This happened 2 days ago.
I'm chilling at the bar with my girlfriend of 5 months and another male friend. So my girl goes to mingle with other friends and me and my friend are talking. He is having some trust issues with his current girlfriend. I'm lecturing him on trust and how it's important in a relationship and that if you all don't trust each other, then it's not going to work.
Now me and my girlfriend have only been dating for 5 months, but we have had an amazing time together. I can honestly say I've never felt this way about a person so soon. We have been very honest with each other and I have never not once doubted that I'm the only one in her life. The same is true for me, I haven't so much as looked at another girl since we've been together.
Anyway, I'm trying to give my friend advice about being open and honest and not hiding things from each other. I'm hyping up my relationship and giving examples of how we make sure the other knows we are not hiding anything from each other. I felt there was a need for a demonstration of trust between me and my girl to emphasize my point.
So here is the fuck up.
We are using my girlfriend's phone to play music on the jukebox. It's one of those pay money to buy credits to hear the music on the jukebox things. We usually use my phone because she is always broke and can't really afford to buy credits. This time though, she bought like $20 in credits so we were using her phone.
So I'm telling my friend, "look she doesn't care that I have her phone. We trust each other so much that she doesn't have any second thoughts about me using her phone to play music". So I proceed to demonstrate by swiping through her open apps with a shit eating grin on my face. I keep swiping and the third app is Snapchat. I didn't know she had Snapchat and from what I understand, really the only point of that app is to hide conversations. So at this point I'm debating in my head whether I should take a "peek" or not and see if there was anything suspect. Fully knowing that my friend is in direct view listening to my advice. I looked.
Of course. There was something there. At this point my grin turns into a look of despair. The first person at the top of the conversations is some dude I don't know. I open the message and see a nude pic from my girl to him. There are some other messages and then a video of him masturbating and then a message from her that says she wants that "in her ass". This conversation happened earlier in the day while she was at work. I quickly take a screenshot (with my phone) and close the app. I have opened Pandora's box and I don't want to see anymore. At this point my friend knows I found something and has an awkward look on his face. He closes out and takes off and tells her good luck on the way out.
So as you can imagine. I'm freaking livid about this discovery. I feel betrayed and embarrassed. A whole bunch of emotions are coursing through my brain, among them rage. I turn off her phone and I calmly place it back at the bar wondering how I should proceed. I cut the night short and tell her that I'm leaving. She of course is like WTF?! So I closed out and leave and I send her the screenshot with the words: "we're done".
I've been very cold but firm about us breaking up. I really felt that we had something special going on. I made it a priority to make sure that she knew that she was the only person I wanted to be with. Our sex life had been amazing as we are still in the "honeymoon" phase. We text all the time and we dirty talk with great regularity. So I don't know why she felt the need to bring someone into that part of her world. She says she never slept with him and she says this was the first and only time anything like this has happened while we have been together, which I now find hard to believe because there no longer is any trust between us.
So she has been texting me, trying to justify the whole thing. Apologizing. Minimizing. Normalizing. Pretty much everything you can think of. She even sent me screenshots of a convo with the dude today, discussing how she got caught and that I broke up with her and the discussion between them pretty much confirmed that they never slept together, and that it was just "flirting". I still feel betrayed.
Now here is the best part, I was in the process of purchasing a townhome nearby where I live with the intent to rent it out. When we started dating, she was and has been renting a big house that she couldn't afford (getting divorced, husband no longer pays his half). As we got closer and closer, I breached the idea of her renting the place out as it would be much cheaper on rent for her. It would help both of us out as she would have more disposable income and could carry her weight so to speak (like I said she is always broke and I end up picking up the tab most of the time). We had an agreement that once I closed on the property she would move in and pay the mortgage until we were comfortable enough moving in together. That was the plan.
We talked about it today and she would still like to move in, but I'm on the fence now. We had so many things lined up and ready to go, and now all that is ruined. I close on the 16th of this month and I'm feeling like I'm going to be left holding the bag at some point. I don't have another renter lined up and time is running out.
So I know that snooping through her phone was wrong. The info I got is like "the fruit of the forbidden tree". I was trying to make a point to my friend and it blew up in my face. I told her I needed space but that I'm pretty sure that we are done. She keeps saying it was just one message that crossed the line. Technically that's true and maybe I'm overreacting, but it still feels like she stepped out on the relationship. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, but I need time to process this and see if this relationship is worth salvaging. I'm so damn upset over this.
TLDR: I was giving advice to a friend and was trying to flex about how me and my girl have nothing to hide from each other by messing with her phone in front of him. I ended up finding that she had been sexting and sending nudes to some other random guy. I am now single.
Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/tifu/comments/10789n0/tifu_by_giving_my_friend_advice_part_2/