u/CucumberLongjumping2

I have a hard time believing that my boyfriend is no longer romantically involved with his ex. We’ve been going on dates for around 2 1/2 months. Here is the backstory behind my lack of trust:

1. After the first time we kissed, I asked if he was single because he seemed hesitant to kiss me (ended up being a cultural reason: he is from the Middle East and isn’t used to moving fast with women, but I was born in the US and usually kiss on the first date). He responded with “it’s complicated”. So I asked for further elaboration. He clarified that him and his ex broke up at least a year ago (I don’t remember the exact timeline) because long distance was too hard on their relationship along with lingering issues from their time together before moving away from each-other.

They dated for over 3 years.

1. I felt assured that things are over between them after this situation.
2. About a week later, he rejects a call from one of his friends while we are laying down together and his WhatsApp message summary shows showing what I remember seeing as a message with two red heart emojis in the chat with his ex. I didn’t say anything at the moment because I didn’t want to start I big convo when he was about to leave. So, I talked to him about it the next night over FaceTime. He said things like it’s normal to send heart emojis to friends (which he had said before), that he can show me the messages, etc.. He listened to my concerns but seemed frustrated that I don’t trust him and also seemed sad that he had upset me. He answers all of my questions and doesn’t get defensive while still being a healthy amount of upset that I don’t trust him, as I would if I was on the other end of things. I tell him let’s talk about it next time we see each-other in person. When we talked in person two days later, he showed me the chat with her and there were no heart emojis in the messages. I want to believe him but my brain is like this man totally could have deleted the emojis and I’m pretty sure I know what I saw. Also, I can’t understand the messages between them because it is in Arabic texting language.
3. Yesterday, I saw that his Instagram profile photo is still of him and his ex because I asked what his Instagram is. He doesn’t use Instagram at this time in his life so it’s not crazy to believe he just never got around to changing it. I still got upset though cause I am insecure about the situation I am imagining in my head.

He is generally not as open about stuff as I am used to. My family, friends, and I are open and oversharers at times so it takes getting used to being with someone who would rather say nothing than share their personal thoughts/situation.

Ultimately my fear is that he is still talking to her in a non-platonic way while dating me which makes me worry that he will go back to her once he finishes his PhD program and can move to a place where they can be together again. I know he loves me and he makes me happy but it’s not impossible for someone to love multiple people at the same time.

I don’t feel comfortable cutting things off without hard evidence because I feel like some of this is my brain playing tricks on me, but also some of it is well-founded.

TL;DR I (23 F) have a hard time believing that my boyfriend (27 M) is no longer romantically involved with his ex. We’ve been going on dates for around 2 1/2 months. He’s from another country, she’s in another country and a life long friend of his and they still text about home and their families. I think I saw red hearts in their chat and other things make me believe he may still be talking to her, but some of it may be in my head.

Any advice for building trust in this situation?