trying to make moves on the girls (tbh I do it just to see how they react and make them break the stare). She pulls out Tinder and continues swiping and shit, commenting "I'll see what offers there are for me" while laughing. This time she starts chatting with people and I'm just like "w/e". Still don't care too much, but I'm starting to see it's some kind of a message or a test.

So, to conclude: she's using Tinder in my presence (almost exclusively when I'm near), I'm not reacting / brushing it off. She started chatting with people. She has confidence issues (mainly regarding looks) and has literally 0 friends and branch-swinging opportunities. Tinder has lots of betas to match with her and compliment her, while it also has potential to provide some opportunities to replace me in emergency. Go figure.

I'm thinking she's just starting to feel dread and has figured out she can't really branch swing and she thought of Tinder as a medium to fix that. However, her using it in my presence kind of makes me think it's a shit test or some kind of reverse-dread, since she's not trying to hide it (on the contrary, she's trying to make me aware of it). I'm not really sure how to react besides ignore (or A&A / use Tinder too). But I'm sure as fuck the way to go wouldn't be "hey honey, we're in a relationship, I don't want you to use Tinder cuz it hurts dem feelz and I need to keep you" or that shit (which would be my past go-to).

How would you go about this, guys? Thanks. :)

Bonus: There's bound to be at least one person who'll yell "ONEITIS, NEXT" since pretty much what I described is a shitty girl nobody would want. This was only the stuff that was relevant to the thread, I wouldn't keep her around if she wasn't worth it otherwise. I'm not getting the "MUST KEEP" tingles or anything, but the only thing you can find on Tinder is dick so I'm kind of trying to figure out what to do here. If you're giving the "GHOST HER", please provide a deeper explanation for it may benefit others too.