Instagram recommended a woman’s profile to me, and my boyfriend was our only mutual connection. I got curious and looked. Her posts were mostly thirst traps, and he’d liked several of them.
To be specific, I found four revealing pictures he’d liked, all from the same woman. I sent him screenshots. By then, I was embarrassed and angry, and my messages made that clear.
I told him I thought publicly liking those pictures was disrespectful while he was in a relationship. I also said that if he was that interested in her, he might as well date her. That was how the conversation started, so it wasn’t exactly a gentle invitation to discuss social media habits.
He sent a voice message explaining that she was someone he’d known for years. He sounded angry and said something along the lines of, “I’ll just delete Instagram then.”
I replied that knowing her for years didn’t explain why he seemed to like only the pictures where she was showing so much skin. His explanation hadn’t addressed the part that bothered me. I already knew they had some connection; that was how I’d found the profile.
I understand that being in a relationship doesn’t stop someone from finding other people attractive. I’m not expecting him to stop noticing women. But seeing his likes attached to those particular pictures felt different from knowing he might find someone attractive.
The fact that he knows her matters to me, too. This is a specific person in his life, and he’s repeatedly choosing to engage with those posts. I even told him I’d rather he watch adult content privately than leave public likes on her pictures.
Now I’m left with both the original discomfort and the way I expressed it. The screenshots showed what I was talking about, but telling him to go date her added something else to the argument.
Is it reasonable to consider those likes disrespectful? And even if the boundary is fair, did I make it harder to talk about by confronting him the way I did?
