Yesterday, I sent my husband a screenshot of his own Instagram like, with an eye-roll emoji. A woman was showing off her body in a video, and there was his approval attached to it. It was a small message from me, but it came with several months of history.
A few months earlier, I had found a secret account he used to like and comment on women’s photos. He wasn’t messaging them. He was leaving encouragement under sexy pictures, asking for more. That distinction matters to what happened: I found public comments from a hidden account, not a private conversation or evidence of an affair.
We fought about it, and he deleted the account. The account disappeared; my discomfort with that kind of attention did not. Seeing another like yesterday brought the earlier discovery straight back. When I looked at the woman’s account, it was full of videos showing off her body. This wasn’t a case of stumbling across one unrelated clip on an otherwise different page.
I know my husband watches porn. I don’t like it, but I accept that he does. That may sound inconsistent beside my reaction to Instagram. To me, though, watching something and putting his name to a woman’s photo or video feel different. One is something he looks at. The other leaves a visible sign of his interest on her page.
A like doesn’t tell me what he expected to happen. I can’t turn it into proof that he wanted a reply, much less that anything happened between them. But I don’t need to believe there was an affair to feel hurt by the attention itself. The part I’m uncomfortable with is already visible.
The secrecy of the first account also makes it harder to look at yesterday’s like in isolation. Before I found that account, I didn’t know there was this separate place where he was commenting on other women’s bodies. After our fight, he knew how I felt about it. Deleting the account was a concrete action, but it didn’t tell me whether we understood the problem the same way.
Sending the screenshot was my way of pointing to something specific. I wasn’t asking him to explain an imagined message or defend an encounter I couldn’t prove. I had seen the like, checked the account, and shown him what bothered me. Whatever he thought the gesture meant, I wanted him to see why it landed badly with me.
Then we talked, and what hurt most was how he spoke to me. That is the part I’m left with now: not only what he looks at or likes, but how it feels to bring it up with my own husband. I went into the conversation upset about another woman’s video. I came out wondering whether I was being too sensitive about the way he talked to me.
