Instagram - help me understand if husband is looking at other women

[Confusedlady84]

Evening!

sorry I posted this on 30 days only but should have posted it here. Will ask for the other one to be taken down.

I’m going to lean on you lovely lot to help me get to the bottom of something that’s been playing on my mind. I’m not great on socials…so here goes. Today I saw my husband’s Instagram explore page and it was full of semi naked women. Not sports women, we are talking women dressed provocatively showing as much boob / arse as possible. So I’m guessing for so many of those images to pop up (I would say they took up 80/90% of the page) it must mean he’s looking at that content? I checked who he’s following and it doesn’t appear to be anything like that so I have a feeling he will tell me it’s just Insta throwing up suggested images unrelated to him but I don’t want to be taken for a mug because I’m not entirely sure how it works. Years ago he kept watching porn and I told him it makes me feel crap. I get that men will do what they want but it was literally an hour after we’d had sex and he was downloading so much content. I don’t know if he still watches it - we’ve gone on to have children and I haven’t been that fussed to check / question him. But today’s findings have thrown me and made me feel really rubbish. Am I right in thinking he’s looking at these women on the quiet??
TIA!

My Insta shows me dresses my DD was looking at this evening on Shein and cruises (me and DH were talking about booking one just 1 hour ago).
There is no escape from Instagram 😎
However, it may not have been him looking at these images - it could have been someone close by.

Going on a tangent a bit, my question^ is why^ do women post these barely dressed pics in the first place???

Last time I saw someone request women to stop posting in a generic post and made the point how unneeded it was, half the internet was furious about women rights and their right to wear and post what they want.

Honestly this is a crazy world. Unless someone can explain the logic here.

One word: patriarchy.

I do think his algorithm could be skewed by it selecting things based on his age and gender. And as a PP said, some pages are memes and fruity stuff so you can accidentally follow tits.

I'm getting cats and dogs, and some of the princess of wales

My Insta page shows dogs, cats, animal welfare, feminist issues and interior design, exactly what I follow and am interested in. It occasionally shows me something I have no interest in so I mark it as not interested and tend not to be shown similar content again. If his page is full of scantily clad women then that’s what he is looking at and interested in.

Women do have the right to post pictures of themselves, no one is being forced to look at them or follow them, it’s a choice.

This was in response to the PP wondering why women would post their pictures.

Name changed for this.

I am one of those Insta women. I have a separate account where I post those kinds of pics because I'm into kink, proud of my body and because it's fun. I follow other women and men who also post those types of pics (you'd be surprised how many men actually do). Mine are more arty than gratuitous. Why do I post those sort of pics - because I can that's all.

To the OP my suggested feed is full of those type of posts because that's who follows me and who I follow. Your partner has or is definitely interested in those types of photos. They never show up on my everyday Insta account because the algorithm wouldn't pick that up. On my everyday account I get cat videos and astrology ones. No Insta babes or Insta dudes at all.

Oh such a mix of responses! thank you so much for replying. Weird how for some people random stuff pops up and for others it’s pretty much related to what they’ve been looking at. I do wonder if he’s been looking up women (porn etc) on his phone and Instagram has taken that and showed him loads of women?! The other day I was googling ankle boots and now my Facebook is full of ads for boots 🙄 I think I need to have another look and see what pops up this time. If I ask him outright he will definitely deny deny deny.

I think it’s bothering me so much because my confidence is pretty low about my body and so it’s just highlighted a big difference to me what he likes / gets off on and what I look like naked after children. My own self esteem issues I know ☹️ It would also piss me off that he will be looking at this stuff from home. I often sleep in with the children etc if one has a nightmare and let him sleep alone undisturbed so I’ve got visions of him laying in bed having a good gawp.

I don't use Insta as I personally don't like it much, so I'm old school and have stuck to Facebook!! I believe their algorythms work in similar ways though. I get ads based on what I look at, however I also get ads for dating sites, I haven't been near one in over 9 years. I do think that men are targeted for these type of accounts far more than women too

Alternative word: profit.

Both linked I feel!

It brings up deeper tensions in the relation OP.
You said he was watching a lot of porn before when you found out? That can feel like a massive betrayal in itself and the feelings of partners of constant porn use are often completely minimised and shamed by the porn user and others.
How did he react when you called him out on it and did he have any empathy for you?

*relationship not relation!

@WandaWomblesaurus He was watching a lot of porn when we first moved in together - I presume he was watching lots before then too but I just didn’t know 😀 I found loads on his laptop when I used it for work and I found it on several occasions months apart. He knew how upset I was as I told him and he was apologetic but I don’t think fully understood my issue with it. He said he wouldn’t do it any more but of course he did. We were sleeping together daily too and our sex life was really good, fancied each other like mad - I just didn’t understand why he would have the need to look up stuff? I was in the bedroom asleep while he was doing it in the living room/ bathroom which also made me feel a bit ick. I told him it felt a bit like cheating in a way, that I was having sex with him but he needed other women to get off to at the same time. He couldn’t really give a reason why, just said sorry. Anyway I didn’t give it much thought since - life and children etc got in the way and I imagined he would have been looking at porn when our sex life took a hit (post birth etc) I think it just surprised me yesterday being confronted with soooooo many pics of bums / breasts and women bending over etc. I don’t want him touching me, now all I’m thinking is he must be picturing all these women while we have sex? It’s really put me off! I also feel like shouting at him that he’s no stud and I don’t go hunting pics of sexy men to get my kicks while he looks after our kids in the room next door!

just checked mine and just got stuff that's loosely related to what i look at no naked anything on there.

Insta uses algorithms, so what you search for online will also appear in your feed, just like Facebook.

HOWEVER, it also selects stuff that is not related to what you search for online and instead bases your feed on your age, sex, location etc.

a man between 18 and 50 will get ‘sexy stuff’ regardless if they have searched for it as insta believe that is what men of this age want to see.

insta knows that a woman of the same age isn’t going to like it quite so much and as there is far less scantily clad men than woman these sorts of feeds are rare.

my feed is full of ‘woman’. It’s not stuff a man could wank off but it would still be classed as sexy I guess. My work Instagram, predominantly centres around my business but there are still a couple of woman feeds as insta still knows I’m a 38 year old male!

I get cute silly cats and dogs, and things about people with a disability learning to walk again or do fun stuff despite their condition etc (because I randomly like to see that and watch a couple of channels of people doing that.)

I get content related to what I've clicked Like on basically.

But PP's report that insta just does this to men, so I guess you can't tell whether it's something he's doing. It doesn't sound impossible if he has a history of porn.

Forgot to mention you can see what posts the account has liked and/or commented on if you have control of the account. Go into the account settings (the three parallel lines at the top right) and look at activity. This will show what pictures have been liked and if he left any comments.

@JIMMI85 Thanks for a male perspective! When you say “sexy stuff” but not wank bank stuff, what does that entail? As the pics that popped up on my husband’s feed were all huge fake breasts and underwear (or barely any underwear!) and I can imagine he would only be viewing them for one thing 🤦‍♀️

@Downunderduchess thank you for the tip! Would be difficult to go snooping. I know I should just ask but he will question why I was looking in the first place and it was genuinely innocent with my daughter thinking his pals pics would pop up not millions of women 😆 I also think he will deny it and I may come across as an insecure woman who can’t bear her husband looking at women with better bodies - which I guess I am. Well now I am anyway!!

Why would a man use those sorts of images to masturbate to when he can easily find much more pornographic stuff online for free though?

it’s like comparing the lingerie section on the Ann summers website to pornhub. I guarantee the number of men that wank over Ann summers lingerie models is tiny.

I'm just using the above as an example but my point is, even if he is purposely following these types of accounts it’s highly unlikely he’s using them to wank over

@JIMMI85 true! I just can’t imagine why else he would be looking at those images. I doubt it’s for research purposes 😀 In my head I think he’s using anything he can to have a good perv - I’m sure he’s on porn websites too but this is just an extra platform to look at hot women. I suppose it probably makes scrolling through Instagram a bit more interesting!

I'm just using the above as an example but my point is, even if he is purposely following these types of accounts it’s highly unlikely he’s using them to wank over

Men aren't following those accounts for any other reason, if they're for instance an adult star's account.

I assume they don't follow them for inspiring spiritual content or something.

Same goes for men following scantily clad female 'influencers' etc.

They are following because they like what they see physically. Sometimes they probably have a wank over it if a particular pic does it for them at the right moment. Either way, they're highly likely to be just there because they like the woman's face/body.