I went into my boyfriend's cloud gallery and found pictures of his ex.

[josie384]

I am 24, he is 31.

My phone stopped working a few days ago so my boyfriend handed me his old phone (that he uses daily along with his new one). I went through the gallery and told him so, he agreed. In this gallery I found pictures from 2025 only. I was looking for pictures from 2024 from this trip we had to Hawaii. Then I found a cloud app. To my surprise it was with no password (He has everything encrypted, with passwords and has two phones).

I checked this cloud, I found the pictures from our trip I was looking for. I went further on this cloud here was a ton of pictures of his childhood girlfriend. Very old pictures kissing each other etc...
I felt like I wanted to vomit but then I thought everyone has a past. He talked me about his ex which they dated from 2010 til 2017 (but I found photos of them hooking up till 2020).

I said ok, those from 2010 are alright u know, you are young etc. Then I noticed he had pictures from 2019 of this woman wearing lingerie, very explicit photos and videos. And I confronted my boyfriend.

He of course said I had no business going through this cloud. I asked him why he kept those pictures, he said he didn't have time to delete them since they’re so many (from 2010, more than 40K photos). I told him to look into my eyes and tell me he didn't have them for another reason. He said he loves me and only me and that's why he took a 16 hour flight to spend 2 months with me.
I don't know what to think. I want to vomit. He never took pictures like that to me.

Like so many, naked, etc.. He said that recently he bought that cloud’s license and put all his hard drives there in that cloud but never checked photo by photo in order to delete it.
What should I do? This is my first long term relationship (we're together since 2020). And I have no clue about what's wrong, and what's right.

Grow up. You can’t delete his past because you don’t like it.

I really think this isn't a big deal. It's his past and I see no reason for him to erase his past. I have plenty of photos of my ex. I'm not going to destroy them. He was a part of my life. So some of these photos were explicit? Well they were clearly into this the of thing. I still wouldn't expect him to delete the photos. I expect he hasn't looked at them for years.

So leave him then if he's cheating while you've been together.

I'd check the photos were actually taken two years ago and not created two years ago first. Backup creation dates are not original file dates.

Otherwise stop going through his photos from before he knew you ever existed. Even if he deleted them, you know he has memories? A whole lot more explicit than some photos and video of when they were together.

Sounds like a very, very long distance relationship. Why bother when you clearly don't trust him?

I don't have those kinds of pictures of exes, but the sole reason for that is that I've been with my DP for two decades and smart phones (or even camera phones) didn't exist when I was with any of my exes.

I can think of at least two relationships I've had which were relatively long-distance, and I'm pretty sure if we'd had smart phones then we would absolutely have exchanged all sorts of questionable pictures that would doubtless still be sitting in cloud folders I've never accessed.

I definitely exchanged very explicit emails (text, not pictures) with one ex and I still have that same email address, so for all I know all that steamy stuff might be sitting in my archive folders somewhere online. I haven't looked for them so I've no idea. If my current partner went snooping and found them, that would be very much his problem and not mine. Ditto if my partner has anything like that from his own exes lurking in old folders from before we met.

Right but if you found pictures he had printed out and kept you'd be concerned, so why not why a guy keeps naked pictures of women he has known intimately? I hate to think exes of mine would be holding onto intimate pictures or that his partners and him could be looking at them!

So him recreating the pictures and backing them up isn't a red flag? Really?

I hope he dumped you. You saw naked pictures of another woman and carried on looking through them, invading both his and her privacy!

That's not how I back up my hard drives at all. Whenever I've backed up a hard drive I've just uploaded the material I'm backing up to a cloud type account that does everything automatically. So I'd have just selected all my folders and clicked to back them up. I wouldn't have seen the contents.

And if you have tens of thousands of photos you would certainly not be checking every bloody thumbnail in a folder before you backed them up in case there was one of your ex's minge in there or something. Jeez.

Yabu. Can't believe you looked. It's in the past

So basically he cannot trust you? Why would he stay with you now?

Doesn't matter what device you connect to backup to the cloud, it's automated and you don't see a snapshot of the files either. You literally click the drive and say backup and leave it for the transfer while you get on with life.

@Germanymunch Not only do I have photos of exes, I even have photos (not explicit) of an ex I loathe. Why? Because there are hundreds interspersed with other photos and it takes a huge effort to go through them and delete them. I have deleted some but I'd rather not relive the trauma on a regular basis to get rid of them. I delete them when I come across them.
Keeping photos doesn't mean you look at them nor are still in love with your ex.

I would argue intimate photos mean a lot more, particularly if they have been saved to special places recently, by a man who can use them whenever he likes to jerk off.

I'm not talking about the expensive trip to Paris, kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower memento jealousy.

But that isn't necessarily what he did. He had tens of thousands of photos, and probably just backed up a hard drive that had an automatically created folder called 'PHOTOS' or 'iPhone' or something without bothering to check what was in it.

Right but if you found pictures he had printed out and kept you'd be concerned

A cloud back-up isn't remotely the same thing and doesn't mean he specifically chose to back up those photos, so it's not equivalent to printing out at all.

But honestly, if I'd gone up into the loft at my partner's old house to go through his stuff, and found a dusty box of printed photos that he'd stashed up there before we met, and among the hundreds of old holiday pics and so on there were some explicit photos of an ex that had been in there for years since he put the box up in the loft years ago... no, I wouldn't be concerned about that because it would clearly just be a forgotten bunch of pics of someone's tits in a box he hadn't opened or checked since before we met.

Quite a convenient drip feed that you would have mentioned in the OP, where instead you originally claimed the most recent one was 2020.

If your partner carried minge pictures of his ex around in his pocket for him to look at whenever he liked, I'm fairly sure you'd be a bit put out.

particularly if they have been saved to special places recently, by a man who can use them whenever he likes to jerk off

You're massively projecting here. You don't know he considered this a 'special place' or how he saved them or whether he's been accessing them. You're just inventing your own interpretation and it almost sounds like you're turning it into a weird little fantasy at this point. You're adding a whole ton of detail that you're simply inventing.

No. If you bulk upload from a hard drive to the cloud, it will be dated on the day you upload it. That isn't 'recreating' it.

But that isn't what's happening here, or anything even close to it. Again, you're just imposing your own idea of what's happened with zero evidence that this is what went on. You don't seem to understand how any of this works or what it means. It's just projection and it makes no sense.

And you sound like a PIck Me girl, but here we are.
If trying to explain why intimate pictures are problematic means I've in a fantasy to you, it explains a lot.

Why didn't you mention the photos from two years ago in your first post?

Anyway, if you don't trust him, dump him.

Nasty. It’s possible to have a discussion with another poster without using a derogatory and misogynist insult.

Shouldn’t have been snooping.

If these photos are all from before you met then there’s nothing you can do really.

But maybe don’t let him take such picture of you, in case you break up, if he’s gonna keep them till the end of time 😬

I don't think @ItGhoul sounds like a "pick me girl" (ridiculous term anyway). I agree with @ItGhoul . Having some old photos on a cloud storage that may not have been looked at for years is not a red flag in my opinion. When I got together with my DH, I didn't immediately go through all my online and physical photos of my ex and destroy them. In fact, I've never done that! I still have them and never look at them but I'm keeping them.

Op what does your gut tell you? Do you feel safe in the relationship? Do you trust what he Is saying? Has he truly heard your concern?

It's your relationship and you can have whatever boundaries you both agree on. In mine phones and all devices are open policy neither of us would care if anyone took a deep dive. Both of us also know we don't have explicit videos or photos hidden/forgotten about somewhere. Or any secrets for that matter. Exes maybe but nothing we wouldn't feel comfortable talking about. If my partner asked me to delete something I'd not think twice. Why would I not want to make my partner feel heard chosen and safe.

If you was to ask your partner to delete them what do you think their response would be?

I logged into my Google images the other day and found photos of me from secondary school with my ‘high school sweetheart’ . it means nothing. I will never see issues with people keeping photos of previous partners as just because it ended doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. You’re allowed to relive the memory of viewing photos, I don’t see why people are so weird about it just because they’re exes