Thank you, Inky and i_like_advice! Your comments were much appreciated 🙂

We have spoken and both want to move past the situation and continue our relationship, which is normally so wonderful and makes us both really happy.

He has now expressed that he wants to gradually remove Heather from his life as a friend, they will always be acquainted as they have many mutual friends back from when they were at university together. I told him that if he wants to take such measures, he can’t be doing so for me, as this may cause resentment later on but he is insisting it is for both of us and that this has been a long time coming, even before him and I were in a relationship.

I have apologised for invading his privacy and understand that I should have communicated with him before snooping. Although he understands why I did so, he is still hurt and claims he doesn’t really trust me with his phone right now but he will get over it – personally I don’t see what I did as a ‘betrayal of his trust’ as I had reason to do so, a reason I had communicated to him several times before I did so and if he went through my phone, I wouldn’t care anywhere near as much as he happens to care.

However, everyone is different and reacts differently to different things, I guess.

I won’t be confronting her, I don’t think I should be in contact with her as she shouldn’t know that she bothered me this much, I feel like she would enjoy that. Therefore, if she is out with the rest of his friends and we bump into her, I will act cordial and conduct myself with dignity as I have finally realised, she is irrelevant.