Should I believe my boyfriend?

[rahrah300]

So this all started a few months ago, when I found Porn on his google drive. Previously before he had told me up to that point that he gave up watching porn but since I found the porn on his google drive he had confessed that he had only said that because I had said I gave up on watching porn and he didn’t want me to think he was weird or feel bad about myself. It was really emotional because he had never kept anything secret from me before and he was usually transparent, and I felt hurt that he had lied but he asked for my forgiveness and I drew my boundaries with porn ( because previously we had never had a discussion about it up until then and where we both stand on it) I said I wasn’t comfortable with pictures but videos were ok because I also watched videos and he agreed and he showed me proof of him deleting the files of pictures, and now whenever I want to check he shows me screenshots of his drive and his other storage apps and camera roll to assure me he was respecting my boundaries. One thing that happened while I had found his porn files as I was looking at them I saw a picture of his ex’s sister (I knew it was in there wayy before we had started dating or liked each other because we were friends for so long so it was uploaded before we had started reconnecting or liking each other) I asked him if he had masturbated to it while we were dating ( I asked him when I first found out and it was a very emotional and stressful time). And at first he said yes, which lead me to fill in the blanks and imagine the worst case scenario, I then asked him if he meant that he went on her picture specifically and masturbated and to explain himself and he had said that it wasn’t like that but when he would scroll through his pictures while he was masturbating he saw it twice and felt guilt he saw it. I then further asked him questions is if when he saw it if he was actually masturbating while seeing it, and he said no, he was doing it before to the other pictures and then when he saw it was her picture he felt extremely weird and stopped and then scrolled away. He told me he saw it another time but he immediately scrolled past it. I then asked him why he said yes to my question and he thought merely seeing the picture while masturbating counted as masturbating to it. I asked him why he didn’t further explain at first that it happened the way he explained and he said it was because at the time he felt extremely guilty and bad about lying about the porn and he didn’t want to defend himself ( he did feel extremely guilty and I could tell it really impacted him because at the time he told me how disgusting he felt)( he also has GAD which makes him trying to explain stuff while his anxious even worse). I am also anxious and I believe him but sometimes I tend to overthink and think “what if he isn’t telling me the truth” and I question him. I have questioned him for the past few months about it and his story did not change. Is it naive for me to believe him?

[rahrah300]

Just to clarify: since he would scroll through his photos he told me that’s why he even saw it in the first place he never purposefully went on it. He also told me he never bothered to delete any of his porn since there was so many pictures and when saw it he would just scroll past it.

[Heather]

Hey there, rahrah.

I've just also caught up with your previous posts, and I have a few thoughts.

One big one that jumps out at me is that it doesn't sound to me like you two have a great setup here for your boyfriend to feel all that comfortable being honest, so I guess I'm not all that surprised he hasn't been fully transparent. Between his anxiety disorder, and how this has gone so far and been so grounded you "catching him" in things, not to mention that if I have this right, the "rules" around all of this are being set primarily around what your own porn use is, which feels a little one-sided to me, this just all doesn't sound like a great setup for you two to have both good boundaries around porn and masturbation as well as good communication and agreements and negotiation likely to leave you both feeling relaxed and comfortable. Get what I mean?

Personally, my best advice would be to do a full reset on ALL of this. I actually don't think it was any of your business whose picture he masturbated to in a file he didn't willingly choose to share with you but you went snooping into without permission. I'm not judging you, I'm just saying that I think the idea you're entitled to information about what he does with his body and sexual imagination entirely alone without you in that way is really problematic.

That given, I think that you both might do better, separately and together, if you could perhaps fully resent all of your conversations about porn from a different place than where they started, and leave everything about files you found that were not freely shared with you behind. Let it go. I honestly think you both will be and feel the better for it. I think some of your upset is probably about the whole vibe of this. Being in the position either of you are in really sucks, flatly. Elise suggested moving on from this whole thing in her last response to you, and I suggest the same. You said in that thread that you often get caught up in looking for "evidence" of things, but I don't see any benefit to you trying to police your partner here, or period, or staying in this role.

If you can do that, let this go and move forward, you could potentially start over by saying that you want to start over and have some talks about pornography/sexual media in your relationship: about how you both feel about it, about what agreements you each want and want to ask the other for around it, and about where you want to draw lines, too, including where your relationship ends and each of your own private sex lives with yourselves that have nothing to do with the other begins.

I can say more about this, but before I do, I want to check in and see how this is sounding and feeling to you.