u/General-Insect-8663

hello,
me and my bf have been together for almost 6 years.
we have just moved together to another country so that was a bigger challenge for us since we have not lived together yet.

just so you know, i love him very much and he is like my soulmate since we were 15 years old when we got together.
he is a very kind man- a gentleman, funny..he is everything i could ever ask for.

for the past few weeks i had an unsettling feeling that he is hiding something from me. he has always been kind of protective of his phone but i didnt think much of it. but few nights back when we were watching a movie his phone kept beeping notifications and everytime i would want to cuddle/get closer he would turn the screen off suspiciously.
i know it is wrong from me to go into his phone, but i felt like he would not tell me the truth if i asked him without knowing first. i am regretting this decision now.

first of all i found that he has telegram and is in 18+ groups. i want to clarify that i do not think watching porn is cheating, however i do think though that he sometimes gets too carried away with it and i talk to him about porn addiction from time to time so he is more carefull. but now i am not sure if watching porn and being in groups like this is the same. but if things were like this i would actually be okay with it.

but i found pictures of my ex-best friend on his phone (that i dont talk to anymore, we had a few arguments that not either of us wants to get past). there were normal selfies but also some where her chest is more visible.
i do not know where he got pictures since he does not follow her on social media. when i saw that i felt kind of disgusted so i closed the screen and didnt investigate more.

the day i found out i sat down with him to talk about it. i was not honest about what i saw though. i told him that i think he is hiding something from me and it seems that he is chatting with someone else. he told me that he is not cheating on me and that he will let his phone unlocked if i want. he also told me he will delete the telegram (i told him that if he has that app that i am againts him having it). we than talked about our sex life- for like three hours, it was such a nice talk.
one thing that he mentioned in the past aswell is that he likes threesomes with one guy and two girls. i am not judging that since we all have different things that we like and he doesnt mind if i liked it too but with the roles switched.
he also mentioned that there are some desires that he thinks that a significant other doesnt have to know about. and that for him personally when he thinks of his desires he has to have like a photo for example since his imagination is limited.
after this conversation i thought to myself that it is okay he likes something like this.
he does not think of other women alone but me with another woman, but he has to have a face of actually someone- and who else than my friends? (since he doesnt have female friends but i do)

two days passed, i thought i would get past this and i actually didnt thought about it for like a day but the unsettling feeling didnt left me.
i had to look again to know where he got the photos from.
those pictures were saved recently- actually the day after his birthday and our nice date.
from the information you can get from the photo itself in the gallery it showed that they were saved from telegram.
then i found also that he must have sent those photos to someone on telegram and that the person has sent him back videos of jerking off of those photos.

i am disgusted and feel betrayed. i didnt like the photos itself but i tried to understand it.
but the feeling of him jerking off of those photos is making me sick. it makes me more sick that i would have never thought i would find something like this. the fact that he has sent those photos to someone is even more sickening and so so wrong- and i am sure he knows that which is maybe even worse??

(little context: we have talked about this friend many times. she talked bad things about me to our other friends. we used to be a group of 4 besties. i struggled with mental health early in our relationship and my bf got me out of those dark times. when things got better and i didnt hurt myself anymore- my friends sent me voicemails about things they dont like about me one night, because i was a little distant at that time and i relapsed back then)

i am devasted. i have a low libido and he has hight libido.
so is it understandable that he has those desires? i personally do not do these things so i am not sure what to think.
i am trying to understand since he has been exposed to porn from a young age and i do believe that can affect a person in the long run.
but i feel disrespected.
but isnt this a mistake from both sides since we never really talked about this topic in this much depth?
are we both at fault since we both knew that our sex life isnt the best but didnt talk about it seriously?
will i get past this?
how do i approach this? tell him that i saw it and to delete it and never do it again if he still wants to be with me? that he really fucked up with the sending photos to a stranger?
there is so much on my mind and i have no one to talk about this (i dont want to discuss this with someone i know- rather with strangers)
please i would like to hear your opinions.