My boyfriend opened his phone to show me something, and messages between him and his ex appeared. I was 21 at the time; he was 22. Until that moment, I had never gone through his phone.
He initially tried to hide the messages. That was what made me ask to see them. I hadn’t been looking for a conversation with his ex, but now there was one in front of me, and he was trying to keep me from reading it.
When he showed me, I saw a message where he told her he loved her.
His explanation was that she was going into labor. That was the context he gave me for saying it. I could understand that labor was a significant moment in her life. I still had questions about why my boyfriend was telling his ex he loved her—and why he had first tried to hide their conversation.
There was another problem. The messages were visibly cut off. Parts of the exchange were missing, and I brought that up. He admitted he had deleted messages because he knew they would upset me or make me mad.
So I was being asked to understand one message in the context of a conversation I could no longer read. He had decided which parts I would get to see before I even knew there was anything to ask about.
I broke up with him. I didn’t have a complete account of what had happened between them, and leaving didn’t give me one. I had the message, his explanation about the labor, and his admission that he had removed things he thought would upset me.
I still wonder how other people would read that situation. Was I wrong to end the relationship over what I saw? And with part of the conversation already gone, could I know whether he had cheated?
