found out boyfriend was cheating through Instagram

I met him on Tinder when I was about twenty-one. We were together, on and off, for nearly two years, and we never settled the question of whether we were exclusive.

I wanted us to be. He didn't, or wouldn't say he did, and we fought about it constantly.

I was lonely and insecure then. I kept pushing for commitment. He kept saying I was being too demanding, too anxious, that my insecurity was the problem.

We didn't get along well. The relationship was long and conflict-heavy, but I stayed in it anyway.

He traveled to Japan several times while we were together. He never explained those trips in detail.

Then one day, a woman I didn't know appeared in my Instagram recommendations—someone with no obvious connection to anyone in my life.

Most of my recommendations came from school or from accounts with many shared followers. This one didn't fit the pattern.

I opened it.

The account was public. I scrolled through her photos.

There he was. In her photos. With her.

I kept scrolling.

The trips to Japan suddenly looked different. The unexplained absences. The arguments about exclusivity that he'd always framed as my insecurity talking.

It turned out he'd been seeing his ex. Some of those trips had involved her.

I confronted him.

The breakup that followed was extremely painful and conflict-heavy.

I don't know how long he'd been seeing her. I don't know if he ever admitted it fully.

For two years I'd been told that my wish for exclusivity was the problem. That my anxiety was unfounded. That I needed to relax, to trust more, to stop making everything so difficult.

The discovery recast all of it. The trips. The arguments. The whole relationship.

Some of my insecurity had been real. And some of it had been an accurate reading of a relationship that was not safe or stable.

I'd been trying to interpret the evidence in front of me, and I'd been told the evidence was just my feelings.