hello reader, i recently discovered something that is really upsetting and i don’t know how long i can keep it to myself, but when i do bring it up, i don’t want to do it in a bad way. this might be long, but i really need help here.
i just want to give some backstory first. i am in a semi-new relationship that started early this year. i had first seen my now girlfriend at a party early in my first year of university. she seemed a little off most of the night, and i came to learn that it was because she was going through a breakup with her boyfriend at the time who was still back at home. she is a friend of a friend i knew from highschool, so a little while after the party i managed to get her contact and started talking to her (she had broken up with her boyfriend shortly after the party, she was single at the time we started talking). things were slow with us (my fault, i cant make a move for my life) and early on she had mentioned she was in the relationship with her ex for a very long time, basically the entire time she was in highschool. i guess this is an important detail.
fast forward, i finally made it official and everything was good during the summer. however, towards the end, she had gone to an event with her friend and was showing me pictures of the night over a facetime screen share, asking me to help her pick some for a social media post (i’ll add that we were a few months into the relationship at this point, quite a while after the breakup with her ex). she was scrolling through the photos fast and i couldn’t get a good look, so i asked her to give me the controls over facetime so i could scroll through myself. after quite some convincing, she gave me the controls (the convincing was already a red flag in my eyes). she had saved the ones she liked the most to her favourites folder in her photos, so i went there first. after i had started scrolling down a little bit, she very quickly ended the screen share and decided that we were done looking at photos, and she would decide which ones she would post on her own later. i pressed her a little bit, but eventually let it go and acted like i didn’t really care anymore. unfortunately, i never did forget this.
fast forward again to now, we are back at school and i had kinda forgotten about this whole thing, but it would randomly come back to me every once in a while. today, when she was in the shower, i unfortunately decided to make the horrible decision of going back into the favourites folder to see what i would find. i get that this is wrong and i invaded her privacy, but i would never get past this if i didn’t check for myself. even after about a month since the facetime incident, i still found exactly what i was hoping not to find. there was quite a few pictures of her and her ex still saved to her favourites folder in her camera roll. i’ll mention that she does like to take pictures and her phone is stocked full with plenty of them, so if there was random pictures here and there of them together i’d understand as it would be a lot of work to go through all the photos and delete them all. but the thing that really upsets me is that they are still saved in her favourites. some pictures were just of them together at parties or events, but the ones that disappoint me the most are just candid ones of him looking out a window or doing his own thing that she still has saved, i guess just admiring him or something.
i tried to stay calm and not show any emotion when she got out of the shower, but she caught on that something was off pretty fast and called me out for it. luckily, she thought it was about something else, and when she asked, i confidently told her i wasn’t upset about that, which is true, and she eventually dropped it.
i love this girl very much, but i don’t know how to approach this with her. maybe this isn’t something most people would be upset about but this is not something i will be able to get past, and i can only hide how i feel for so long. i’m worried when i bring it up with her she will get defensive and turn this back to me saying i shouldn’t have invaded her privacy, which i do understand.
my fear right now is that she is not over her ex. why would she still have some of these pictures in her phone, and why would they be in her favourite of all places? i would like some insight on a correct approach to validate her feelings of her privacy being invaded, but also get me some answers. i love her and i really wanna be with her, but im going to need some answers from her to figure this out.
tl;dr, approaching a year after their breakup, i found pictures of my girlfriends ex still in her favourites folder in her photos, and now im worried she might not be over him.
thank you if you made it this far and sorry for the long read, i appreciate any help anyone has to offer.
Comments
you don’t trust her, you violated her privacy, and you fucking lied to her. you’re the red flag.
don’t lie to your partner. that’s shitty. don’t try to “trick” them into things. just fucking talk to them, like you’re both basically-adult human beings, like you’re partners in this relationship, like you’re both on the same team, for fuck’s sake.
don’t date people if you don’t trust them. that just breeds resentment and toxicity, that ruins a relationship, and it’s shitty and unfair to everyone involved. trust is a necessary foundation for a healthy relationship, so don’t date people if you don’t trust them.
this relationship is very likely doomed, in no small part due to you refusing to be honest with her, your refusal to talk to her, and you violating her privacy. the only way to salvage it is to be honest, and grow the fuck up out of this silly insecure bullshit.
or let her go, so she can find someone actually worth her time, who doesn’t lie to her and disrespect her like you do. then just stay out of the dating pool until you’ve done the work to be an adult who can behave like an adult, without childish insecurities, and be a good partner.