"I (20F) think my boyfriend (20M) may have been signing into my social media accounts for more than a year."

tl;dr: I found an overwhelming amount of evidence showing that my boyfriend of one year has been accessing my snapchat account from his phone since last August (over a year ago. He denies it’s him and is now saying he believes I slept with someone else. What do I do?

I have been dating my boyfriend (20m) since last September, but we have been seeing each other since the June before that. We are long distance (~6hrs apart by car) and see each other about once a month if we’re lucky. We have had a lot of ups and downs, but ultimately we care about each other and just want each other to be our happiest and healthiest.

I posted earlier this week about an incident that happened this past weekend where an old friend of mine tried to kiss me. He was drunk and initially tried to kiss me on the mouth. I pulled away, and he again tried to kiss my neck, leaving a bruise (I bruise incredibly easily as I have very fair skin and poor circulation; the entire incident lasted no more than a few seconds).

I did not expect or want this to happen, and I thought the friend in question knew I had a boyfriend (I actually thought he also had a girlfriend up until he kissed me, so it definitely caught me off guard). Once I firmly expressed to him I wasn’t interested and had a boyfriend, he backed off, and the rest of the night went normally. I don’t have any plans to hang out with this friend again.

The next day, my boyfriend was already at work when I woke up, where he has limited access to this phone. I planned to facetime him and tell him when happened when he got off work, however, he noticed the bruise on my neck in a snapchat before I could tell him myself

(I hadn’t even noticed it was there because as I said it was no more than a few seconds and it didn’t occur to me that there could even be a bruise there from so short a time). He called me when he finished work, and I explained what had happened, but by that point he had been stewing over it for over 5 hours, and was furious with me.

I understand that I shouldn’t have put myself in a position where someone thought I would be receptive to a kiss, but I also can’t control other people’s actions or the past, and I have been trying to earn his trust back since. However, he remains absolutely livid.

In other news, for the past few years, my snapchat account has signed me out constantly on my phone (forcing me to log back in to the account sometimes as frequently as multiple times a day). I submitted several maintenance requests to the app, and Monday they notified me that they had sent a customer service email to my spam email account (which I seldom use, and hadn’t looked at in years).

When I signed in to the account to view the email, I noticed several other emails from the app over the past year. Most notably, there were a series of emails from last summer informing me that someone had connected to my account on those specific dates from a specific location in a neighboring country.

My boyfriend and a few of our mutual friends happened to be on vacation in that exact place on those exact dates. We were not dating at that time. I have confirmed the dates of that trip with someone else who was there. Nobody else on that trip goes to college with my boyfriend, or within 75 miles of there.

Getting fearful, I went on the snapchat website and downloaded my data (which basically gives you all the data the company has stored about your account over a certain period). This data included the location history of where my account has been accessed for the last ~2 months, with each data point consisting of a date, time, latitude, and longitude of where the account was used.

It revealed that dozens of times over the last two months (sometimes as often as multiple times in the same day), my account was accessed from where my boyfriend lives. These data points are very specific (3 decimal points), and correspond to directly over his house, various buildings on his campus, and other places in his college town that he frequents.

They all are on dates that I was definitively in my own college town, 400 miles away. You can actually watch me and whomever “fight” for control of the account, with me signing in one hour, then it signing in from his town the next hour, and us going back and forth for a while.

The data only goes back two months, but the emails and pattern of snapchat logging me out (which is their attempt at security, when you log in to an account on one device it force logs it out on all others) indicate that it has been going on with this level of regularity for over a year.

I confronted my boyfriend about this as soon as I found out. He was initially indignant, then horrified once I presented him with all the evidence. He empathically maintains that it isn’t him doing it. He can’t provide any other explanations, and his best guess is that he is being framed, although he has no idea by whom.

He has said a few times that if I need to find an explanation, he’ll let his reputation take the hit, because he loves me that much and hates to see how this is hurting me. He has now also shifted the conversation back to the incident from this weekend, and is saying that what point would he have to lie, because he thinks I slept with someone else anyways (which he had not told me before that)?

This is an especially sensitive subject for me because two years ago, I was most likely hurt by a very close friend, but I have only been able to put together what happened after the fact based on other knowledge. Not having a clear answer or knowing for sure about what happened then absolutely tore me apart, and still messes with me immensely.

My boyfriend knows all this, and helped me through all the fallout of that. I don’t want to believe he would lie to me after seeing how much not knowing what happened there destroyed me. Snapchat is my main method of communication for a lot of my friends, and I save all my direct messages on the app so that I can reference them later.

For over a year, someone has been going through my photos, my messages, seeing who I talk to, and watching me without my knowing, and I can’t find any other explanations for all the info besides that it was my boyfriend. To not know what happened here will absolutely destroy me, and he knows this.

I so desperately want to believe it’s anything else, and I want to trust him (like I want him to trust that I didn’t sleep with my friend), but I just can’t find any answers. My question is, does anyone have any other possible explanations for what could’ve happened besides the obvious? What should I do now? And how can I convince my boyfriend I didn’t sleep with my friend without compromising my feelings here?

What do you think is going on? This is what top commenters had to say:

RedOliphant said:

I can’t imagine any other explanation. I would cut my losses and not give a damn whether he believes you or not - he’s just deflecting and/or gaslighting you. This person has violated your privacy and your boundaries, and profoundly disrespected you. He doesn’t deserve to be in your life. I would also talk to a counsellor to help me process all of this in the aftermath. I’m so sorry he’s done this to you.

OP responded:

Thanks for the response. I wish I could feel that way, and be so sure about it. It’s just so hard to believe that the person I’ve trusted the most for this long has been doing something so fundamentally invasive and violating, for almost two years. And yet, I still care a lot about what he thinks of me. I care about my reputation, and I don’t want people thinking I’m a cheater when that’s not at all what happened.

Itsathrowawayffs said:

He’ll let his reputation take the hit for this??? Wow, what a prince. That alone is reason enough to dump him. It was him, no question about it but instead of being honest and owning up to it, he not only continues to lie to your face, but does it in a way that makes him out to be a hero. Why would he think pretending to be the one who did it would make you feel better? He’s despicable.

CookieWaifu said:

I agree that you should end this relationship and change your passwords

[deleted] said:

Uuuuufffffff. You seem like you detectived the hell out of this!!! It quite clear, no one should dig through your stuff! Especially like this!! Wtf is that all about!

And OP responded:

Yeah, I’ve really dug myself into the research here. I don’t really know what else to do. A friend of mine is a software engineer and I’ve asked him about a million questions, and they all turn up the same answer.

Four days later, she shared this update:

I posted a few days ago about finding an overwhelming amount of evidence that my boyfriend of 1 year had been signing into my snapchat account off his phone for over a year, yet when I confronted him about it, he claimed he was being framed. He also accused me of sleeping with a friend who made a move on me that past weekend.

I asked here for any other possible explanations for what might've happened besides the obvious, and for advice on how to prove to him that I didn't sleep with that guy. Everyone here told me I was out of my mind to think it was anything else, and that it didn't matter what he thought of me, that he was violating my privacy, and that there were no other possibilities.

I realized y'all were right, and I came up with a plan. I met my boyfriend in a diner, and got there early and told the waitress what was about to go down. I then set my laptop up with all the evidence I had amassed, and waited for him to show up. When he got there, he was combative, and initially tried to accuse me of sleeping with that guy again.

I effectively took over the conversation pretty quickly, and set in to my speech. I took him through every piece of evidence that incriminated him (of which there is a Lot), asked him if he still thought that he was being framed, and he denied it a few more times. At that point, I told him that in our state, what was happening constitutes fourth degree felony stalking.

There was too much evidence for it to all be technical glitches at this point, so either he was stalking me, or someone else was stalking the both of us. I told him this was his last chance to come clean to me, or if he still said it wasn't him, we were going to go get in my car, drive to the police station, and turn the case over to a detective, at which point it will be investigated, and whoever did it will be charged.

I told him that once I turn it over to the police, however, it's out of my hands how it gets handled, and there will be consequences for whoever did it. He said that he wasn't going to the police station, and said again that he didn't do it. So, I stood up, put on my coat, and said we were going to see a detective and file a report right there because those were his only options left.

He pulled me back down to the table, and finally, confessed. It was him. It started two years ago, 7 months before we even started dating (we were casually involved at that point, and friends, but not dating or exclusive). He said it started because he wanted to know whether I liked him, and it (and I) became an obsession for him.

He has checked it multiple times a day, every day, for our entire relationship, including when I was with him. He read all my messages (which I save through the app, as I use it as my main form of communication for a lot of friends), gone through my photos, and kept tabs on who I was talking to.

The conversation was terrifying. It was like I didn't know him. He was cold, cruel, and didn't seem even the smallest bit remorseful. He tried to blame it on me quite a few times, then blamed it on his 'trust issues', then blamed it on himself being 'messed in the head.' It was so unbelievably out of character for him that I would've thought this was his audition tape for an episode of SVU.

He also tried to manipulate me into not going to the police or any of our mutual friends, citing that he 'had nothing' in his life (except me, but I guess that didn't matter so much). He said that I could just move on from this, whereas he would have to 'live with this' for the rest of his life, which should already be punishment enough.

I made him sign a paper where he wrote out what he did, just in case he wants to go back on his word later. Then, I left. So, it's over now. I've blocked him on everything (I actually cried when I blocked his number, sad as that is).

All that's left is to move on. I'm debating on whether to tell our mutual friends or not, because honestly, I'm resentful that he tried to manipulate me into not doing so, and I don't feel like I owe him anything at this point. Anyways, thanks for all your help.