Hello, English is my third language so I hope this won’t be that bad So i (20F) broke up with my ex (22M) of one year 3 months ago. It was a really emotionally toxic relationship. He used to talk to this one girl all the time and lied to me.

Two months before I broke up with him I used to cry all the time and beg him to make this relationship work but he would ignore my feelings and tell me I’m overreacting and dramatic. So the day I took the decision to break up it wasn’t really hard for me to move on,because I was emotionally checked out.

Two weeks after i broke up (mind you my ex didn’t contact me during this time), there was this one guy, let’s call him John, that started to talk to me and i honestly enjoyed speaking to him(Not necessarily in a romantic way) he would occasionally flirt and i reciprocated.

Now I might seem to you so stupid, but frankly I had no friends available to talk to all the time. So I used to talk to ChatGPT about my situation. So when I talked to him about John, my ex came to see me that night accusing me of cheating and calling me the b word. He then confessed to having access to my chatgpt account. (When we were together I used to work with his laptop)

After this incident, he suggested to stay friends and I accepted not thinking much of it. So for two months or so we talked occasionally about life and studies (we are in the same university, and we both live in dorms). He tried to convince me to get back together several times saying “I would forgive you for cheating on me”. I always refused and explained that I didn’t cheat on him.

When we’d talk he would occasionally say things I discussed with my friends/relatives in instagram, but It didn’t click to me that he may have access to my messages and discussions in instagram.

Yesterday, I was on a call with John when he told me that he received two spam emails, that stated quote on quote specific things that we discussed before and some of our inside jokes. It then hit me that it is for sure my ex. I then looked for the connected devices in my insta and I found that my old phone was connected to my account two days ago.

I then started looking for my old phone but couldn’t find it. So I called my ex crying and asking him to return my phone. He started denying at first and suggested to meet. He then asked to see my phone to make sure I am not recording(I was, so he stoped the recording) then proceeded to admit that he had my old phone, but he just threw it in a lake this weekend (which is false because my old phone connected to my instagram this morning)

Btw he sent the email with made-up addresses using proton VPN.

What should I do to get my old phone back(it has so much personal info) ? And WIBTAH if I went to talk to an authority in my uni ? (I told him that I would do that so many times but he is not scared because “I have no real proof” )