Husbands Instagram. Urgh.

[JustAnotherManDoingManThings]

Been with my husband 20yrs.
We broke up for a few years in about 2018 but been back together about 5 years.

I've never really been an Instagram person, had an account for browsing but not really a poster.
DH has an account and its private. Because I don't really use it I've never paid much attention but I have asked him to add me quite a few times because he posts photos on there and I've seen his page before whilst he is on there, and he's my husband so was interested!

Am perimeno so having some bad insomnia lately and for some reason he left his phone on my side table last night so I did the stupid thing and looked.

All his photos are normal family orientated and hobby/interests photos.

But then i clicked on his 'following' and Im just so sad. So many cosplaying women in skimpy outfits. Voluptuous, large breasted women.
And a load of female tattoo artists?! He hates tattoos!

I am having a really hard time with my body lately. I've lost a lot of weight (125lbs) and my body and excess skin is a mess :(
I used to have big boobs but they are 90% gone now and are very saggy and point downwards. I already had very little confidence before this.

I'm just so fucking sad and disappointed in him. Its just so fucking stereotypical and cringy.

He's never cheated on me in 20 years. I don't think its anything like that and i checked his inbox and theres nothing there from any women, just his male mates but Im just sad.

I feel like I don't ever want to have sex with him again TBH.
Im nothing like any of those women. Its not like hes following saggy skinned middle aged women like me. I can never be like all those women. They all look the same, very obviously has a type, thats what gets his rocks off and theyre absolutely nothing like me.

Why do men have to do this shit?? I don't have a fucking account following a load of buff firemen and shit. I don't need that.

Am just lay here now and don't know what to do. Whether to say something or not.

What's the point? He will say it's not cheating or they're old accounts he followed ages ago or something (well you've had 5 years to delete them!)

I know people will be along to say its normal and if hes not messaging them I shouldnt care, but I do. Its made me feel utterly shit.

Well I certainly won't as I've explained what makes a pervert in my previous comments, don't meet the criteria I'm afraid. 🙃

So is what's really upsetting you that he's following lots of women full stop, or that he's following women that don't look like you? How would you feel if it was the same number of women with bodies like yours?

Because if it is just that they seem opposite of you- none of my ex's were the type of guy I "fancy" in the media - I can't explain it well but that definitely doesn't mean I didn't find my boyfriends attractive. I can understand the confidence knock but it doesn't mean he doesn't fancy you too! (fancy sounds immature, but "lust over" sounds gross and I don't know what else to call it!)

However if the fact he is following a bunch of women full stop is giving you the ick (which is valid), that's not at all relevant information and is something very hard to undo 🤷‍♀️

Play him at his own game and follow some hot men.
Get excess skin removal surgery and focus on yourself from now. Fuck him. He’s shown what he really likes

What’s your issue with a man having a wank bank. You can’t seriously be suggesting women should control whay men see so they can control over what fhey think about when masturbating.

some views on here are Really disturbing.

What a load of absolute nonsense. And, how dare you suggest the people who you disagree with you must be quite unattractive?

All of the women excusing their husband's porn use/instagrams must be very low self esteem and quite unattractive to be so non chalant about this, or maybe from a different era where turning a blind eye to a man's indiscretions was more accepted because you couldn't expect to get better.

What a bitchy, nasty thing to say.

Not as disturbing as the women who hijack the thread of a clearly very upset woman simply to invalidate her feelings and make her feel even more shit than she already did. But here we are...

And you can't seriously be suggesting that it's acceptable for a married man to be following half naked women on Instagram.

Is the bar really set that low these days?

"What's your issue with a man having a wank bank"

Honestly, really - I think this thread has been taken over by men's rights activists.

That, or the bar is sub-floor level for women's expectations of their male partners.

OP i hope you are ok.

What are you on about?

Yup. absolutely grim. OP do not let any be gaslight you into thinking this is okay or in anyway normal

You looked, now you can never forgot, you already broke up, and that shows you aren’t the right people for each other.

Men looking at images of attractive women, and vice versa, is 100% normal.

I’m so sorry! I quoted the wrong username.
Sorry xx

No problem!

Exactly. Just because some women have a low bar doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.

Well done you!! Jesus the bar is low for some women.

Even if she looked just like these other women, she would still be justified to be annoyed and sad about it. It's disrespectful to do this to a partner and a bit grim really.

Why is it on women to turn themselves into unfeeling, cold people with a steel-like ego & self-esteem?? Just so that men can salivate at other women? Why must our needs revolve about what's convenient for them and what kind of thigh-rubbing they want to do??

This isn't just about seeing other women or finding other women circumstantially attractive. It's about the fact that he is in effect collecting these women on an app which allows direct contact with those women, and not only that - they can see his account and send messages to him too, if they wanted to.

That's the strong appeal of Instagram and why it works so well as a porn machine - it's tantalising for men to know that those women can see their likes, that those women can see them looking at their stories. It allows people to pass messages to each other with actually sending a worded message and that kind of micro-cheating and adulterous behaviour. It fuels a sort of intimacy that they wouldn't get from watching other types of porn online.

No - following lots of women where they can have easy & direct contact with them is a very modern phenomenon. It may be normal for Gen Z and some Millennials, but the only reason why this may have become the norm in your social circle maybe, is because the men have set the bar that low, and now women have not choice but to accept that or consider being single.

At no other time has it been normal or possible for men to follow the sheer number of women they do today. At no other time has it been so easy for them to be overly preoccupied by women who aren't their significant other, including knowing what they did at the weekend, what they eat, what they like and other minutiae of their lives.

Before, that kind of preoccupation would have been much harder work and time consuming to obtain that level of information about someone. Now men can do this when they're in bed, when they're sat on the toilet or even when they're with their partners. Before, a man would have had to give a woman his number and had to find time to have extended conversations on a landline. He would have had to justify why he was having 11pm calls with another woman. Now they can exchange long messages with other women whilst they're in bed, with ease.

The lack of boundaries and opportunities it presents is I'm sure fantastic for men, but makes many women sad and anxious. Women are left feeling like they are abnormal, or jealous, feeling like they just need to squash reasonable emotional responses in order to fit in with what men want, when what they're feeling is perfectly natural.

If they're women, I wonder what their age group is. I wouldn't be surprised if they're either Gen X or much older women that had to accept adulterous, slimey behaviour under the 'boys will be boys' reasoning.

With some of the dismissive posts I've read so far, I can hear echoes or when women might have told other women that she shouldn't be threatened by her husband visiting a brothel, that all men do it, that it's only natural, and as long as he comes home to her, that's what counts.

Easy to say- skin removal surgery is very expensive ! Hard to get on NHS. Most have to put up with it

Your posts are brilliant.
If the women are insecure, its men like this making us so.

I think you’re addressing a different issue from the one I was talking about.

Looking at attractive people isn’t new. Men and women have always noticed attractive people, celebrities, actors, musicians, models, colleagues, neighbours, and so on.

What is new is social media giving people unprecedented access to large numbers of attractive strangers, along with opportunities for interaction and parasocial relationships.

If your argument is that social media can encourage unhealthy preoccupation or create boundary issues within relationships, I think that’s a reasonable discussion to have. But that’s different from saying that finding other people attractive, or even looking at pictures of attractive people, is somehow abnormal.