u/Easy_Gazelle_2277

I (F25) recently found my bf (M35) has kept hundreds and hundreds of nudes and other NSFW content from women he has been in relationships/situationships in as well as all sorts of girls from random hookups to regularly sexting them etc. He has allegedly deleted this since because he claimed he even forgot it existed and he never went through that folder and knows now that this has no right to exist in a relationship.

As if this wasn't bad enough, I also found out that while he was already in a committed relationship with me for over half a year, he had found an old sextape he had with his ex from 10 years ago, which he stumbled across and decided to save it to his phone. Also he screenshotted multiple provocative social media posts of girls, one of whom he hooked up with before we got together.
Now after confronting him and him apologizing and allegedly regretting having done this because now he realized it's wrong and unacceptable in a relationship, I dug a bit deeper and he gave me the following explanation; seeing thirst traps of half naked women where boobs, nipple or bootycheeks are visable excites him in a way that he just wants to snap a picture of this because it would be gone otherwise and he just keeps it in his collection. Same goes for the sextape that he AND I QUOTE "didnt want for it to go to waste". He denied getting off to that stuff but not sure how true that is.
Do men really think like that??

He keeps talking it down and insists its something irrelevant and just overall not important and that he doesnt attach any meaning to it but its just something he does when bored and horny.
Not sure where to go from here... any explanation or advice?

Me (F25) and my BF (M 35) have been together a little over a year and I heavily struggle with RJ bc of his entire sexual past. We first got to know each other a couple of years ago and dated for a year. We were never exclusive at that time because he had longstanding unresolved commitment issues and he simply did not want/ could not be in a relationship with me at the time. We had called it quits mutually and I was very hung up on him for years because he was my first everything and the first person I actually had caught serious feelings for and seriously wanted to be with him. However, he got a girlfriend a little less than a year after our split, as a result of being in therapy and he claims he wanted to implement what he learned and chose to pursue a relationship with her. they didnt last very long and funny enough he did text me after their breakup - my biggest mistake was that i never blocked him and never fully excluded him from my social media. however we didnt see each other nor texted until like 3 years later when we randomly crossed paths again at a bar and this was the first time we saw each other face to face after we stopped dating. after a long and heartfelt conversation I told him how much he hurt me and it was the first time he actually realized the damage he'd done. anyway even after that, he wanted to talk and meet up more and clear the mess he left but a couple day later he withdrew and transparently shared that he had not overcome his commitment issues and could not start engaging with me again. this made my feel incredibly stupid for even giving him a chance to talk to me again. later i found out that 2 months later he started dating another girl and kinda strung her along for a couple of months before calling it quits because he did not have feeling with her and dumped her. another year went by and we ran into each other again, made plans to actually see each other and talk this time but it fizzled out, also on my end, but later i learned that he had slept with 2 other girls after that. finally a couple of weeks after this we eventually made plans to grab lunch because i was moving cities anyway and felt like it would be okay to have a friendly/amicable lunch with him. and this is how we got back in contact and eventually we started dating again leading up to being officially in a relationship a couple months later.
sorry for dragging this story so long: the point is that i have always been hesitant about letting him back into my life and after a lot of contemplation came to the conclusion that i'd rather give it a chance and finally close that door forever in case it fails, rather than living with the idea of "what if " and what could have been.
After being abroad for half a year at the very beginning of the relationship I came back home and had a bad gut feeling and went through his phone. what i found were hunderets of nudes and pronographic content he had taken over the last 8 years (so technically before me in a sense)and thats how i learned that he had slept with at least 13 girls between the first time we split up and the time we got together for real. i cannot begin to express how disgusted i feel about all of this and bottom line is that i feel too good and too pure for him. even though the relationship is going well and he is behaving well, the thought of him having shared the most intimate act with so so so many different and random girls makes me sick to my stomach because it means he is a weak and lustful loser that could not keep it in his pants and got it on with every girl in front of him.
something in me doesnt want to believe that he has fundamentally changed and now all of sudden views the relationship as something sacred and special. it's very obvious to me that he numbed himself with partying and sleeping with sooo many random women and part of me wants him to face the consequences that come with this lifestyle such as being with a girl on his level that's just as easy, promiscuous, sexually used and disgusting as him. and i would want him to be in my shoes or simply experience what it feels like seeing your partner who supposedly loves you sleep around with half of the town because they cannot control their urges and will always chase novelty and use other people to stuff the void within themselves.
not sure where to go from here because objectively everything is going quite well in the relationship at the moment and part of me just wants the RJ to be over and to be happy with him. It comes back in waves and there are even days at a time where i dont think about any of that and am simply happy in the moment with him.
on bad days i remind myself that this person has never had the same values and standards as me and i see him as less than because of this. I only feel strong contempt towards him in terms of sexual past and feel like i will never be able to get over this because i dont trust him that he has truly broken this pattern and that he truely truely in his core has changed and doesnt just put on an act in order to make the relationship work. I am not sure if he really regrets carelessly sleeping around for years, not thinking its wrong or unmoral or does he just say he regrets it because he knows what i think about I and that I think he actually doesnt deserve me because of his past.