Me (23f) and my bf (23m) have been together for 3.5 years now and we’ve lived together all that time. (We made the stupid mistake of moving in together right away) 

From the beginning of the relationship he always preached how important privacy is. He had my phone passcode and access to it from the beginning. But told me he wasn’t ready to share that level of trust. He told me that growing up he had a pretty bad porn addiction and his mom would go through his stuff constantly, and shame him. He says this gave him a bad association with sharing his privacy. I respected that without question as I like to understand that not everyone likes to share their personal spaces with others. He eventually shared his code with me but we still agreed that I was to not look through it.

I started taking birth control as soon as we became sexually active. (I was with a woman previously so I didn’t have any need for it) When I moved in with him I lost access to my doctors so I went 2.5 years without a follow up. I never realized that my birth control made my sex drive extremely low. I always felt guilty and confused as to why I was not able to satisfy him given how heavily sexually active we were in the beginning. I always justified it with me being in a new relationship as well as taking on domestic responsibilities I’ve never had before (for example: my first job, paying rent, being the only one employed most of the time)

He constantly reminded me how much I was not satisfying him and how he would have to regularly turn to porn to feel relief. I was okay with this and even offered to allow him to have sexual relations with other women (AS LONG AS I GAVE THE OKAY) preferably with me being able to watch, as it was a kink I wanted to try. I never had any reason not to trust him as he always preached honesty and trust above all. I never believed he was capable of cheating. And he was super loving over all.

  Recently though, he’s been hanging out with friends I’m not being introduced to, whereas before he’d be happy to introduce me to friends. He’s been more cold and distant. And constantly accusing me of being unfaithful. I work 5 days a week 9hrs a day and he’s unemployed so he has a lot more free time than me. 

A week ago, we had an argument because he was going on a week long trip with someone I don’t know. I expressed how I felt uneasy with it and he claimed he needed freedom, and if I can’t be okay with him going we shouldn’t be together bc I was trying to control his freedom. He left with us on bad terms.

I have had people telling me forever that he’s cheating and I’ve never believed it, even had conversations with him about it that made me feel reassured in that. However before he left we pretty much agreed that we’re broken up and I will be gone when he comes back.

I had some friends over to drink and they told me to go through is old phone that he’s had our entire relationship but stopped using about 6 months ago. I kept saying no as I don’t believe that’s right no matter the circumstances. But after a couple beers and breakdowns about missing him, my friend convinced me that if I did find something it would make the breakup easier. I caved and charged the phone to look. I found thousands of photos of porn, lewd art, and screenshots of instagram influencers butts. I never knew his addiction was this bad but I knew that stuff existed so it didn’t bother me.

Until I realized he screenshots all his passwords. And I found a screenshot with a password that had a calculator layout in the background. I knew what that meant. There were two calculator apps. After putting in the secret code I was able to open the files. I found several screenshots of sexy photos of his ex girlfriends, screenshotted from their Snapchat (he has a cheat with the Samsung pen where they don’t get a notification). Screenshotted years into our relationship. It crushed me.

I confronted him about what I found and he had a breakdown crying about how I’ve betrayed him by looking through his phone and how he trusted me and I broke that. I hate what I found, but I feel guilt for looking in the first place. I’ve always been against that sort of invasion of privacy. He’s back from his trip and we haven’t talked about this at all. He goes from being very loving to very cold fast and I just wanna heal past this.

TW: SA EDIT: I should probably add that he can get very violent about things, he’s forced me to have sex when I didn’t wanna give it to him. He’s spit in my face, held me down by my throat and threatened to punch me, and broken things due to frustration with me. I know going through his phone was bad but I felt fed up with feeling like something might be happening and I’m the one getting abused.