A little bit of back story: My fiancé and I have been together for 11 years, minus 2 or 3 months back in 2018, and have two kids.
We have a beautiful family together. He is the love of my life and my best friend. I can see us spending the remainder of our lives together.
As any relationship goes, we have had ups and downs, but we persevered through all of it together.
However, because of our past issues, I find myself feeling anxious or insecure once in awhile. Which in turn gives me the urge to check his phone and other devices. The last few years since the short separation, I have randomly checked his phone and computer. Every time I’ve checked, I wouldn’t find anything alarming. I always feel so guilty for not trusting him afterwards.
UNTIL a couple weeks ago, when I got that feeling again. I was checking his phone, and I found pictures of our neighbour. They are not pictures she’s sent him. As far as I know, they have never really interacted outside of small conversations because our kids play together.
No, these are pictures he has taken of her through our window while she was outside doing yard work. Like close ups of her body, zoomed into her butt, or her bending over picking something up.
Either way, I can only assume what he used them for….
I am extremely disturbed, and I honestly don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose my family, but I am so creeped out that it is hard to be in the same room as him without thinking about it. I keep trying to convince myself that it isn’t a big deal, but then I think “What if it was someone taking pictures of me?” IT’S DISGUSTING!
One half of me wants to be strong and confront him about it, but the other half of me is so afraid of our lives imploding. Because it’s not just me, it’s our children’s lives too.
How do I go about this? Do I say anything at all, or do I live with it like it never happened….I am lost.
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You have to confront him about it. If you don’t then it’ll eat away at you and end up imploding your relationship anyway.
Has he given you permission to repeatedly check his phone and computer? If not, then you’ve been invading his privacy for several years, and that isn’t something you do to ‘the love of your life and best friend’. That’s something you do when you don’t trust someone.
And now you’ve found something, which many commenters are likely to say justifies your actions, but that’s not true. If this is not something you can support, then break off the relationship, but whatever you do, please get therapy to address your insecurities and your belief that you have a right to invade your partner’s privacy.
You are essentially doing what he is doing.
I’m sure he just took those photos for his anxiety or depression!
I don’t think it’s really that deep. I know it seems like a lot because our female brains would never go that far (or most of us) but guys are about variety… have heard them jerking off to photos of their friend’s grandma or a parental aunt… it means very little.
I’m so sick of posters hinting “past issues,” but not saying what they were. The actual current response to your post depends on what these “past issues“ are, which you are purposely not providing, probably because you don’t want to hear what the correct response would be to it.