This has a lot of context necessary. I really don't have anywhere else to ask about this because of how many sensitive, private things are involved and I'm still not sure how I feel. Please be gentle
Background: husband and I been together 5 years, married a few months now, baby very shortly on the way. When we first met we were both very different people. I was working as an escort on and off, and disclosed this to him. He seemed oddly okay with it, and I suspected he had been a client of escorts, which looking at his social media confirmed. However when I asked him upfront, he claimed it was just one time. I later learned through speaking with escorts I knew this was not the case - it was at least several and he was well known to boot. This was the first major thing he concealed from me. I was still confused how I felt about the sex industry at this point and over the course of the next year we both felt worse about my working in that industry and I stopped. We developed quite strongly critical views of the industry, both prostitution and porn, from the perspective of women involved in it and what we view as detrimental effects on mental health/behaviour from those using it. This was informed by my personal experience on my end, about which I was very open about, and he talked a bit about why he had been a client and that he saw it as an immature way to behave and not acceptable. I was always very grateful that I found someone who was so accepting of my past and grew with me through (I thought) mutual honesty and respect.
When we talked about our sexual histories/relationships, he told me he had been involved in the sex party scene at university, and had often been a third for older couples, he also said he was offered the chance to do porn in Japan by a producer which he declined. He has a stable professional career which he has focused on instead. I never probed how or why he ended up in those circles, I took him at face value.
The second big lie/concealment was several times over the next 2 years. Through accidentally encountering notifications on his phone that sparked my suspicion, I then (mental health much worse at the beginning of relationship) looked through his phone and found he had a habit of messaging and even buying gifts for porn stars through their online wishlists. Sometimes quite expensive gifts, some of which he had brought for me on our second date.. More than once I confronted him about this, he responded by apologising and vowing to change, and it kept happening. I stopped confronting him about it and over the next year while I worked on myself through therapy, he to my knowledge seemed to have given it up. He abandoned a lot of his former habits and behaviours, as did I (with regards to self destructive habits), and we became closer and very stable, eventually becoming engaged after some years of stability and no further incidents. We have been very happily boring and married since.
This year I became pregnant, and began to worry about my past catching up with me, as I have known other women be blackmailed/exposed for working in the sex industry before. I never showed my face online, but I still worried. I also have trauma from that time and have been unable to discuss this fully with therapists. I can't afford private therapy and don't want to be flagged as an unfit mother for my past on NHS. By chance last night I found a website which performs searches based on facial recognition. I thought I would see if anything dodgy came up with my face, and luckily it didn't, I am extremely private. Just out of curiosity I put my husband's picture through. The website found screenshots from porn videos. I checked it was him, and it was. He wasn't having full sex or being aggressive - in fact he was a submissive, which again was new to me- and he was obviously very young, about 20. This was well over a decade ago but still being shared around (low views relatively, but still) as recent as this last year. To be honest I felt sick less because of the sexual context but because of how young he was and he looked sort of passive. It also was such a stupid thing for him to do, and I did stupid things at that age too, but anyone who wanted to could find this.
My first instinct was to wake him up and tell him calmly that by accident I had found he had been in some porn videos and I worried someone would join up the dots in the future. It was about 4am. He said something about how he's sure there's things about me I haven't told him and went back to sleep then off to work. I sent him a long message letting him know I wasn't angry or anything, just a bit worried, and also that I felt strange he had never mentioned this in our many conversations about both ourselves and the sex industry. I said I loved him and wanted to know every part of him, because it scares me that other people know things about him I don't. That I have told him everything about myself, if not always the minute detail of how I felt exactly. Which is true. He hasn't looked yet, he's at work so it's not the right time I guess.
I felt very empty today and detached. I am alone at home on mat leave. I tried to distract myself. I have just now started to feel some new emotion developing, where I am worrying about the extent of what else he might be concealing from me. How he rationalises why he doesn't need to mention things to me. And a bit of anger that I have been so warts and all about my life, and he never mentioned this. Knowing who he is now, I guarantee he feels ashamed of it, but I am ashamed of much of my past and shared it with him out of a desire for honesty, because I think love is based on truly knowing someone and growing with them, through and past difficult or unpleasant things. I feel like a mug in a way. I think he thinks if he pretends something never happened it didn't. But that puts me at a disadvantage. Because I think, who are you? Our past doesn't define us but it informs us.
Like I said I'm really not sure how I feel about it and I'm trying to keep calm and allow him to talk about it when he's ready. But he probably won't ever be ready, and he's adept at putting up emotional walls. He will likely distance himself from me which at this point in my pregnancy will be hard.
Do you think couples need to be completely honest with each other? Given the context of my own life, do you think it's okay for him to hide this, or is it his right to keep private?
Please be gentle I know this is a very salacious topic but this is my life and my family and it's very confusing.