21F 20M - weird gut feeling
i, 21F, am madly in love with my boyfriend, 20M, i trust him fully and our relationship is pretty perfect. but recently i’ve been having this major intuition spike and a heavy gut feeling, and i can’t shake the feeling that something is off. i’ve been getting heavy anxiety and even had a panic attack the other day which is extremely rare for me. i am having some troubles with my friends at the moment and did just dial it down to that.
but, today me and my boyfriend were watching our show like usual on HIS ipad. he fell asleep and i felt bad watching our show without him so i swiped up on the app. before i turned his ipad off i got this massive gut feeling and this urge that just took over me telling me to read his messages. i am NEVER usually this type of person, and if i feel this way im usually easy and quick to talk to someone about it, but i just couldn’t help myself. (i know this is bad and a major invasion of his privacy, but i honestly don’t even remember how i got to the messages i just remeber reading them)
when i first opened his messages it was all normal and fine, and there was nothing actually bad or inappropriate for me to see. but there was this one blocked number of a girl.
for a little context to make this make more sense, my boyfriend has told me about his past, just as i have about my past, it was a normal conversation without any weirdness. im his first girlfriend, but he had this situationship/friends with benefit thing before me. he had told me it was over a year ago before we even started talking and they had only had sex once and that was it. i don’t and NEVER minded who he had slept with before me.
BUT what has made me confused and slightly upset is that he didn’t completely tell the truth. i obviously had found messages between him and this girl, which dated to last year at the end of september, we officially started dating at the start of december but had talked since the middle of october. the messages were back to forth of them planning to meet up, and sneaking around, implying they had sex A LOT more then he had told me. ik we weren’t even together at this time, but why did he have to completely lie about it? i feel like im overthinking the situation a lot, and i KNOW i shouldn’t of looked at his messages and it’s a major privacy break which i feel horribly guilty for, but is this the reason ive been having that deep gut feeling recently? i just cannot shake the fact that SOMEONE, whether it’s my boyfriend or not, is sneaking around behind my back.
one message that stuck out to me was her, joking id assume, saying “don’t want your girlfriend to find out about us, is that why were meeting up late?” and he joked back saying “yeah i don’t want her to know lmao” it made me feel sick to my stomach.
i just need some advice, maybe this is something i need to look into myself and figure out why im so upset about it, do i even have the right to be upset
EDIT: i thought i should also add that in both of my previous relationships i have been cheated on and been heavily blindsided. i think i could be self sabotaging but i worked so hard on myself not to do this in future relationships.