Am I stalking or "breaking the rules" (lengthy details inside)?

so there is no question, I am a regular Flutherer and I am using an alias because I would prefer not to be recognized.

I was broken up with recently, in a very abrupt and unfair manner. I was given no answers and certainly no closure. I knew the password for his email, so I logged into it, hoping to find some answers. I did, too. I found, over the course of a couple of days, a few saved drafts that did answer a lot of questions. These drafts were never sent. Without going into detail, I know exactly why they weren’t sent, and it really had nothing to do with him not wanting me to read them, but more with him not wanting to contact me. I found out that he did not want to break it off, that his parents forced him to do it and pretty much dictated the email he sent to break it off.

That knowledge may have been the only thing that made me not lose it.

In logging into his email, I discovered that although he was not allowed to contact me, instead of creating a filter to send all of my emails into the trash, he created a folder and filters them in there, marked unread. Basically, he doesn’t know that he gets an email from me unless he specifically looks. He asked me not to contact him, but if I email him, I know he won’t know unless he goes looking for it. I feel like I can email him all I want and it’s not breaking the rules, because if he chooses to go looking there, it’s not my doing. And I do email often, because I feel like if he’s filtering them and keeping them, maybe he does read them and he knows and is comforted by the fact that I don’t blame him and I still love him and am here for him.

In the interest of honesty, I still log into his email. I do this for two reasons. 1) I check to see if he does anything with my emails, changes the filter, deletes them, or whatever. Unfortunately since the filter marks them as read, I can’t see if he reads them. It just makes me feel better if I know he’s not deleting them. 2) The only thing that kept me going was the “real story” I got from the drafts he never sent. I check to see if he’s written anything else.

So now to the actual question (sorry for the length but I think the story is important): Am I stalking him by checking his email? I know it’s wrong and weak. I am absolutely not arguing that. But is it stalking? My friend says I’m stalking him. Now, in the course of checking his email, without even opening anything other than the folder with my name on it, I discovered his new phone number (it was changed so I couldn’t contact him), and I have known it for weeks, and haven’t called it. I haven’t driven past his house or places he goes, or tried to talk to his friends. I just see if he starts writing to me, or if he trashes the emails I send. Also, just for clarification, when we were together, he knew I knew his password, and he didn’t change it. It seems odd to me with all the bases he covered to block me from contacting him, that he would forget that part. He’s very smart. Not that I think he knows what I do, but it’s just another detail.

Again, I am not unaware that it’s wrong and an invasion of privacy. I am asking if it’s stalking, or breaking “the rules” when he asked me not to contact him. I feel like if he really didn’t want to ever hear from me, he would filter everything right to trash.

I am also asking very kindly not to be attacked in your replies. I’m sure almost everyone here has done something desperate and/or morally wrong in the wake of having their heart broken.