Advice, im hurt emotionally

hi op.

at first glance it appears you are self sabotaging here. You don't have any reason (that you disclosed) to suspect he is doing anything wrong at all.

Your own personal insecurities appear to have your head wrecked to the point you need say "I need to ask him who these women are" . Yet anyone on social media that is not under some form of coercive control will have members of both sex followed and it stands to reason you wont know who they are nor when they met and what level of friendship exists. Especially seeing as you had quite a bit of time apart.

His not adding you to his social media seems to be justified if this is your default reaction to snooping on his profile. Where is the trust? if there is none why not and why are you together with him? Snooping was your 1st mistake. Its not normal to need a pertners approval for his social media feed and friends.

I think that if you handled a discussion with tact and expressed yourself well, without making him feel like you don't trust him, or are snooping on him., then as a couple you might strengthen the bonds and the trust. Because you should be able to express what's going on, and communicate together.

But i also think that if you handled it wrong it could come across as accusatory, untrusting and highlight the negatives in your relationship. The apparent lack of trust and what i suspect are your personal demons/emotional baggage.

I advise you don't make a second mistake here and make things worse. Let him know if you are feeling without coming across as blaming or accusing. if you need some reassurance let him know that too. and stay away from snooping. it will only feed your insecurities. The old saying is "Comparison is the thief of joy" applies here. Allow him his social media, private if that's what he wants. Give him a little space.

TLDR : Trust him or don't be with him.

I would never answer those questions to a partner. I would always lie and say none if they asked how many people i slept with when we were apart, if in that situation.

Its like someone saying does this outfit suit me? There is an answer they want, so just give them that answer. No matter how much they say to be honest, its a mistake to be.

OP, your partner os protecting you from yourself by not giving you info that would only gnaw at you.

Delete your social media, its a cancer and adds nothing to people's lives but stress like this.

I have all sorts of people i barely met on my social media. I also have people im curious what they are doing no on it. Most people do.

At the start i didnt like the fact he was in contact with exes, unless there is a need to ie. Kids etc. Because i personally don't need to see my exes lives, its the past. you may not like it, but did you agree with him that he would have no contact with exes? If not then thats a conversation you need to have. I can understand your position. However its not clear that you are both in agreement.

I am straight up and I fear these are women he met when we were apart, who he didnt tell me about so thats a lie to my face. If so have you any reason other than your feelings to believe he is? You say its a lie but your statement makes it appear to be the opposite. you say you 'fear' so thats not evidence based it feeling based, yes?

if he agrees explicitly to not have contact with exes, and then he does that's a breach of trust. But it requires him to be in agreement, and it requires you to have evidence that he is in contact with exes. Suspicion is not evidence.

if you consider following & not unfriending these exes on social media to be required then you need him to agree to that too. Personally i find that controlling behavior. Borderline red flag behavior. But that's just me- other people think differently.

Being connected on social media with friends you don't know is not the same thing. People who you only suspect he may have been with when he was single. To require him to disconnect from everyone you don't know or approve of is absolutely coercive and controlling behavior. If i were advising a friend in those circumstance i would tell them to run a mile.

my advice at the end of my 1st post still stands. Trust him, or end it with him.

So he has no followers? Sounds like me on certain things where I follow people but don't post anything so no one really follows me back. And that's ok by me lol.

Honestly OP I think the poster who mentioned they could be friends of friends is maybe onto something. I have friends of my sister connected to me on Facebook. I rarely bother looking at anything & they all added me after her 30th when we were all celebrating. That happens a lot with people. You're focusing so much on these 2 women that you don't know. Would you be as concerned if they were men? If the answer is no, then the issue is trust. You don't trust that your boyfriend was honest with you when he told you who he'd been with while you were broken up. The only way to resolve this is to have an actual conversation with him (not getting angry just talking) about who these women are, that you feel hurt that he won't connect with you on social media & that you'd like to be able to put 1 or 2 pictures of your life together up. But you have to be prepared that he may not want that. My best friend flat refuses to have pictures of herself up online, so to the social media world, it doesn't look like we're friends at all. Some people just don't want their image shared or want to be fully in control of it themselves. And that is a choice you have to respect.

This. When people are *that* adamant about never appearing together on social media, it's usually because they want it to look like they're single, for whatever reason. To me that's the red flag in this situation, not two random women he's following.