My girlfriend (F23) and I (M25) have been dating for a little under a year now. We met 3 years ago when she was in college and I was spending the summer at a relatives in the same city as her. We met on a dating app, went on a date, and started hooking up. I thought she was a sweet girl and very cute, but nothing else ever happened because a week after she started classes again,
she told me she was seriously talking to someone. I left for grad school and so we didn't speak again (had each other on instagram though) until about a year ago when she ended up going to grad school at the same institution. I saw on instagram that she was here, slid into her dms, and then we started dating. I thought she showed pretty much every green flag I could ever imagine.
She has lots of friends she's really close to, close to her family, volunteers, has lots of hobbies, and is academically and professionally successful. She's so incredibly sweet and considerate. For example, my birthday was just a month after we started dating and yet she still got me a perfect gift. She is pretty much beloved everywhere she goes- her colleagues love her, my friends love her, my family love her.
I also want to emphasize how not mean spirited she is. I've definitely dated girls before who were bitchy towards people around them, but my gf is nothing at all like that. The only times I've heard her talk badly about people, it's like she's in a stand up comedy special. It's all humor, nothing mean.
And she never gets into arguments with her friends or family and is pretty much on good terms with everyone she's ever met. Anyways- today she was working on her computer and left for the gym. For some reason she left it on (I think she had some research thing running).
It was on the kitchen counter so I had to move it, and I saw a google drive folder shared with a bunch of people that was actually titled "SMOKE DARTS EAT FARTS- super DUPER secret edition." I know I should absolutely not have looked but my curiosity got the better of me. Basically it was a folder shared with her friend group from college, which is about 10 girls and super close.
There were a lot of subfolders. The first one I looked at had homework keys and back exams from their classes. Then I looked at a document that was titled "bitches love being out of pocket." It was massive (like 100 pages) and there were subheadings for different topics. It seemed like a collection of out of pocket things any of them had said. Each one was cited with the name of who had said it.
As I was scrolling through I saw my name under a subheading "men ๐."
Here's what it said (paraphrased):
1.) "He seems like the kind of man to purchase linkedin premium"
2.) "I feel like he gets off to his own instagram stories"
3.) "There's no way that at least once in his life he hasn't removed a tampon with his teeth"
They were all signed with my girlfriends name. I'd felt bad about snooping until then, but after that I really wanted to see if there was anything else about me. I looked through the rest of that file and there were insults about basically everyone they'd ever met, including about every man my gf had ever been with (honestly mine were way less mean than theirs... I guess that's a positive?).
There was also a folder with presentations it seemed like my gf had made and presented before each semester in college. They were all titled something like "roster" or "da hoes" and the date, and they had a slide for every man she was talking to, as well as a recap for whoever she'd done over break. Of course I was there, with my full name and pics of me and a picture of my car too.
The only description of me was "6/10, bought me cigs and let me use a flavored condom." There were also a lot of pics and videos of them doing illegal/disgusting things and there were some very mean things about other men they knew, like ranking them on the "loser scale."
The only other thing I saw about me was in a folder titled "life changing moments" that had a list for each of them. There were a lot of insane things in my gfs that I'd never heard about (think: chlamydia from unprotected sex with frat brother or vespa ride with sexy italian man or smoked a pack and threw up).
There was also one about me which basically said: slept with ____ and realized I needed to get out of my hoe era if I didn't want to end up being a sad sack of sh!t too. That is the one that really got me, as it seemed so much meaner than everything else, and I have no idea what she meant by it.
It was getting close to the time she would be back though, so I just closed everything and locked her laptop. She got back, I didn't mention anything, and we just had dinner as normal. I am here now because I have absolutely no idea what to do. Everything I saw was honestly awful, and yet she is the last person I would ever expect something like this from.
I am in disbelief and I really dont know where to go from here. I am hoping there is some explanation that doesn't make her the world's worst person, and yet I really don't want to confront her either. We have a great thing going and I don't see anyway that confronting her isn't going to lead to drama.
I don't want to talk to anyone I know about this, in case we stay together and she then has to face them, so I thought I would ask here and see if anyone had any reason to apply to this completely absurd situation.
The responses on that post were very mixed, but they gave me a lot to think about. I did some reflection and realized that her tone didn't really seem to be much meaner than the jokes she usually makes about people. The ones about me in particular I realized were actually hilarious, like I kept cracking up about the linkedin one.
And they were honestly entirely accurate too. What I was honestly really bothered about was that I was included, and I pretty much wanted to know if she actually liked me or was just settling. I knew about her hoe phase before so I wasn't that upset about it either and I felt like it wasn't my place to say anything about that.
I decided that I needed to confront her because the situation was upsetting me a lot. I decided that I was going to a) ask her about the 6/10 rating because it honestly hurt my pride a lot hahaha, b) ask her about the sad sack comment because that was the one that seemed meanest, and c) ask her in general if she actually wanted to be with me.
It would also have been a deal-breaker if she kept updating the document with stuff about me after we'd started dating, or if she had any really unacceptable stuff on people (like revenge porn). Unlike what a lot of people said, I did not think she was going to Ted Bundy me while I slept.
I've seen her in plenty of high stress situations and I have never thought she was going to commit homicide, and I'm also not that afraid of a 5'3" girl. I also didn't think it was right to not say anything, as I knew it was going to continue bothering me.
That said, I did realize that I wanted to mess with her a bit. I've never met anyone who takes it better than her, like anytime I've seen people making jokes about her she takes it very well and enjoys it, so I didn't think it would upset her too much.
The day after I made my post, we didn't see each other until dinner. I'd been a bit weird all day over text but she didn't think much of it and just asked me if I was OK. I'd devised my plan at this point, so over dinner I dropped that I was considering buying a linkedin plus subscription for networking. She gave me a side eye like I have never seen before and asked me why on earth I would do that.
I saw her later texting her group chat, I didn't see what but I was pretty sure it was about that. That night, we were trying out something new in the bedroom, and as we were cuddling after, I asked her if she was open to something when she was on her period.
She asked me what, and I asked if I could take her tampon out with my teeth, as I'd seen a lot on tiktok about it. She looked like she was actually going to scream but held it in and said sure. The next day she seemed suspicious, so I decided to really finish it off. She went to work and I had the day off, so I decided to really go to town on my instagram story.
Some of you thought that the instagram story comment meant I posted pics of myself on there, but I actually just post a lot of aesthetic pictures, that I do spend a lot of time taking. I think that comment in her doc was probably because on our first date I took some pics for my instagram story, and she said something like "oh yeah I like those" and I said "ehh they're not really good enough"
and she laughed at me even at the time. So anyways that day I roamed around the city to all my favorite aesthetic spots and posted probably 10 or so stories, which I imagine annoyed everyone a lot. She slid up on them and by the 10th one she said "damn youre really going to town on these today." So I replied something like "lmaoo yeah it gets me in the mood you know" to which she replied with the ๐คจ emoji.
At this point I think she'd caught on, and I had honestly been acting a bit off too because my pride was still a little bruised, and I was also regretting having snooped. That night, she came to my place with my favorite dinner and subtly (for her) asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about.
At this point I laid it out for her, and I prefaced it with apologizing for snooping, but that the title of the document had caught my eye. She looked absolutely mortified but was also laughing and kept apologizing. I laid out my 3 concerns to her, and she told me that a) the 6/10 was truthful at the time, but she did like me a lot (as evidence by dating me),
b) the sad sack comment was about all the people she knew who only hoed around and never had real relationships, and that sleeping with me made her realize that she would much much prefer to be in a relationship with someone like me, but that she thought she'd squandered her chances by hooking up with me instead, and that c) yes obviously she loved and liked and respected me a lot.
She also invited me to look through the folder freely, and that she wasn't ashamed of anything in there, just embarrassed that I'd seen those comments about myself. I checked and there was nothing in there about me since we'd started dating, the only stuff was from when we'd hooked up.
She also pointed out a document that I hadn't looked at before. It was in a folder titled "rankings" and each girl had a doc in there. She only let me look at hers, but it was basically a ranking of every person she'd ever been involved with in any way (it was a long document) with comments.
I was first, and where for everyone else there was a list of pros and cons, mine just said "lub him xxxx." Also, it seemed like they would all comment on each other's to argue about the ranking (like some of them had things like "no he was sexy move him up"), but mine just had comments from all the girls pretty much affirming the choice and praising me.
So I was pretty satisfied with what I saw, and it also seems like they only update it now with stories gossip, or pictures and no insults or anything else like that. My gf was overall mortified and extremely apologetic, and I was also apologetic about looking through it, and told her she could look through anything I owned if she wanted, but she turned me down.
She wasn't upset about the snooping at all, and said that she had nothing to hide and that she would've done the same thing if she'd seen a folder as artfully and intriguingly named as theirs. So yeah we are all good :). Thank you to everyone who commented and gave me some perspective.