Weird facebook marketplace posts keep popping up on my boyfriends feed and I don’t know what to believe
Hello, I am a 24 yr old f and my boyfriend is also 24.
So, this just happened today but last year I had seen similar posts on his phone.
So, like a lot of guys my boyfriend is always looking at random things on facebook marketplace such as car parts, random vintage items, vehicles, etc.
The first time this happened months ago, he was scrolling showing me something and I see a picture of a girl and I can’t remember the caption, but it was obvious that she was either selling pictures of herself or advertising herself for $. When I caught that I immediately said something and asked for his phone and kept scrolling to see if I could find more and there were some other similar posts sprinkled in the majority of the other stuff I mentioned he searches up on there. I am definitely not okay with my boyfriend watching any type of porn or sexual content. He knows this and seems to be totally okay with that boundary. When I asked him why that would be there he was claiming he had no idea and was very frustrated at the fact that there was no way he could i guess prove his innocence in the situation.
It definitely ruined my mood seeing that and made me feel so uneasy not knowing if he was telling the truth or not.
Now, fast forward to today we were laying in my bed, both of us on our phones and then we turned to each other because he wanted to show me a pair of boots he saw on Facebook marketplace but I only glanced for a few seconds but I did still see when he swiped left to go back to the previous page with all the posts and immediately I see there’s a girl on the top right corner. I would have reacted regardless, but what made me react quicker was the fact that he swiped up on the app and swiped it away so when he opened up the app again, it would all refresh. That immediately raised a red flag to me and I said “wtf why did u do that”.
he tried to act dumb and play it off, as if he was gonna do that to all of his apps, but he instinctually only swiped up on that one… I know if my intention is to swipe up on all of the apps so they’re not all running for whatever reason, my thumb is swiping up consecutively with the quickness.
it seemed to me that he was hiding something so I grabbed his phone while saying “if I see another girl on here or multiple girls, it was definitely something weird and you’re trying to hide something.”
after a scroll or two, I see a post of a girl, it’s a mirror pic and she’s wearing a thin T-shirt with no bra on, with the caption “selling pics”. I also see multiple other posts the captions werent as obvious but seeing as this is facebook MARKETPLACE they were clearly marketing themselves in THAT way for $. Now, these posts weren’t the majority at all but there were definitely more than enough posts to make me extremely uncomfortable and feel not secure with my boyfriend.
After me reacting again, and letting him know
How disgusting and disappointing it is to see that on his phone i asked him again why that was on there and he said he doesnt know. and i asked why he was so weird and swiped up on the app. he said that as soon as he got a glimpse of that post, he knew it would cause problems. He said that being on Facebook marketplace again recently he had seen those types of posts, and he tried to do everything he could to remove them, he said he even spent around two hours trying to figure it out, but nothing worked. I asked him if he’s ever searched that stuff up and he said he never has. We’ve been together for two years, he’s known my boundaries since we started getting to know each other. he’s always respected my boundaries and I’ve always done the same for him. I also never ask him to do something I would never do myself in terms of setting boundaries.
Then, I also said, “ before we got together when you were single did you search this stuff up? Is that why it’s maybe still showing up?” and he said he’s never searched that up, ever.
He was swearing up and down he had never ever clicked on or searched anything up like that.
After some more back-and-forth about how uncomfortable seeing that made me, he tried to say that it’s probably on there because since the stuff he searches up is clearly stuff that a man would search up that that stuff is popping up because of that. so his point is literally that because he’s a guy that type of stuff is showing up on Facebook marketplace.
we eventually stop with the back-and-forth because it was mainly him, pleading with me in a very frustrated manner that he didn’t search that up and again he was saying it was frustrating not being able to prove that he didn’t do that. and if he was telling the truth, I just didn’t want him to be going through so much turmoil in his head because he truly was getting so frustrated and angry, and just looked and sounded so defeated at the situation. so we sort of made up towards the end of this, but I still have a very uneasy feeling and I can’t wrap my head around why those posts are on his Facebook marketplace timeline….
I now have a question for you guys, specifically men.
do you frequently use Facebook marketplace, and search up “things that a man would search up”?
if so, do those kinds of post randomly pop up on your feed? if so, is it totally random?
Or is this just not a coincidence and not a normal occurrence…?
please comment and give me some insight on this if you can.
I suggested he just continue searching up different things to kind of water down those posts and eventually they’ll be gone. In the past when this first happened, I remember we came to the agreement that if he needed to use Facebook marketplace, he could just use it through my phone and he was doing that at a point because I remember going to look up coach bags one day and there were random car parts I’ve never searched up before and this truck he had been telling me about.
I don’t even use Facebook marketplace that often but I remember using it at least two days in a row after seeing the stuff he had searched up on my phone. Eventually, the stuff he searched up through my Facebook was all gone and it was just stuff that I was searching up. I want to believe him, but in the back of my mind, I just don’t. I know how algorithms work and your phone definitely wouldn’t be suggesting something that you didn’t already search up in the past or weren’t searching up currently.
he’s making it seem like it’s just a coincidence and he’s acting like he has ZERO idea why that would be there. my heart wants to believe him but my head is telling me otherwise. plz give me some feasible advice, thank u all.