Disclaimer: I understand it isn’t okay to look at your partners phone. Talking to my therapist about the ins & outs of that now. I’m asking for advice on how to handle what I found, not looking for a lecture on privacy laws.
I (34F) found some concerning photos in my husbands (37M) hidden photo album on iPhone. Many, many photos of women on the street (like hundreds) but it was clear they were unaware they were being photographed. Mostly innocuous pictures of just women walking or standing in a group, but it was always women.
I wasn’t sure how to talk about it (especially because I looked at his phone) so I just tried to forget about it. We live in a college town and this weekend we went to a big football game with a group of friends and walked around campus. After a few hours in, I noticed his phone was in his hand doing what I now realize to be taking photos. It looks very natural and obviously I’ve never noticed it before, but he holds his arms casually by his sides, with his phone in his hand camera facing out. It looks like he is just holding his phone in his hands, but now I know what he is doing.
I’m not sure there is anything inherently wrong with it, but something about it just makes me feel icky and gives me that pit in my stomach that’s hard to ignore. Also the fact that he was doing it in a large group of people feels weird to me.
I’m not against telling him what I saw, I’m okay with fessing up to looking through his phone, but I’m not even sure how to talk about this or explain why it makes me feel so gross. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
5 comments
that’s really creepy. i’d just bring it up and ask him why he feels it’s okay or necessary to take photos of unsuspecting strangers in public.
Not lecturing on the snooping, even though I want to 😀
You find it gross because it is gross. It’s gross and creepy to take pics of unsuspecting people on the street on the sly, without their consent, arguably for masturbation purposes. I’d rather you own up to snooping, but if you don’t want to, just tell him you noticed him taking pictures of random college girls when you were out, you were bothered by it, and you want to know what he was doing.
So creepy! I can’t imagine any scenario where his intentions were good…
Tell him you saw them and that you would
Like to know why he has these photos. Tell him it’s creeping you out – that’s totally valid
I’d be making him explain exactly what part of his behaviour he thought was acceptable.
Weird as fuck. Hell of a lot weirder than having a specific porn kink, sitting at home. I live in a major city, where the density of women in a half mile radius rivals small towns. I’d never be able to function if I did that. It’s obsessive and weird.
One of these days, someone will notice and beat him to a pulp with you watching.
You’re in for an interesting mid-life. I wanted to link an r/loveafterporn post, but the mods deleted it. BF had an addiction that he promised her was resolved. They bought a house and she found his OF and SnapChat subs…he lied to her, broke her trust, and wasted mortgage/household money on porn. (She was happy to send him pics of her, and sext…while he simultaneously chatted with creators.)
If you confront him make it clear that his safety and yours are in jeopardy. Do so after copying a dozen pictures from that folder. Shoot them to your personal device using AirDrop. The metadata will be there with the pics. If you dump a Diagnostic file from his phone to outside media, it will have his IEMI somewhere.
Dial *#06# from your device. You’ll see your IMEI number displayed on your screen.
Sorry, but you’re too far along in life to be foolish and trust his word. He’s doing weird shit behind your back. Dump it to a folder on a thumb drive and encrypt it.