My boyfriend eventually cut contact with an old hookup, but I’m still struggling with how it happened.

My boyfriend and I met on Grindr.

A while back, I told him I was uncomfortable with him following a previous Grindr hookup on Instagram. He agreed and unfollowed the guy, and I thought that was the end of it.

A couple of weeks ago, I found out they were still communicating.

To be clear, I didn’t find sexting, flirting, or anything explicitly inappropriate. The last message I saw was something harmless like:

“i am just so chill haha”

My boyfriend didn’t even respond and left it on seen.

The part that hurt wasn’t the message itself.

It was realizing that when I previously asked him to remove this person from his life, he only unfollowed him. He never blocked him. They still had access to each other, and I didn’t know that.

I also found out he deleted parts of the conversation because he didn’t want it to cause an argument between us.

Since then, he’s apologized repeatedly. He has reassured me. He deleted his old Instagram account entirely and created a new private one with only close friends, including me. As far as I know, the old hookup is completely gone now.

If I’m being objective, his actions afterward have been good.

He didn’t defend the contact.

He didn’t choose the other person.

He didn’t tell me I was crazy.

He took accountability and changed things.

But I’m still bothered.

I think what I’m struggling with is that I thought the boundary had already been respected. I genuinely believed the connection was gone, only to discover later that it wasn’t fully gone at all.

Now I’m stuck between two thoughts:

One side of me says:

“He listened, apologized, and fixed it. Let it go.”

The other side says:

“Why did it take being caught before it was truly addressed?”

I don’t think he cheated.

I don’t think he’s in love with this person.

I do think he loves me.

But I also can’t pretend that discovering all of this didn’t affect my trust.

For people who have been in similar situations:

How do you rebuild trust when your partner’s current actions are reassuring, but you’re still hurt by the way things unfolded?

Would you still be bothered by this, or am I holding onto something that has already been resolved?