I would have been more torn a year ago on my response to this, since I’m into that kinda thing myself, but only if my partner is too.. so while I would have been excited to see her in past encounters, and I really enjoyed it when my ex would go on flingster and take directions from people there, if she was uncomfortable it would definitely kill the excitement for me.

Then after the break up, I found out that when we were recording, she and I weren’t the only people who could see what we were doing. I was watching an old movie of us while we were on a no contact break of yet to be determined length.. we had both initiated a break like this at different times, this particular break I had requested because I was worried I wasn’t handling my emotions well and was going to say something to her on the phone or is text that I would regret, so I wanted to continue my therapy and hope I could get my jealousy and my mind’s tendency to create false narratives under control, as well as learn how to set better (read:any) boundaries and communicate my needs more effectively and compassionately. Anyway, I notice that in this movie, she was positioning me to face away from the camera and making weird gestures with her hands behind my back and above my head. She would also make eye contact with me until I would tilt my head back and close my eyes or become distracted in some way, and when I wasn’t looking she would do shit like the brush her finger under her nose and then make a k with her fingers, which I guess is a manga gesture that’s something like “wipe the blood and show your heart” (she’s pretty into things like that, I’m not, I had to research it).

She would roll her eyes at me and then give the camera loving glances. I noticed sometimes when I would move the camera to a different angle unexpectedly, she would look terrified, then relieved when I set it down. And then, I saw in a couple of the movies she would look irritated and put her finger to her lips, glaring at the camera, so I played with the sound settings toolbox on VLC player and realized that she was either streaming or on a video call. I don’t know if it was intentional, but on a few of them I can hear at least two people, one man and one woman, giving her encouragement, degrading her, talking shit about me.. sometimes she laughs in response. And then I’m watching myself, dissociated to hell, remembering how often I felt like something was off but couldn’t put a name to it, and how often we would go for hours and I just couldn’t get off, it felt like I had a plug in my urethra or something.. like everything that was happening should have resulted in me finishing but I couldn’t.

Realizing that she had violated my privacy in that way by opening me up to mystery people watching maliciously was such a gross feeling.. mostly because of how much I trusted her to make decisions with “not recklessly causing damage to each other” as one of the criteria and how much I really loved her. I don’t mind people watching if I’ve given consent, we’d get on flingster together too and have sex in front of strangers.. but this was clearly people she knew and was either being paid by or cheating on me with (further research indicated to me it was a submissive relationship existing prior to ours with a couple who were her dominants, but idk that it matters that much beyond her not technically cheating since our relationship was invalid from the start.. I’m not against poly, but being aware of that status when entering the relationship is the first step for me not having a minor psychotic break and spiraling for months barely sleeping before I got my shit together.

If you didn’t secure consent for your current partner to see it, it’s not ok for him to watch. The scenario I just described was agonizing, humiliating, and I’ve been out of the relationship almost a year now and I still am terrified to even think about trying to build trust with anyone new. I legitimately don’t know if I will ever want to be with anyone romantically again, ever. Granted, your ex will likely never find out if things never progress beyond your current bf just watching and reading but.. given his appetite for the scraps he found, I’d imagine he will want steak eventually, ya know? Sorry to post such a long comment, I just haven’t really shared about this since I got a grip on reality again and was able to separate delusional speculation from tangible video evidence, and lately I’ve been finding myself romanticizing the past.. it helps me center myself a lot to open up, and hopefully it adds some depth to the perspective that consent is crucial.