Hi all, I’m really struggling with this and I’m almost embarrassed to tell my friends and ask for advice, partially because I’m afraid they’ll say I’m over reacting and partially because I find it humiliating in general.
I (31F) have caught my bf (31M) repeatedly search for a female coworker on social media, so affectively stalk her social media.
A bit of back story, we’ve been together almost 2 years and at the start of the relationship, before we had even made it official I truly trusted him with my life and honestly still don’t believe he would actually cheat on me. Last year he started a new job and he kept mentioning a female colleague and commenting on her appearance negatively, which set alarms off in my head because why’s he even thinking about her that much. One two skip a few, he told me he’s not attracted to her at all (still don’t believe this obvs) but he did admit that he thought she was being a bit full on and flirty so he’s stepped back from conversation and made her well aware that I’m in his life etc.
I accepted this and appreciated the honesty regarding the flirting but still felt a deep rage anytime he mentioned her name. However, since this revelation I’ve noticed her name in his search bar on Facebook multiple times. She’s the type of girl to posts a lot and lots of revealing pics too so I know what he can see. I’ve brought this up and he always has some sort of explanation (that I don’t believe) and we move on. I recently noticed he’s been looking her up on Instagram too and I’m just sick of it, he knows it would annoy me. I know it isn’t cheating but I just can’t bare the thought of a few years down the line having a child with this man and I’m sitting with a baby on my boob postpartum and he’s on his phone gawking after other women.
Also side story, when we first made it official he told me he done a mass unfollowing on instagram of girls he’d chatted to romantically because he was all in and didn’t need those people on social media anymore. I didn’t ask him to do this but I appreciated it so much as I have trust issues from a previous relationship. After he told me this i checked to see if he’d unfollowed one girl in particular which I had a funny feeling about. He had (amazing) but over the summer this year she came up on my fyp and I noticed he had followed her again so this caused a massive argument.
So there is a pattern with crossing my boundaries with social media. We had an argument 2 days ago about this and he told me ‘men are different, if you went through any man’s phone you’d 100% find worse’ and ‘you’ll be forever alone if you’re expectations are that high’. He also apologised and said it won’t happen anymore but I mean I’m not holding my breath.
I’ll take any advice, is ignorance bliss if I believe he would never actually cheat?
TLDR Bf repeatedly searching for attractive women he knows on social media and I’m not sure if it’s something i should accept or end things over.