Partner's ex is still in touch

[80smusiclover]

Hello lovely people, hope you can help :)
My partner & I have been together for 18 months. I hide absolutely nothing from him, we've a good relationship and I trust him. We don't live together but are in touch a lot during the day and see each other 2/3 times a week, stay over etc.
I was single for a long time when we met and he had been split from his ex for 3 years. It just fizzled out with his ex and he stopped loving her. She had health problems that affected their relationship (intimately and otherwise). They were together for 5 years. Just the other day when he was at mine he went for a lie down and I plugged his phone in to charge it and......don't ask me why....... I looked at his messages. I know, I know !!!! I admit it was completely wrong of me. I'm completely ashamed at myself for doing it. I just don't know why I did......curiosity perhaps ?
Anyway, I found a message from his ex. It was from 4 weeks ago. The first message was from him saying 'I had a missed call, everything ok?' I know she had health issues and so did her mum but my heart sank that he was so ok about her being in touch. Then she texts him saying her mum had a rough year last year and it's been making her think about those who are precious to her and how he keeps popping into her mind and she thinks of him often. She then sent him a funny animated video saying this is what reminds her of their relationship. She also said 'tell me if you don't want me to bother you again'. He replies saying 'I still try to think of all the good times too' (in relation to the funny animation).
Now last year both of my long term exes tried to get in touch with me and I freaked out a bit. I told him about them and showed him their messages. He asked if I wanted him to message them and tell them I was with him now (and to back off). I blocked one and sent the other a long email saying I had moved on and was happy now. They haven't been in touch since.
So now comes the problems. I'm wondering why he hasn't deleted or blocked his ex's number - I know they ended amicably, but still, he's with me now and I don't have my ex's numbers in my phone, as I said above. Why didn't he tell her 'he hopes she's ok but he's moved on and he's with me now' ? Why has he kept the messages ? And probably the most important issue of all - why hasn't he told me about her being in touch ? After I told him about my exes last year he was the one who wanted to tell them I'd moved on with him !! Why isn't he doing the same for me ? Does he still hold a torch for her, still love her ? Does he think about her often and the good times ? Is he keeping his options open ? Has she been in touch before ? Is he needing an ego boost - he's with me but his ex still thinks about him a lot and is still in touch without me knowing ?
Oh and there was another message from a woman saying 'how about meeting for a coffee/drink' - don't worry, I think that was from an old flatmate, but the problem with that one is he hasn't told me about that message either !!!
I know how it all sounds, trust me, I read it back. Makes me look like a paranoid and untrusting freak, but I'm not. Am I really being a complete idiot ? And how can I possibly bring this up and discuss it with him when I looked in his phone in the first place !! Eeek. Got myself into a right old mess I know, but any advice would be very welcome on how to approach/deal with this. It'll only eat away at me if I can't bring it up and I can't trust him and he hides things from me. It gets me thinking, what else is he hiding, that isn't in his phone........ Relationships are hard lol
Sorry for the long-winded message. Thank you for reading this far :)

You sound controlling to be honest and looking at his private messages is inexcusable. He doesnt need your permission to contact people and he doesnt need to tell you when they contact him. I hope he sees sense and walks away from this controlling toxicity.

I think if you speak to your bf every day and talk about what's going on in your lives then he should tell you his ex contacted him and he should say how he dealt with the message- I think that probably goes against the grain of the other advice here. But and it's a big but, he honestly might have felt you might be upset and wanted to shield you and just deal with it. If he's someone who generally says what he's doing in his day then I would expect him to say he's having a coffee but lots of men just don't have the chatty gene so it might be just not something he thinks is worth mentioning.
You shouldn't have snooped of course but don't beat yourself up.

I still speak to a long term ex, very platonic, we were together for a long time my mum still asks after him, his parents like to know how I’m getting on. We’ve both moved on in happy LTRs but probably have a short text exchange 2/3 times a year?

I think you tested him a bit with the way you handled messages from your exes. And you’ve took it to mean some sort of agreement between you when it wasn’t .

You would have been better to have an open conversation about keeping in touch with exes. As you can see from the replies some people don’t like it and some don’t mind. I don’t like it personally and like you I would have expected him to mention he was now in a new relationship.

But, he remained neutral about further contact and he might be a private person. You can still have that conversation and it sounds like you need to.

I agree with other posters, you assumed he would act in the same way as you. Easy mistake to make. I had similar but lesser scale with my ex. I was friends with a few people I'd been on dates with and he hated it and said it was weird! Nothing had happened with these friends,it was a few dates and then agreed to be friends.

Turns out he was chatting to 3 people he had slept with before he met me and hid the whole thing. Wouldn't have been such a massive issue if he had been upfront. Then you just think what else are they hiding!

But fact is he's not making you the priority here and that's not good enough.

He asked if I wanted him to message them and tell them I was with him now (and to back off).

Ugh.
I'd be rethinking the relationship on the strength of that alone.
he seems to believe that you are his possession & he has the right to tell other blokes you belong to him.

Maybe he likes collecting interested women & keeping them on the back burner as an ego boost. Maybe he's planning of venturing more with them. Who knows? But the double standard is nasty - he reckons you should get rid of any exes/male attention providers, but secretly does the opposite himself.

As it would be insame to admit you snooped on his phone, your pnly option is your idea of raising the previous contact from your exes & asking if he's had similar. You sound intelligent - his response should tell you everything you need to know, even if (or especially if) you have to read 'between the lines' to make sense of it.

I’d like to know more about the context of that comment before writing him off. I wonder if op approached it with him by saying she was freaked out and unnerved by an ex getting in touch and she didn’t know what to do or how to handle it and lots of hand wringing etc and he then suggested that he message them- I could understand it in that context.

If it was more of a territorial think ‘you’re with me now’ etc (as op herself is displaying) then I’d be concerned

OP looked at his phone because.

A woman is legally entitled to a man's phone and jumpers - the same way he goes through your phone and frillies. It's where he keeps his guilty secrets, not the nuclear launch codes.

Huh?
Anyway I simply don’t believe the OP looked at it because she had put it to charge (or whatever bollocks excuse she gave). OP, you were being intrusive for no reason. And if he has no lock on the phone it’s even less likely that he has anything to hide. If anything, that’s a red flag regarding you and not him.