Hi Rachel,
I can relate. I think Matt hit the nail on the head here. Your partner is deflecting. I was in a similar situation where I started to catch my boyfriend in little lies here and there. One particularly vulnerable night, I snooped into his Facebook account and found he had developed a fixation (I would call it an “obsession”) on a girl half his age he had met at a bar one night. I confronted him and he continued to lie over and over about it and then would “drip feed” me the truth. Months later he would then claim he was “honest” after I dragged little kernels of truth out of him through repeated conversations. Anyway, for months, he would not admit he lied. Then later on he admitted he lied but said he “didn’t mean to or want to” and that it was because of the way I approached things that made him lie. His lying was a “reaction” to the way I confronted him on issues. I found the whole ordeal very invalidating. Like you, I understood my breach in violating his privacy, but I firmly believe we need to trust our intuition. Something didn’t feel right and that’s why you looked at his phone. Like Matt said, he needs to take accountability for his role in it. The bottom line is that no, you shouldn’t have snooped, but I agree that your partner’s infraction was far more serious.

I am likely overstepping a boundary with my final point, but please reconsider actively trying to have a baby with this man until your relationship is on more stable footing. The proverbial biological clock keeps ticking, but you owe it to your future child to provide a loving and healthy home.