Bfs Past is Haunting our Present

My boyfriend and I have been together for 4 years. We live together and have talked about marriage and what we want in the future as a couple. He’s so great to me and meets the expectations of what I want in a partner. However, there is one fight that keeps happening that we cannot see eye to eye on.

About 9 months into our relationship, right before we moved in together, he went on a business trip to a place he used to live. He ran into an ex-coworker (whom he had a couple month fling with right before he moved to where I met him) and their mutual friends. They all went out together. He ended up getting black out drunk, she tried to kiss him at the end of he night and he says he turned away, then when he got back to where he was staying he sent her a long, emotional message about how he misses her and wishes he could have been the man she deserved, bla bla bla.

One of the biggest issues about this, is that he never told me about it. We had just moved in together and were watching a movie when she responded to his message he sent her after that night. Her name popped up with the first sentence of her message, and it made me feel uneasy. He never told me about her before so I didn’t recognize her name. After some prying he finally told me what happened and reluctantly handed me his phone to see the messages, which crossed some emotional lines in my opinion. He said it was none of my business, and he didn’t do anything wrong because they never got physical. He said he got some needed closure, and if the situation was reversed he would be okay with it.

That took some time to get over, especially because he never apologized for what happened. But once I got over it, her name would pop up in his social media feed, or in my feed because he’d like her pictures. That bothered me so I eventually told him I never want to see her name again, and he agreed (unhappily) to unfollow her for my peace of mind. (We fought about the situation again and butted heads). This happened about a year ago.

Since then, it’s been forgotten and things have been great. Until last week, my phone was dead and I was trying to look up a social media post to show him, he let me use his phone to show him but got nervous once I opened it. And to my horror, her name was the most recent searched. This started a huge fight. I asked him why he looked her up, he said it was none of my business he just wanted to see what she was up to. After more fighting he admitted that he looked her up while he was masturbating because they had great sex, and it’s not harmful because he’s not contacting her or acting on his fantasies. He said I can fantasize about my exes and it’s none of his business if I do. This all infuriated me. He was looking up a girl from his past who almost broke us up.

All the feelings I had 3 years ago are back now plus more. Am I being unfair? Is he being unfair? Or are we too different?

I think you should ask him what's his true intentions with her. Most guys get off to their ex's or masturbating to porn girls. You got to ask yourself how personal is that for you? Does he still have emotional ties with her now or is it purely physical lust? If you think you're too different maybe you are. How well do you know him? Was it a surprise to you or wasn't it about what you've found out. Got to get to the bottom of the barrel.