My ’24F’ BF ’23M’ recorded me. What do You Think ?

Hi, I’m new here and desperately need some opinions.

Warning, this is going to be a long text.

Context, which is important:

I (f25) and my boyfriend (M24) have been together for about a year and a half.

We both come from abusive homes and have a troubled relationship with sex.

About me:

I was sexually abused as a young girl and have generally only had very toxic and terrible experiences with men in my life (especially with my father).

I am highly sensitive, suffer from panic and anxiety attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and recurring trauma-related obsessive thoughts. My nervous system is very damaged. Since this year, I’ve also been in therapy.

About him:

His father was an alcoholic who beat and terrorized the family. As a young man, he spent time in a social care facility and also received some therapy. However, there he came into contact with parties, a lot of drugs, and later, one-night stands. All of this damaged him for a very long time until he hit rock bottom and decided to turn his life around. And shortly after that, we met.

We then gave each other a very loving relationship, which we had both been missing.

In addition, since puberty, he has developed a fetish (being crushed) that he has kept almost entirely secret for years because it was associated with self-harm and shame. This resulted in erectile dysfunction, which is why he couldn’t be truly intimate in his previous relationships and one-night stands, let alone experience an orgasm with another person.

This erectile dysfunction became noticeable very quickly. With a lot of patience, love, care, and time, it improved over several months. He was able to have normal erections.

Now to the problem:

After a few months, around New Year’s, he was able to achieve an orgasm through a handjob alone. This was, of course, a great success for him.

However, this is where my problem begins.

Some time later, we were intimate again, and he had the same climax as before. And then half a day passed, and we did the same thing again. After we had sex, I wanted to check the time and saw that he was using the recording app on his iPhone and recording.

I panicked, and so did he. Then I saw that he had already recorded us earlier, about half the day before, also just audio. I immediately deleted everything, and we got into a huge fight. My world fell apart.

We talked again after hours.

He said at the time that he didn’t really know why he had made those recordings. He had recorded the first memo impulsively. He said he had felt uneasy after sex but then pushed it out of his mind. When he made the second recording, he said he already felt guilty and supposedly wanted to tell me.

I asked him to reflect on how someone could act so "without willpower." He came to the conclusion that these sexual encounters were so incredibly overwhelming that he simply "wanted to capture and preserve what we had accomplished."

I then went through his phone, of course, but didn’t find any other recordings of any kind. However, I did find something completely different: material related to his fetish, scattered across various apps. A whole bunch in his recently deleted files folder.

That was the moment he confessed to me about it. And said he wanted to get rid of it.

Side note: I also found videos of him filming other women’s shoes in public years ago because of his shoe fetish. He also had a tendency to steal.

After all that, I told him about my rape (as well as my past transgressions), and he burst into tears.

That was about a year ago. As far as I know, there weren’t any other recordings. However, other things happened that might be worth mentioning.

Every few months, I would accidentally find material on his phone again. I told him from the beginning that I didn’t have a problem with his fetish, he just shouldn’t misuse it as a form of emotional self-harm. Also, he should just TELL me if he felt the pressure.

It wasn’t even really "bad" stuff I found. It was more that I always had to find it out myself, and I could never really build trust. Then, starting in the summer of 2025, he voluntarily went into therapy because he realized he had deep-seated shame and wanted to make me feel safe.

(I have access to his phone etc. at any time).

The summer was good. Then his therapy was briefly paused, and during that time he had extremely severe financial problems for months.

Then, in November of last year, the worst thing happened. I found hundreds of AI-generated videos on his phone.

He completely broke down, and I was devastated. I told him I couldn’t continue like this; he had to give me enough reasons to give him another chance. I really love him very much, but I can’t take it anymore.

That same evening, he sent his therapist an emergency email asking her to please discuss it at the next session.

He also suggested that he tell my closest friends and family. Or rather, I could tell them the "naked truth" even before then. He wants to do this to overcome his shame and also to essentially make a "vow" in front of others and prove it to those around me.

We’ve also been having a conversation every Sunday since then, where we talk frankly and honestly about how we felt during the week, what’s worrying us, and whether there have been any "setbacks."

Since January, he’s also been in group therapy.

I make it very clear how deeply my trust has been broken and that I want to see action over time. He says he wants to offer me that.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been having extremely intense and graphic thoughts at night that he might still be secretly filming me, or that he’s planning to film me if "I trust him again." I often think about small surveillance cameras. These thoughts are very strong and almost obsessive. On top of that, I keep thinking back to that time and I get stuck on the fact that he could just take TWO photos, with a time gap between them, WITHOUT any malicious intent.

Now I’d just like to know your opinions;

What do you think about this?

Since my nervous system is just so overloaded, I desperately need an outside perspective.

My therapy session was only one, so I can’t bring this up right away.

I would be grateful for any opinion!!!!