I managed to piss off my BF. He decided, for whatever reason, to sext a girl that he fucked twice a long time ago. He fucked her at least four years before we got together. She randomly hit him up, so he sexted her. He said he wasn't serious and that what he sexted/texted to her was all lies. Who's to blame here? Me for snooping on his phone—first time—or him for sexting with someone that he says never meant anything to him and never will? How do we fix this and move past it?

Still Livid And Pissed

My response after the jump...

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Does it have to be an either/or question, SLAP? Can't you both be wrong? Can't you owe him an apology for snooping while he owes you an apology for sexting with another woman?

Backing up: the Snoop Nazis will blow up my email inbox if I don't take a moment to chisel Snooping Is Aways Wrong into the internet. So here goes: Snooping Is Always Wrong. But... you know... based on what you found... you had cause to be suspicious. And discovering that you had cause sprinkles a little of retroactive legitimacy on your snooping.

Now it's possible, of course, that your boyfriend was harmlessly getting his flirt on, as the kids say, and this was the exactly the kind of partnered-person-flirting-with-someone-else that actually benefits the partner of the person who's flirting with someone else. (Could you follow that?) If swapping sexually-charged messages with his ex-hookup got him so horny and that he came home and plowed all of that sexual energy into having sex with you—if he came home and plowed the shit out of you—and you never found about the texts, well, Yatzy for you, right? His flirting with his ex-hookup resulted in you two having hot, horny, relationship-strengthening sex.

So the question you have to answer is whether you believe him when he says he was lying to his ex-hookup. (Um, the only way his sext messages could lie would be if the pictures weren't of him.) Was he just innocently flirting, flirting in a way that might've benefited you two, like he might've if he had, say, run into his ex-hookup on the street or in a restaurant or some other way that wouldn't left a digital trail? Or was he actually making plans to get together and cheat?

You saw his sexts, SLAP, and you read his texts. You're in a much better position to judge his intentions than I am.