He's cheating isn't he?

[Holaamigo]

I've been with my boyfriend for little over a year. Things got serious quite quick and I moved into his house after a couple months.
Things have generally been very good, we get on great, do a lot of fun stuff together and I am happy.
But, he's forever on his phone. I had noticed a lot of the messages were from girls and even though I have low self esteem, I really tried to trust him and not sneak on the messages. I had made comment a few times to them, and my suspicions increased after he then slyly deletes the messages when he thought I wasn't looking. After a few wines last night, he'd given me his phone to take pictures and I thought I would take a look. There were lots of very flirty messages, to girls he's slept with before it seems as this was referenced in the message- although I know he has a bit of a history, so I don't know when this was. The girls he had been messaging before had theirs deleted- he knew he was giving me his phone so I think he did this on purpose. Although there was no direct propositions of sex, I felt if the girl he was messaging seemed more willing he would have offered.
He seen that I was looking at the messages and was very angry. I'm in the wrong as I have completely invaded his privacy, but there's only one thing I can do now isn't there?
I'm trying to be strong and stand up for myself here, but I'm also thinking that I can forget it happened and go along living in blissful ignorance with this man. Help!

Whether he is cheating on you or not, your relationship is dead because you don't trust him.

He might be, he might not be but do you want to spend all your life worrying whether he's sleeping with someone else?

I good guy doesn't have flirty messages at all with other women. The kind of guy who does would find it an easy step to move on to cheating even if he hasn't had sex with someone else yet. He will.

Agree with PurpleDaises

I don't think he has slept with other women in our relationship. But yes, I could always think that if the chance came up then maybe he would.
I'm just sad about the whole situation, I wish things were different because otherwise it had been going so well.

He's having flirty messages because he likes the attention and he probably expects that it will lead to extra sex for him. He's trying to hide it because it's not innocent banter with friends, it's flirting with shag buddies/potential shag buddies. He's not sorry because he feels entitled, doesn't care how you feel and isn't committed to you.

Relationships that develop so quickly tend to collapse just as quickly.

For me, the flirty texts and talking about when they had sex etc IS cheating.

Today he's acted like he's genuinely sorry. We still need to have a proper talk about things though. I'm finding it hard because I'm feeling as though I'm in the wrong for snooping in the first place.