Can’t you see it’s your hatred of women that’s preventing you from being laid not your looks?

Hi everyone. I haven’t written my feelings down about the situation before so please bare with me.

I started dating my current partner (24) a year and half ago and now we have a baby together. In the first few months we had a huge problem with his obsession with what seemed to be every woman. A few months in I had asked him if he could stop liking sexual pictures of other girls (not IG models but girls in our city) as that was a personal boundary for me in a monogamous relationship. It took a lot of arguments for him to stop doing it completely. Through that I found out he was still secretly using Bumble and Facebook dating behind my back for the first few months because he’d been hurt in the past and thought I would hurt him as he never had a serious relationship before me. Which I called BS on. To top it off I noticed that he was very fond of an old ex and I noticed naked pictures of her saved on his phone as he was scrolling. One thing led to another and he confessed he had been masturbating to pictures of her while I was in the other room wondering why he wasn’t having sex with me. Six months into being monogamous. He said she was his first love but she never treated him right and also sent naked pictures of him around the internet to joke about his penis size. The pictures he obtained of her were illegally shared through telegram. He had shared some too. I broke up with him, feeling devastated. Later he apologised to both of us and we got back together. I noticed he had put in significant effort to change for me. Since then I have tried to convince myself that it was a mistake not to be repeated again. I tried everything from watching porn together (a boundary for me in the past) to learning how to give great BJ’s etc. but my self esteem is hurt. He loves it and it has improved our sex life immensely. We don’t have problems sexually except my bruised self esteem. For example, my stomach turns over when he goes to the bathroom for a long time. To help me he often spends the whole time in there sending me reels. I was never like this before, I had a high self esteem and never let myself get hurt like this.

Recently I asked if he had been on his ex’s profile while I was pregnant and he said yes, a few weeks before I gave birth he showed her profile and her photos to his coworkers because they asked to see her. Even though he thought she blocked him. He said it was because they were talking about what the biggest problem in their relationships had been and he spoke on the situation that happened with her.

I haven’t been able to forgive what he did in the first place and that is destroying me mentally. Plus my hormones are still crazy with a baby at home. I just don’t want to feel like a second choice when he’s my first - he was my first love and he makes me feel like he is with me because he can’t be with her. Even with him constantly reassuring me how much he loves me. But with a baby I want him to be in her life and he can’t afford to move out.

Please help. I am in a foreign country and the majority of my friends that I met here have left. I will be starting online therapy next week to deal with my postpartum emotions too. An open relationship or to quit the relationship completely seems the only options, but I know how rough single moms have it in terms of dating and we live together. I always had a very romantic way of looking at relationships and I just want to be with one person for the rest of our lives. He showed me in every way that he changed until I asked about the ex. The thing is that he constantly shows he loves me, constantly wants to be around me, knows every little detail about me, constantly does romantic things, acts obsessed with me still, does little meaningful things everyday. And then just a few days ago he told me that.

Edit: I just want to thank everyone for validating what I have gone through, and also for the tough love and advice which I desperately need. I’m not looking for sympathy, I understand my mistake. I’m not looking to stay with him long term, there are just many complications. I forgot to add a bunch of things, like he has proposed to me, which I rejected and he has been in therapy for a year. I have only been speaking of the negatives and I feel bad for not telling the whole truth, which is difficult in a Reddit post. I was told by everyone around me that these porn problems are normal and I was wrong to stop him from interacting (liking, following, OnlyFans etc) with their social media profiles. As for the ex I thought he had gotten over her until recently. There is no problem with his attraction to me. Visually since we got back together he prefers just watching me. I try to put on porn but he ends up just preferring to focus on me. I feel so done but I also feel I don’t have the help around me to do something about it. Ideally I’d like everything to be over and sorted and to be co parenting by the time our daughter recognises what’s going on.