My boyfriend (49M) and I have been together for about 4 months. He dated his ex-gf (47F) for about two years before I met him. They were very serious and had discussed marriage. He said they had a tumultuous last year of the relationship and were fighting constantly. She initiated the end but he said he can now see they really weren't right for each other.
I have always struggled with comparing myself to my partners' exes but this time is is particularly bad given the recency of their relationship (they were only broken up for a few months before we met) and how serious they were. Also, while he has had limited relationship experience, he admitted that he tends to date petite, thin women, and I am very tall and more curvy.
When we first started dating, a picture of her popped up on his phone. He apologized profusely and said he would delete the pictures of her on his phone. About a week ago, it happened again. This time, he seemed genuinely confused because he said that he had done a face search and deleted all the pictures of her but must have missed this one. Nonetheless, it sent me into a bit of a tailspin of comparing myself and our relationship to theirs.
A few nights ago, he left his laptop open and I went snooping. I found a file of pictures of her, many of which I could tell he had taken (like not selfies). I was surprised because he has told me he is bad about remembering to document experiences and has taken very few pictures of me/us since we got together.
I feel bad about snooping and I know that a 2 year relationship will obviously produce more pictures than a 3 month relationship. But I can't shake the feeling that: 1) he knew that deleting the pics would not delete them from his computer such that it feels a little deceptive and like he wants to keep them and 2) the volume of pictures of her makes me feel like he was more attracted to her/motivated to document their relationship than ours. I know a simple solution would be just to ask him to take more pictures of us but I want him to feel motivated to do it. I also can't bring it up without admitting that I was snooping.
Am I blowing this out of proportion?