He Was Cleaning Out His Apartment And Discovered That His Girlfriend Had Taken Creepy “Stalker Photos” Of Him Before They Even Met
For the last three years, this 23-year-old man has been in a relationship with his girlfriend, 25. The two of them met right outside of his previous employer while she was a college student.
On the day they met, they stood outside talking for two hours. This turned into an intensely romantic situation between them. They would constantly bump into each other randomly, and they’d hook up.
Over time, he started to have romantic feelings for her, and she divulged that she had been feeling the same way since the day they met.
From then on, they were in an exclusive, committed relationship. Throughout the entire time that they’ve been dating, his girlfriend has been faithful and kind. Besides a horrible discovery he recently made, they haven’t had any problems.
He works as a paramedic, and not long ago, he was injured while working. A work colleague Naloxone’d a homeless man, and while the two of them were getting ready to transfer him, the man attempted to retaliate and stab his colleague.
He protected his colleague, so the man ended up stabbing him. Luckily, he was okay, but he had to take some time off work in order to recover.
Not long before this incident, his girlfriend moved in with him. So far, they haven’t been able to get everything organized yet.
He decided to take his time off work to do some cleaning and rearranging. His plan was to start with the den since he and his girlfriend both had a lot of their belongings there.
She works as an art director and photographer. He was about to throw away an empty box that used to hold a lens, but he stopped when he opened the box and realized there was an SD card in it.
Shi – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
“I popped it in my computer to see if it was empty. It had pictures of me. Pictures from before we met. I’m talking, like, taken stealthily from afar. Stalker photos,” he said.
Understandably, this horrified him. Rather than prioritize his girlfriend’s privacy, he went forward with looking at the photos on some of her other SD cards, and what he found was alarming.
“They also had photos of me on them. Photos of me asleep, photos where she had gone out of her way to do things like pull back the covers and lift my t-shirt up,” he explained.
“To make it look more suggestive. I don’t think I slept the way she photographed me, so knowing that she manipulated the details in my sleep.”
“It unsettled me. She even managed to take a photo of me while I was showering. I guess I didn’t hear the shutter over the sound of the water.”
Plus, his girlfriend had also filmed videos of him in which she closely zoomed in on his eyes, hands, and face, all while he was sleeping.
Among the photos were some that he’d known she was taking when he was awake. Some of these photos were taken at either her apartment or his before she moved in with him.
These aren’t the photos that upset him, but the ones that were taken without his knowledge or consent are the ones that terrify him. Obviously, while he was sleeping, he was unable to give consent to these photos and videos being taken.
While he doesn’t normally like having his picture taken, he wouldn’t have minded if his girlfriend had asked to take more photos or videos of him.
Instead of telling his girlfriend about his discovery immediately, he wanted her to make the choice to come clean.
He told her that he had been rearranging the den and had been going through the SD cards, but she didn’t confess to anything.
Finally, he told her that he knew she’d taken photos of him without his consent while he was sleeping and before they met.
In response, his girlfriend didn’t see an issue with her actions, and she calmly tried to defend herself.
“She said it was just a way for her to document her feelings and that the photos were just that: personal documentation,” he shared.
“She showed me other SD cards in which she took photos of daily life. And herself, too. I told her the difference is that her photos were staged intentionally, whereas mine were taken without my knowledge. To which she said that would have ‘broken the reality of the moment.'”
When he confronted her about the photos she took before they met, she said that if they never started dating, she would have deleted the majority of the photos.
However, since they met and began a relationship, she chose not to delete them because they were memories that she wanted to hold onto.
She added that street photographers take photos just like these, and she has photos of other random people she’s never met on other SD cards.
Her explanation for why she took so many photos of him from far away was because she was attracted to him, and she purposely went to the place he worked back then so that she could see him. She told him that going to his work was often the best part of her day while she was still in college.
Even though his girlfriend never told him about photographing him before they met or while he slept, it didn’t seem like she had gone out of her way to hide them, either.
At the beginning of this conversation, she didn’t seem to think there was anything at all wrong with her actions.
When she could tell that he was still upset and that her explanations weren’t making him feel better, she started crying and love-bombing him, saying that she was crushed knowing that he seemed to believe she had bad intentions.
Later, she told him that she didn’t want to talk about the situation anymore. Then, she attempted to be physical with him, but he rejected her advances because it was clear that she was only doing this as a means of distracting him.
Her actions deeply concerned him, and all of it made her seem incredibly guilty. He was furious and no longer trusted her.
When he told one of his best friends, a work colleague, and his brother about what he discovered, they excused his girlfriend’s actions as just a part of her art, and they assured him not to worry too much about it.
They added that since he and his girlfriend have a fantastic relationship, he should let it go. In retrospect, he picked up on a lot of things his girlfriend does that are a bit odd, but he never thought they were things he needed to fret over.
This behavior of hers is a completely different story. Despite how upset he is, he wants to believe what she’s told him because he doesn’t want this to end their relationship. He loves his girlfriend dearly, and it doesn’t make sense to him that their relationship could be different than the way he’s always viewed it previously.
But no matter how much he tries, he can’t shake off his concerns, and he wonders if he should break up with his girlfriend.
What would you do if you were in his shoes?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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