My (18F) boyfriend (19M) has questionably obtained nudes of other girls in his hidden folder
My boyfriend and I are just on the cusp of our 6 month anniversary, and so far it's been a pretty wonderful relationship. It is also my first romantic relationship. Neither of us are perfect, but we're always very honest with each other, and have no major boundaries in terms of privacy (apart from journals, etc that we keep private and is respected by the other party), and this has always passed on to phones. We have each others laptop and phone passwords, mainly out of convenience to put on a video or movie or check a text if the owner of the phone is across the room etc and call out if its urgent.
A couple weeks ago he took a few unflattering photos of me as a joke, and after a bit of playful wrestling I got his phone and went to his recently deleted to get rid of the pics. He got a weird half-panicked half-faux-playful expression and snagged his phone back to "Check what was in there". I didn't take it seriously, laughed, and didn't think much of it seeing as after glancing at the contents he handed his phone back without issue. After exiting out of the recently deleted I made a joke about how "if you're so afraid of your recently deleted I wonder what your hidden folder is like", and instead of laughing or brushing it off, he wrestled his phone back and said something vague about how "(his) nudes or something were probably in there and it would be embarrassing". I asked why he was so embarrassed about nudes when he was literally naked in the bed next to me. He made some vague comment about how he might have been younger and it would be weird for me to see. He brushed it off, but I felt a bit strange about the whole thing.
I realised he was lying to me about something when I thought back on it and remembered various tells in his body language, and I gave him a couple weeks to bring the situation up to me organically. I could tell he remembered it, as for the next couple days he was more edgy with his phone, but then eased up. So, I did the typical suspicious girlfriend thing, and snooped through his phone when he was sleeping.
Firstly, the folder only had contents dating up to about a year or so before we met, nothing during, except a couple silly photos of us he had put in there (meaning he had opened the folder during our relationship, at least). There were a couple suggestive (non-nude) photos of him, and some downloaded porn videos, sure, but it was totally dwarfed by what must be 50 minimum nudes from random girls on snapchat. I already don't understand why you would keep these whilst being in a relationship- he has nude photos from me to look at if he wanted, or porn sites, so I'm a little hurt and confused at keeping a collection of nudes girls sent you. Besides, if he had simply forgotten, surely the whole incident that led to me checking his phone would have reminded him and prompted him to delete them. It feels weirdly like a betrayal. I have never specified that I didn't want other girls nudes on his phone while we are dating, but I didn't think I had to, as it isn't something I would ever do.
Secondly, some of the nudes were saved using the sticker function, which unlike saving a photo on snapchat, used to not notify the sender of the photo. This means some of the collection of nudes from all these different girls were saved to his phone without their knowledge. The date on the screenshots were all from one day in 2024, before we met- meaning he went through those stickers and intentionally screenshotted them all on that day, presumably to delete them from his sticker section on snapchat but still keep the nudes. This makes me feel even worse in the case these girls (some of whom have their faces in the photos), have no idea there is a record of them fully nude on some mans phone. It also makes me concerned about the nudes he has of me on his phone- were we to break up, I don't want to end up in that folder either.
My issue is: I don't want to admit to going through his phone, and I'm not entirely sure this is as big a deal as I feel it is, but I also don't want to let this fester in my head and come through in my actions instead of words. How can I bring this up to him to understand why he has these photos?
TLDR; Boyfriend acted suspiciously about his hidden folder, I snooped through his phone and found out it was full of girls nudes that had been kept without their knowledge dated prior to our relationship. Feels gross.