I recently broke up with my partner because I caught him sneaking off at night and watching prn in the bedroom. For context, we normally sleep on the couch as that was his preference and I noticed at night he went downstairs much quieter than normal. (I’m a very light sleeper) I didn’t notice a hum of the bathroom fan or see any lights, so I go check the bedroom/bathroom area to see what’s up. I get down to the bedroom and he quickly puts the covers over him and I ask what’s up and he says “trying to sleep”. Let me preface, he’s never ONCE left the area we were sleeping to go and sleep somewhere else, ever. I then say, “Then where’s your phone?” And he said he left it upstairs and I know he didn’t. I ask again, and he said that he was trying to sleep and it’s upstairs. I call the BS and say, “Let me see it” and he gets it from under the blankets and opens it and quickly exits the app he was in and opens Reddit. Now I know he’s hiding something and I open Safari and it needs his face to unlock it. I hold it to his face, BOOM, prn. I told him then and there that he needed to find a new boyfriend cause that’s insane to me. Like I get needing a, quote “release”, but when your partner is there and in the next room over and you HIDE it from them is a line in my book.

Once a while ago this person got mad at me for watching porn, so I stopped because he wanted me to. I respected this because he was my partner and that was a boundary he wanted so, respect. Then this happens and that fact he lied to me to my face really just gave me the ick. This isn’t the first time he’s hidden something from me either.

The first time he hid something was that he (during the first 6 months of our relationship) was on Tinder “making sure he was doing better than his ex”, but the profiles he would share through text to himself has his ex PLUS 4 other guys. When I found this out, oh was I mad, especially because he hid it from me and one of his coworkers knew about it. I understand wanting to do better than your ex, but being on Tinder and having a job where you travel is not a good combo. Let me be clear though, the Tinder was gone when this happened but I saw him using “Bumble Friends” and he knew my distaste for it so I asked to go through his texts and that’s what I found. (Also found texts from his ex with spicy photos still in the camera roll)

So I’m asking, was this a valid response based on previous patterns? Was I being dramatic, or did I have self respect to walk away when lies were being told to my face?

What I really want to know is, how do you recover from this to prepare for a future relationship? I’ve had to deal with infidelity in my own family, so I already have issues with that as well.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!