RELATIONSHIP ADVICE NEEDED

Do I end things, or forgive him?

**DISCLAIMER: lengthy but so worth the read and I really need advice** I’ve been dating my boyfriend for over half a year. When we first started dating, I had very recently gotten out of a mentally abusive relationship. I did not expect to get into another relationship so fast, but it just happened. From the moment I met my current boyfriend, we connected so deeply and never went another day without seeing each other. We basically lived together. We are in college and he just moved back home this week, a few states away. Around our 6 month anniversary, he told me I couldn’t go on his phone because he had a surprise for me. I can’t stand surprises because I can’t wait to know what it is. I kept asking him what it was, so he finally told me I would know by our anniversary. Well that came and went, and nothing ever came of it. He then told me it wouldn’t come in time so I would have to wait longer.

One night about two weeks ago, I slept at his apartment. We went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. I had a weird feeling he was hiding something else other than a gift on his phone, so I quietly grabbed his phone and unlocked it. I first opened his search history, but there were no tabs open, which was weird because he said the gift was in his safari, in pictures he had in his camera roll, and in emails and texts. I opened his camera roll, and saw nothing. His camera roll only has about 250 pictures, so it’s very easy to look all the way through fast. Then I opened his recently deleted, which is where things really started going downhill. I saw pictures and videos of a naked girl. I couldn’t believe my eyes, my heart started beating so damn fast. This guy told me I was his entire future, that he had never felt like this with anyone else, that he wanted to give me the world, and then I find these recently deleted pictures and videos of a naked girl???

I turned on the light, opened up one picture, woke him up, and slammed the phone with the naked picture open on the pillow next to him. He woke up and immediately started panicking. I was still in sick shock, I ran out to the the living room and sat on the couch, shaking. He kept saying “it’s not what it looks like… let me explain… I never cheated..”. I had no idea what to think or do. I eventually said I needed to look through the rest of his phone, which made him instantly defensive. He stormed back into the bedroom. I kept saying give me the phone, and he kept refusing. Finally I was able to grab it from him and he agreed to let me look through it with him sitting right next to me on the bed.

I started looking and found more. He was snapping two girls, his excuse for that was that they just added him and he always messes with girls for fun which we’ve done together before. Which is true, but then why didn’t you tell me about these? Then I looked at his text messages. Nothing from girls but I found a Hinge verification code from that Monday, it was Wednesday with all of this happened. I said WTFFFF. He said that he downloaded it when we got into a fight that Monday about him moving possibly moving 8 hrs away for two years. He said he downloaded the app but never even ended up messaging with anyone because he deleted as he knew right away that he didn’t want anyone else except me. He said that’s the only time he did that. Then I kept digging and found a fake calculator app. He wouldn’t give the password for it at first, but then he gave in. There were two folders: one entitled my name, and one with the name of the girl I knew he hooked up with before we met. I saw a timeline of when the pictures of her were uploaded to the app and it was heartbreaking. He uploaded new pictures multiple times during our relationship, even when he went to Florida for baseball tournament/spring break while I was staying at his apartment deep cleaning it. He said that he downloaded those from Snapchat but never talked to her since before we met. Which to me doesn’t make sense because wouldn’t she message him if she kept getting notifications on different occasions of hun saving things to his camera roll?? He said he unadded her, which seemed true as I couldn’t find her in his Snapchat.

So then he repeatedly apologized, cried to me saying he didn’t want to lose me, said he did because guys do it as a trophy thing and that he never got off to the pictures, etc.
He deleted the app and pictures and said he wouldn’t add any new girls on Snapchat. I asked him what the surprise was then, and he said he was going to get me a custom necklace from Vintage Pearl. That jewelry brand name had come up one before when months before he got a text message from the company and he said he had no idea why because he got his high school girlfriend a necklace from there years prior.

So, what do I do? It hasn’t come up much since and when it does he said can we just move past this, that’s he doesn’t know what else to do except say sorry, etc. What would you do if I were in your position? I thought he was the only person who would never hurt me like that, but here we are. And how am I supposed to trust him now? Really bad timing with him moving 6 hrs away