'I found my GF's fake instagram account where she follows my exes.' UPDATED

"I [23 M] found my girlfriend's [23F] fake instagram account where she follows my exes, past flings, hookups, etc."

Basically what the title says. The instagram contains several photos of someone I've never seen before, and has been around since May. For context, we've been together 2.5 years, living together for 1. We live closer to her hometown (with mine approximately 6 hours away) so she hasn't really gotten the chance to know many people from where I'm from except my family and closest friends.

I guess I'm just a little weirded out and I'm not sure if I should bring it up. Honestly, I'm generally the jealous one in the relationship and we've had to have many talks about my not focusing on her exes or getting to mad if someone hits on her.

tl;dr - found gf's fake instagram following almost all of my exes/past flings. Should I say anything? Should I be weirded out?

This is what people had to say to OP:

Princethor said:

Did I wake up to some TwilightZone bullsh!t today? Reverse the roles here and you guys would be up in arms telling OP to leave him and this is a major red flag and to cut off all contact before he goes beyond creeper status.

bookscoffeeandbooze said:

Not going to lie, I've considered doing this before. The only reason I haven't is because it would be awkward if I got caught. I'm not a crazy girlfriend though, if that I don't care if he talks to other women, don't care he has female friends he hangs out with alone, can't imagine him ever cheating, etc.

Buuuut I'm crazy nosy and at least one of his exes is batsh!t. So it may be less she's psycho and more just likes to see what they're up to. But talk to her about it if you're worried.

OP responded:

This is actually good to hear. I confided in one of my friends about this and she actually told me its pretty common to try to snoop private profiles. She said a few of her friends have done this and only snooped once then deleted it.

When I look at the photos they were all posted shortly after the creation of the profile, and were likely just enough to make it believable. So she might not even be using it still, but just didn't delete it.

minin71 said:

Yea, that's not only weird. That's straight up nuts. Maybe I just don't care about people's exes enough. But making a fake account to monitor them is not okay. You should probably have a conversation about this.

And OriginalityIs said:

She might just be doing it because she's nosy and likes to see what's up. It might not that she doesn't trust you, but I can totally relate to wanting to follow certain people on Instagram anonymously too. Talk to her and see how she reacts

Three days later, OP shared this update:

So I decided to try to talk to my girlfriend casually about the account.

I told her that when she was letting me use her phone (I logged her out of Instagram and was going to log into mine so that I could post a photo directly from her phone, and saw the other account as an option) I noticed the other account.

She looked horrified at first, but then without any prompting at all she confessed that she had a super insecure day after exactly the incident I was discussing with other commenters here (so thank you very much for making me introspective).

She ranted to her best friend about how she was feeling, and the two of them made the account. They crept the accounts that accepted the follow requests, her friend helped her boost her ego a bit with some girl talk, and she completely forgot about it.

She said she was having a really hard time when I was depressed, but felt like she couldn’t complain about it because my pain was “worse,” so she just sort of let a whole bunch get to her over time.

She told me that she felt her poor handling of certain things this summer (her words), and the massive insecurity she felt, was an indicator that she probably needed to talk to someone and work through some things, and she’s actually been seeing a therapist every other week or so for the past few months.

This wasn't just due to the summer, as she felt she's needed to do this for a while, it was just sort of what motivated her. This shocked me, and she apologized for not telling me. She says that she felt like she couldn’t complain to me about her mental health when she knew I was going through so much. And then when I started to get better she didn’t know how to randomly bring it up since some time had past.

I had no idea how hard my depression was on her. I feel so selfish that I didn’t even notice, but she says she completely understands, and she know how preoccupying depression can be. All in all, she apologized profusely for the account, deleted it in front of me, and we promised to try to get back to being the good communicators we were before my depression hit.

TL;DR - Talked to her. She was embarrassed, had forgotten about the account, and revealed why she made the account without any prompting. She took trying to support me during my depression harder than I realized, and we're going to try to be better communicators.