My boyfriend lusted over other women

[anan302]

Hi everyone, it's my first time posting here (or anywhere) about this topic. I've never been too keen on forums but I have no one to talk to about this and I really need an advice/a new set of eyes. I'm 19 and my boyfriend is 20. We've been together for 3 and a half years, we've been very mature about the relationship and it was only getting better. We communicate our problems and feelings the correct way. Now, my stance on a s/o looking at pictures of other women and doing his ..thing.. to them isn't the best. I was never trying to be controlling but I'd ask him kindly if he could unfollow girls that he didn't know/spoke to. However, a specific girl was in his searches on Instagram yesterday and my heart sank. I already knew what it meant. The same girl he unfollowed 3 years ago. He remembered her user, searched it up, did his thing. I immediately started crying while he was just there..looking at me helplessly. After we both calmed down I tried to get any answer out of him, but I'm not sure if I should trust what he says. There was a time when I saw random Reddit nudes on his phone while he was scrolling through his gallery, hurt me a lot but I gave him a chance. But this to me is different, this is a real person that he could go and meet or talk to, this isn't a celeb or a pornstar..His explanation was that after our argument a few days ago, he was stressed and needed to do it, he said it was a dumb thing to do and that he felt gross and awful immediately after along with other sappy things he wanted me to hear. I'm not sure why some men do that, or if they even do. Is this a valid explanation or am I overreacting? The thing that bugs the most is that he has a whole folder of my pictures, and even if he didn't want to look at me then he could've used porn or a celeb, not someone so easily available to him. The girl doesn't look anything like me, in my opinion she's prettier, has a better body, bigger boobs and everything that men would generally find hot. I'm glad I'm not in a situation where he actually went and did something physical with someone (but now I can't be sure he didn't already without telling me) but this still bugs me so much that I don't know if I should stay. My confidence is gone, my trust and feelings towards him have completely changed, I see him and I feel disgusted, I don't know if I'll ever be able to kiss him or be intimate with him again knowing what I know now. All I think about is him looking at her face and getting off to it, and that's the worst part, it was JUST her face. He said he hates himself for it, feels disgusted and feels like throwing up. He showered me with what seem to be genuine compliments, everything that he loves about me, every detail. He said many comforting things since then but after multiple chances I gave him I don't know if I should believe that. I don't want to get hurt again. We had boundaries, he knew every single one, he knew how much I hated people that do that, he knew how much it would hurt me if he did that, he knew it all. If I accidentally didn't see his search bar, I wouldn't know. He wouldn't tell me. He didn't care until he got caught. He didn't deny it but he also didn't say unless it happened. He says it will never happen again because he feels disgusted with himself. He says he doesn't want me to leave, he doesn't want anyone else in his life, he said he wants to see how I'm doing every day, see me laugh and smile and hear my voice. This is such a hard decision to make since we've basically grown up together through our toughest times. I really don't want to hurt myself more, I can understand finding other girls hot, I find other men and women hot too!! Of course! But I just can't understand having a specific person in your head for three years and getting off to them while you have a whole girlfriend you have pictures of, who you supposedly love and don't want to lose.. Any eye opening advice would be awesome..:(

Yes, he fancies someone. He is with the OP however. There is a huge gulf between being attracted to someone and acting on it. You do not fall in love with someone and just never fancy someone else again! Of course you still find others attractive but you are an adult in a monogamous relationship, so you control yourself!

The idea that someone will only ever fancy one person forever is pure nonsense and very unhealthy!

Sure a qualified sex therapist 😁love to know more about your training and qualifications Obviously they didn’t teach you any psych 101 as we did about respecting boundaries amd womens rights to set whatever dealbreakers they like
that was one of the
regardless of whether there may be some ways to access ethical porn the reality is that the vast majority of users are not doing so
they are using the mainstream sites that are repeatedly caught with questionable content . Just look at the recent visa case

Partners can wank all they like but if they are going to support an industry that routinely exploits women and girls a woman has every right to know her partner does that and choose whether or not to be with him
of course we still find people attractive git jotging to do with making that ok

Eh?
You're responding to the wrong poster. (Again)

Where in this post has her DP ‘supported an industry that routinely exploits girls and women’, please?

This is very good advice. You are so young, 19. You should be out there living your best life, single or dating. Enjoying your time before settling down. Not worrying about stuff like this.

Whilst no one should be policing anyones private fantasies, I do see how it can be problematic.

Many years ago I (genuinely accidentally) discovered a folder of pics on my then partners PC. He had saved loads of profile pics from social media, of women he knew. Mainly just heads and shoulders but some full head and body too. Anyway, the main point were they were fairly innocuous photos that the women had uploaded onto their profiles. He had collated them all into the worlds most boring wank folder. He got off on the fantasy he created around these images rather than the images themselves, if that makes sense.

I did have a problem with him looking at photos of women he knows, there was something inherently disrespectful about it all. I'm not sure whether I'm articulating this very well or just coming off as a controlling weirdo. It's not that he was getting off at looking at another woman's image, it was that he knew them in real life, friendlier with some more than others. If they were models, film stars or random women I wouldn't have batted an eye lid. From the perspective of the women too, I know when we put our images out there who really knows where they end up but I found that really creepy. This man they viewed as "Mr Nice Guy" in turn viewed them as wank fodder.

Perhaps I'm projecting a bit from my past experiences but you don't have to be ok with something. You can't dictate that he only ever looks at your image or never casts his gaze upon an attractive female, because that would be controlling, unreasonable and unrealistic. It's not ok to go through someone's phone or invade their privacy, that is controlling and smothering. But you can put forward what you are or are not comfortable with sexually and he can do the same. As for policing it goes, well ... you don't ... you trust each other that you respect each other's boundaries without the other partner monitoring. As usual, communication is key.

Ok to me, if this girl is a friend of a friend and just had head pics, that is a completely different thing to wank to, than a random body. One is a fantasy, but if its someone he could feasibly met or has met, then that's more of a kind of aspiration and that would be a boundary crossed for me (maybe not if it was just in his head but not if he was searching out and screen shooting the poor girls profile pics).

It's a part of life that people will think about different things when they masturbated and some things that people think about will seem strange or hurtful to their partners. I dont think it means that they will actually do what they fantasised about in real life.

I'm your case though you got together when you were really young, and it might just be you have different standards of what you think is acceptable in a relationship. Neither is wrong but you might just have outgrown each other if you think differently about stuff like this. One thing I'm pretty sure about though is he doesnt think it's wrong, he will do it again but just tell you what you want to hear, because for him doing this isnt something that's wrong (I'm not sure how he would feel if it was you with a friend of a friends pics on your phone). He will just get better about deleting them etc. You can tell him how you feel but if he genuinely feels like its acceptable then he wont change. So basically you need to decide if it's something you can get past or whether it's a deal breaker

I did have a problem with him looking at photos of women he knows, there was something inherently disrespectful about it all. I'm not sure whether I'm articulating this very well or just coming off as a controlling weirdo.

For me I think the disrespectful part is that they presumably didn’t post those pictures wherever with the intention of becoming wank fodder. Intimate pictures shared in the context of a relationship-wisely or not - could reasonably be considered to be used for sexual stimulation but random Insta photos I wouldn’t expect to be collated and wanked over by someone I knew as a friend of a friend.

OP you can have whatever boundaries you feel appropriate in your relationship, but you can’t change the way others behave - if he can’t/won’t respect your boundaries your choices are to re-evaluate whether you feel your boundaries are ok with you and if they are you need to end the relationship. That’s what a boundary does, it tells us what is ok or not for us and gives us a means to remove ourselves from people who don’t respect those boundaries.

For me I think the disrespectful part is that they presumably didn’t post those pictures wherever with the intention of becoming wank fodder.

Surely women who post their pictures know that is exactly what’s going to happen!

Otherwise why would so many women take such a suggestive pictures.
The poses, lack if clothes, cleavage shots, butt out?
They know what they are doing.

Anyway, the main point were they were fairly innocuous photos that the women had uploaded onto their profiles.

@YouAreNotBatman the post I was replying to clearly said they were innocuous photos. So not posted to titillate in the way semi-nude photos are.

@Makingmelaughnow OP's upset that her boyfriend masturbated over an Instagram model instead of porn. She uses porn herself.

He sounds disgusting.
Delete all the pictures of yourself off his phone and dump him

I agree with Sunflower 987...delete, delete and delete any pictures he has of you. Revenge porn is a thing!
You're so young. If this is stressing you out you need to determine whether it's worth carrying on the relationship.
Enjoy you're life, live it the way you see fit, you're a long time dead.

You want to find a man who doesn’t fancy young hot girls?

Go on Grindr. Plenty of them.

Leave him. The whole relationship sounds off, and he sounds weird for even admitting to doing that. I can absolutely see your point in all of this. Maybe it's all completely innocent and he wouldn't cheat but the issue is, you have so many seeds of doubt in your mind now, and you're going to drive yourself insane.

This whole relationship is going to turn you into a needy, jealous, and controlling person. Cut him loose. Take some time out to be by yourself, and one day you'll meet someone who will make you feel secure and you'll never have to second guess him or yourself.

19 is so young, please do not waste your young years on a guy who makes you feel like this.

You're not comfortable with this, and are well within your rights to feel this way.
Don't let him or anyone else tell you otherwise.

The replies here are, for the most part, fucking shocking.

OP, you are not in the wrong for feeling upset that your boundaries have been crossed or for feeling insecure. Personally, I think what he's done is gross and shows an inherent lack of respect for the women in his life - he essentially reduces the attractive women he knows down to being sexualised objects and wank fodder for his own pleasure.
There's a certain sub-set of men who particularly get off on wanking over women who post every-day, innocent, photos online without intending them to be sexualised and wanked over. For the men who wank over pictures like this, they are getting off on the lack of consent. That is why he went for a woman's innocent face pictures instead of porn or your pictures. It's the thrill of getting off on someone's pictures/face without them knowing about it. That's why leaked nudes are so popular too, it's the lack of consent. It isn't that you aren't good enough compared to this other woman, it's that you aren't a taboo because you consent to being sexualised for his pleasure.

That aside, this unsettles you because now you will wonder who else in real life he is fantasising about, whether he compares you to them, whether it will escalate to eventual cheating one day if the opportunity arises. What you are most likely feeling is his disrespect towards the woman, towards you and towards your relationship, along with a bit of disgust at his lack of self-control. A lack of self-control in a partner is a deeply unsettling trait indeed.

Some women genuinely won't care about their partner's wanking habits - probably because they don't fancy their DP that much and get off on other people themselves (some of them may even be pleased their DP gets off to other people because then they don't have to have sex with him 😂)
Always read the replies here with that in mind - people often bring their own baggage in with them.

“Always read the replies here with that in mind - people often bring their own baggage in with them.“

Especially be careful of people who post with the sole purpose of complaining about other people’s posts and not realising that the above statement regarding baggage applies to one’s own post when framed as above.

Pretty much.
A large proportion of males will get themselves off on pictures/videos of other women, whether that be from; Porn, Instagram, Facebook, etc.. , and like it or not on a primitive level - are hardwired to seek out this novel sexual stimulus.
Have a look at some research on the "coolidge effect".

Personally, I wouldn't be too happy with that either, and I don't think it's wrong to be upset about it. Yes, he will find other people attractive, and yes he will probably get himself off to other women (hello, porn), but what he doesn't need to do is:

Save porn on his phone (as you said, the random Reddit pictures)
Deliberately seek out specific women (if it upsets you)
Constantly stimulate himself just because he enjoys it i.e. follow loads of ig models publicly

Everyone has boundaries with who they're comfortable with their partner getting off to whether they admit it or not. Yours seems to be that porn is fine, but people he can have a connection with aren't. It's probably better to just find someone on your own wavelength rather than continue in the relationship you're in, I'd say.

girl I am 17 and in the exact same situation. The pain and paranoia is unbearable, but he really does seem to have loved me, yet he does this when we are arguing. could you tell me what you ended up doing? I really need advice, I’m so scared of being hurt again.