Found video on DH’s ipad, naked woman, not me.

[LidlLife]

For background, DH and I, both late 30’s, two kids in primary school, steady relationship, I’d consider us both happy, general life demands, nothing out of the ordinary.

Was on DH’s ipad this morning, I know the passcode, he knows I know the passcode. He only really uses it for watching sport on, I wanted to use it to look at the hotel we’ve booked for next year, it’s easier to see it on a bigger screen than on my phone.

Anyway, I looked at the photo album on there, there are pictures and videos of the kids when they were tiny and I look at them every now and again, when I use the ipad, which is infrequent, maybe twice a year.

Anyway, there was a video on there of a woman, looks to be homemade, not porn, being touched intimately, she is awake and aware by the looks of it. Graphic, nothing left to the imagination, the video was about a minute long.

That video wasn’t there last time I looked at the photo album. It’s got the geographical tag on it and it’s the area DH lived before we got together and the video has a date of 2015 on it, so I assume it’s him and an ex. It was at the bottom of the screen of pictures/videos so I assume it’s been added to the ipad recently. That’s how my camera roll is laid out on my phone, new things are at the bottom. So he’s obviously kept it for a long time, on his phone maybe? I don’t know the phone passcode.

I feel a bit sick about it all, why has he got a video like this? It it him and an ex? Does she know he’s still got the video? I can’t tell if I’m under or over reacting but I’m so uncomfortable about it.

I don't think you are over reacting at all.

You use his pad with his consent, you know his password, and presumably he knows you view family photos on there. So I think it's entirely reasonable for you to ask him why he has kept this video footage and why he has obviously been looking at it recently.

I'm very anti porn so any porn would be a big issue for me but if he is using images of his ex as home made porn that is very big personal betrayal of you imo.

Yeah I mean it is his ipad, he bought it, he uses it the most but with full knowledge that I also use it adhoc.

It’s upsetting me cos does she know he has this footage, why has he kept it so long, where has he had it kept, what else does he have, why move it from, I assume, his phone, to the ipad? I know that it’s only him that can answer things.

Its made me sad, altered my view on him. I’m also anti porn and this crosses another barrier in addition to that because if it is him with someone in the video then it’s him getting himself off to his ex? Is it about her as a person? About the sex? Ugh. I don’t know.

I think you should talk to him about it. If you know him well enough your gut will tell you whether his reaction points to guilt.

I’m not techy enough to know for sure but I think this could have been deleted from his device but kept ‘in the cloud’ and then accidentally redownloaded recently. If so I would have sympathy with this but still awful for you to see.

If he had been actively saving this video all these years or redownloaded on purpose recently I would consider it a betrayal.

I once found a sex video of my DH with his ex on his laptop but we had only been together a few months. He deleted it straight away and said he forgot it was on there. I believed him and we were still in the early days of our relationship so it didn’t feel like a betrayal at the time. If I found it now I would be very upset.

You need to talk to him. It’s bad enough he kept it this long, but even worse that he’s transferred it to a different device.

Maybe he had it on his phone and it reappeared on his iPad after a sync or something, just ask him directly and tell him it’s unacceptable and he needs to delete any trace of explicit videos/pics from his past.

You need to speak to him, but it points to him having kept private sexual videos of himself with his ex and I can only assume ‘using them’ while married to you. A huge betrayal to you but also to his ex, who I'm sure consented to the video at the time, but is unlikely to consent to it being viewed now. I'd be mortified if I was the ex.

I hate porn, but at least that's an impersonal fantasy. This would feel worse because it's a person he's been intimate with in the past and has had a connection with. It would definitely be crossing a line for me.

To speculate I would guess she does know he has the footage, but probably never gave it any thought since they separated - why does he still have it - possibly he only recently found it again and saved it to his gallery, maybe he was looking for something else and found it, maybe he was having a clear out of old messages and decided to keep this one, maybe he enjoyed watching it again. It's not porn, so don't mix up the issues, but if he's watched it to masturbate to that's very dodgy both in terms of his respect for you and also for her.
Personally I would not be going nuclear or asking questions I wouldn't want the answer to about his masturbation habits but I would tell him I found it and tell him it's disrespectful to both of you to keep them and he should delete everything now.

I sympathise with the shock of seeing a video like this, but this has nothing to do with internet porn. He’s not going to spiral into addiction by watching a video of himself pleasuring a woman he was dating previously.

You need to speak with him and tell him how you feel if it’s upsetting you. Hopefully he’ll delete it without question and that’ll be the end of it.

Yeah I’m not techy at all, he was away at the weekend with family and I know the ipad went with them as he watched the traitors on the train on it. I looked at the internet history on it after I found the video and it’s got searches for activities in the place that they visited, nothing dodgy. Maybe it’s something that’s accidentally transferred? Is that a thing?

You’re right, I need to speak to him or it’ll eat me up, frustratingly I’m on night shift tonight and tomorrow, he gets in from work at 5 and I leave at 6:30, the in between bit usual meal time choas with a family. So it’s going to have to wait til Wednesday before we have time to have a chat where the kids aren’t about (and likely interrupting) and I can gauge his response.

I’m not conflating porn with taking videos within the context of a relationship, I’m just assuming it’s him in the video, all I can see is the man’s hand, not sure if it’s DH’s or not, I’m just assuming it is his hand.

No issue with him masturbating, it’s normal and healthy, I do have an issue if it’s done to a video of him and his ex though. It’s disrespectful.

You should ask him. Sounds like taken before you got together so no cheating worries.

Honestly I would much prefer my partner to jack off to videos of consenting exes (or me) than online porn which is filled with women who are underage and / or trafficked.

Would it be more respectful if it were a stranger on the internet?

I'm quite big on consent and very worried about women being trafficked and abused in the porn industry so I'd prefer if it were an ex who had consented to be honest. But I get you may feel differently.

Did the ex consent to the video being watched forevermore? Would she consent if asked today?
I'm pretty laissez faire about my DH being attracted to other women at times but I wouldn't like him masturbating to an actual video of someone he used to be with. It's not respectful to the current relationship nor to the previous partner unless explicit ongoing consent was given (and making the video in the context of a relationship doesn't equal indefinite consent!)

This isn’t about him using online porn though is it. He knows my feeling about online porn, which are the same as yours. It’s not about which type of video I would prefer him to watch. I’d prefer him to watch neither let alone me find a video of it first thing in the morning.
It’s about why has this video popped up on the ipad now? Has it been done on purpose or some sort of techy thing that someone else might have an idea about.

Im sounding out and working through my feeling and response to it.

So I have been in my job a long time.

Recently I used my non work laptop to write a deck for another role. I've not looked at the photos on it for 9 years. I went in the photos after saving a screenshot.

Photos of me and my ex (not explicit) popped up on my iCloud. If my partner had seen it they'd be wondering why they're there. Obviously I can easily explain it and they'd be fine.

Sounds like this is the same. Question is, if he explained it as similar to the above would you be a well rounded enough person to understand?

Yes I think so; if it’s a techy thing and it’s explainable then I would be ok with that as a reason why it was on the ipad. Like I say, I’m am not techy at all, he is an office worker and much more skilled with it.

I would want to know why DH has kept the videos and if there are more. For me, I would be very uncomfortable knowing that he had further explicit pics and would need for him to delete those. If he had forgotten about them (and I can see that being something he would do) and it’s been a glitch, then fine. I need talk to him and see what he’s like when he explains.

It sound like a random iCloud sync to me! This is the problem with having devices linked with the same ID but there is no other way to do it. But my phone, iPad and Apple Mac are all linked together and things appear on the other devices all the time. My son had it where his what’s app was automatically saving photos into his iPad photo album and it sync a years worth of photos

Apple products sometimes showcase random shit from many moons ago in the ‘collections’ tab on the camera roll, could it be that?

I’ve just looked on my own collections tab and it’s got a random photo of a Highland coo, holiday photos from 2018 and photos of the cat I lost in 2015, so what it chooses to display in there is seemingly random. My guess is it’s still on his iCloud library, he may have totally forgotten it was there and it’s come up as a ‘memory’ 😩

However, you are going to have to ask him because I too would be utterly furious until I had an explanation.

If you could stumble on this video accidentally, so could your primary aged kids, and that is the angle I'd be most angry about.

It depends if his phone is synced with his tablet or not, either way the video would have had to have been on the phone in the first place.

He has downloaded this video to his phone or iPad. Your phone/ipad sync so if you download on one, it downloads to the other.

It wouldn’t just appear without him having to download it from somewhere (and no, it wouldn’t just appear). If it’s homemade of an ex, it’s come from his cloud storage.

He won’t admit it, he’ll play on your lack of tech knowledge and probably spew lots of confusing things at you to confuse you more and explain it away.

He is masterbating to this. That is why it’s there. He’s done it before and may have other videos too, he just forgot to delete it off both devices. Have you checked the deleted items to see if there are anymore in there?

The kids can’t access the ipad unless we put them on it, they don’t have the passcode and the only thing they use it for is TT rockstars. But you’re right, depends how long the video has been in the file for.

Not on the collections bit, just in the library. My phone does the collections things as well, groups together holidays etc.

im going to have a chat with him when he gets home from work and I’m going to need reassurances that he’s either not got other videos or that he will delete them.

On the whole he’s a standard family man, trustworthy, hard working, we share similar values etc so I’m hoping that this is an oversight on his part with an unfortunate tech glitch.

If it's someone he knows, it's not porn and him having it is not your business. Seems unlikely she doesn't know he has it.

If he's masterbating over an an ex, that's wrong!

You can see on screen time when it was viewed and for how long for. There is data for everything I'd be checking there first because it would be incredibly easy for him to lie.

Let's hope it's just a mistake but I'd want the facts. Why would he of kept it in the first place? Both me and my husband deleted everything of ex partners very early days. This is a very explicit video he will of known it existed and should of deleted it.