How to get closure/begin healing process after painful breakup?

Well ladies, do I ever have a story for you. This is going to be very long so I apologize in advance, I just want to make sure you have all the details.

So I’d been in a relationship with my now ex-boyfriend for over a year. We had had struggles from the beginning, and it turns out I was always the one who cared more and put more effort into us. Looking back on it now, my ex seems to have many of the traits of someone with narcissistic personality disorder. Here we go:

A few months into dating I came across a ‘porn folder’ on my ex’s computer filled with hundreds of screenshots from Instagram/Facebook/vsco/whatever of countless girls from his high school and even just generally popular girls - anything remotely revealing, sexual (i.e. beach pictures), even just straight up selfies. I was pretty grossed out and also took a big blow to my self confidence. When I brought it up to him, he first got super pissed at me for looking at his stuff, then said it was from before we started dating and he forgot about it completely, yata yata. He apparently deleted it. Later in the summer before we both left town (I was moving away for school and he decided to move with me, despite not being in school), he had gotten rid of his desktop computer and switched to a laptop. I found the pictures again, he said it must’ve transferred over from his other computer, and deleted it in front of me. By the time the end of last summer came, I was an insecure obsessive mess. I asked him specifically to unfollow a handful of the girls from the pictures I found (that he was still following on instagram) which me specifically uncomfortable. It was a battle to get my side across and feel heard but at the end he unfollowed them and said I just needed to tell him directly what I’m feeling.

Fast forward to December, I’m at his house while he’s at work and I go doing a lil snoop, not expecting to find anything (please don’t make this about my snooping as I clearly have had reason to look). Low and behold, I find a fake Instagram account he made with a completely made up name, following probably well over 60 girls, all the ones from the original folder. It fucked me up, I was so devastated. I thought about leaving him but I didn’t want to, I wanted to believe he was good. We talked and he cried and apologized profusely, “I don’t wanna lose you”, “I love you”, “I’ll do anything you mean the world to me”, the whole 9 yards. I went home for Christmas and we took a break. I battled with trying to forgive him cause I wanted to believe so badly that he would never do something like that again if he knew it upset me to the point that I would break up with him over it. Eventually I forgave him and tried to move on from it, I told him that if he EVER did something like that again, so much as a Facebook search, I would leave, that I would not put up with this again. I thought that maybe I just wasn’t firm or direct enough on my boundaries, I didn’t tell him it affected me so deeply that I would end the relationship over it, so I thought ‘ok now he knows, should be fine’. After December he deleted all Instagram accounts and even gave me all his online passwords - Facebook, google account, email, everything. He knew that I would be looking occasionally if I wanted to ease my anxiety on the matter. On April 26th, I signed onto his google activity to take a look, he was notified and then messaged me asking why I did it, saying “oh it makes me doubt that you trust my word, I need my independence back.” Of course he made me feel bad about it, so I got him to change all his passwords. I thought ‘yay look we’re moving forward, rebuilding trust!’

After exams were over, I moved back home with my family while he was stuck in my university town. Fast forward to two weekends ago; I went back for a visit (got there on Friday the 18th). It was so great to see him, everything felt perfect. He went to work on Sunday, and I went for a little snoop. I wanted to double check since I hadn’t been keeping up with his activity, I just wanted some reassurance. And bam. I find a folder he had specifically made hidden (on Windows it’s an option, you just unclick show hidden items), labelled ‘real’. I go into it and there are hundreds more of the exact same pictures, exact same real girls from our hometown, even a creepy video he went to the extent of editing from an S-Trip collage video of girls shaking their asses underwater. Disgusting enough there was even a sub folder at the very top labelled with my name containing all my/our stuff. I looked and the first picture was created on April 27th, one day after I no longer had access. My heart dropped and I knew I couldn’t just stay with him, I gave him an ultimatum and I had to stick with it out of respect for myself. I spend one last night with him (basically in denial), then broke up with him before I left on Monday. I watched him cry and tell me he didn’t even have an explanation, that he’s so fucked up, that he needs help, that I’m beautiful and I didn’t do anything wrong and I deserve better… he even had the audacity to say he thought all we needed was a break before I told him no, you can’t treat me like that and expect me to wait around. I still remember him ugly crying while saying “I thought you were gonna be the one.” It fucking shattered me.

You’d think it stops there but oh no.

Now, since I got back home, we’d been texting here and there, mainly if I needed to ask him a question about it or get something off my chest. He would continue to say he loves me and would stop at nothing to get me back, that he would fix himself and show me that he can be the person I deserve, appreciate me, show me how much he cares. That was sort of all I held onto for a while. Well, a few days ago, I downloaded tinder, just to look through cute guys and get a bit of an ego boost (not looking to have sex with anyone). I try to hit login and somehow, it logs me in to HIS tinder account. I swear that didn’t even cross my mind, I didn’t go searching for it, it just popped up. I was shocked to see a recent picture of him on his profile. I go to see, and I find a bunch of matches, and 2 conversations. I looked through and found the earliest conversation on May 9th, the next one was the 13th, all while we were still together. It had been about 2 weeks since I finished school. The first one was all flirting, and the same day he matched with that girl, he tried to stop sharing his location with me (we both shared our location for safety purposes), then play it off as an accident, “oh I just deleted our convo and accidentally hit stop sharing”, then reshared it again. So basically, the same day of his first match, he tried to stop sharing location so that he didn’t have to worry about it, so he could go out wherever he wanted and not have me see, guess he didn’t know that I was notified. The match from the 13th was straight disgusting. “Would love to watch scary movies with you, be your personal cuddle buddy ☺️ With great benefits of course😏” girl asks what kind of benefits, “Good vibes, great sex and even better weed?” girl goes on about not smoking but that she does drink but can’t get drunk cause bad shit happens, “I feel that 😩 can just fuck and watch tv all night 🤷🏻‍♂️ Netflix horror section always bumpin, got amazon prime video too so bonus?” girl says lol sounds great, “Yeah? I’ll add you on snap” (I got screenshots of everything and these are direct quotes from him).

I sent him every single screenshot, and all he says is “Yeah I’m done”. I asked if he had sex with them, he said “No, haven’t even met them”. The next day I sent out a long message saying everything that was on my mind, addressing all this sketchy behaviour from tinder, basically asking him how he could do this to me. When I visited for the weekend, we had sex, I slept in his bed, all the while he knew what he had done. He would be talking to me at the same time as these tinder girls. At one point, at the exact same time as the nasty tinder conversation I referenced, he was talking to me about getting a dog together and raising it from a puppy so that when we had kids, we would know it would behave because we raised it to. These are all things I had to get off my chest to him. I’ll spare my long message because this post is long enough as it is lol.

He read it, didn’t say a WORD, then proceeded to block me on Facebook, remove me from snapchat, and even block me on iTunes where I followed his new music (pretty extra imo). I’m sure he’s blocked my number too but I haven’t sent him anything else.

Today I decided to torture myself and be a low-key creep and used my outdated insta to check out his new one (because obviously he made a new one right after blocking me, and blocked my main account). His first post was the day I sent him my last message, and it was a selfie captioned “all smiles now”. That’s just the icing on the cake I tell you what.

(Continued in comments but almost done, I swear)