SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

There were signs I missed because I was so trusting. He would NEVER cheat! We had a "great" marriage, best friends, blah blah blah.

So one morning I asked him to show me a picture that he had taken the day before, I wanted to send it to my phone. Now, he never was protective of his phone and didn't even have a password! Who would be suspicious of that? right?

So I saw, in the "saved" file a pic of him in his underwear in front of a mirror. I was like, "what is this?". He said, "Oh, hahaha, I was going to send that to you but then thought better of it".

At first, since I had ZERO worry of him every cheating...I just accepted that.

But then I thought...wait, he has NEVER done that with me before. Rarely even a flirty text. Then I realized, his face was not in the pic, just his body. Why would he hide his face from me?

So I went online. And WOW. He is SO not techy. ALL the evidence I needed was on his Google activity account. Sites he went to (AFF), VOice texts to the whores (particularly painful) he didn't know google saved. ALL his wearabouts saved by google every day because his email was never logged out.

And the kicker? I'm very tech savvy. ALL this shit was RIGHT THERE for 4 years, just ONE EFFING CLICK AWAY! He never deleted anything because he didn't know it was being saved.

I tried a digital forensic program on his phone but it kept glitching out and I decided I really didn't want to read all his deleted cheating texts, pics.

TT lasted for a week, I just was so good at uncovering it all that he couldn't hide. A polygraph a few months later confirmed I had sleuthed it all out.

Here is the crazy thing that I think about in retrospect about Dday. Even when I saw the picture of him in his underwear...it took me a WHOLE DAY to start waking up and looking at his digital footprint. A WHOLE day. I saw the picture! I can't believe it, my mind was so trusting it couldn't even accept the reality of what I had seen!!! Isnt' that crazy?! It has given me a whole new perspective on BS's that just believe what their WS's tell them after they find evidence.

Going to bed together and waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to find my WW ....waking up in the morning and finding WW fast asleep next to me.

In the end it was like she wanted to get caught. In the end if I didn't start caring about her destructive behavior... I would have had to bury my kids mother.

The phone. He stopped charging it where the rest of the family charged, in the kitchen, and starting charging it in his office. He would wake up really early and instead of staying in bed to cuddle, he started getting up so he wouldn't bother me and wake me up, he said. He was traveling a lot for work, and when he was home, he wanted to take me to dinner and said he wanted to connect with me since he was traveling so much, but then when he traveled, it was like he was dead. After the third or fourth time he apologized for not answering my call or text late at night because he'd, he said, taken a sleeping pill, I said, "F*** it," and broke into his phone when he was sleeping. I had to dig deep to find WhatsApp. It used to be very prominent on his phone, but he'd moved it to the second page of a folder.

All of this took place within a span of about 2 months. I think they have good sneaky intentions, but once they are deep in the A, they can't see anything correctly, including and especially themselves and their own behavior. They're like little kids putting their hands over their eyes and thinking no one can see them.

The Valentines Day love letter to her adultery partner she left on the computer declaring that she could not even begin to find the words to describe the profound depth of her love for him and then promptly affirming that the sex she provided was like nothing she had experienced with any other man ever, ever, ever....

....up until she got my divorce filing.

The1stWife:

Finding joy. Why did the OW tell you if the A?

Supposedly because she had always felt bad about it. He had told her our marriage was ending, I was a b*tch, he was going to leave me to be with her, but she still felt bad about my betrayal. Supposedly she often told him if our marriage was so bad that he should deal with it and then move on, not move on first. Supposedly. Supposedly after he broke it off, her conscience really got to her and she figured I really needed to know.

Yeah, maybe this isn't her usual m.o. and she felt bad. Sure, maybe. However, her conscience only kicked in after he ended it?

Sound like sour grapes to me. She wanted him to pay for hurting her. And if she could "clear her conscience" at the same time - all the better.

And perhaps, somewhere in her mind, she was hoping that what he had said the whole time was true - we didn't love eachother and he loved her. I think maybe she thought he was just too cowardly to divorce and if she broke us up... he'd come running back to her.

So, why did she tell me? Oh, I can assign a multitude of reasons. I'll never take her reasons at face value, nor can I say that I know her mind. Not even sure she could suss out all her motivations. It was a muddy time for all of us - yeah, her included. He did hurt her, too, even if she walked into it.

IPhone. My WH was attached to it at all times. I finally ordered an itemized bill listing all the phone numbers. That's when I busted him. He had also started being very distant and mean to me. He was hoping I would get sick of it and I would leave. He knows he was a coward.

My WW was foiled by a butt dial that went to my voicemail 2 years after the fact.

She was staying at a friend's house, drunk, and was talking about me (and had texted me immediately prior and / or was trying to call to check in), how I "didn't care" if she checked in. Friend said "he trusts you". WW said "I'm not sure he does, but until I do something to prove otherwise, I guess he does". Friend says "like getting banged on the couch by so and so!". WW says "Right?!! Well, I actually didn't bang him, but he might of got a finger in me. Some could say that doesn't count, right?". Laughter. "Stop it" says she, I only kissed him".

Well - I would say it certainly does count. And I wasn't laughing. And her and her friend seemed to lose their sense of humor about it pretty quickly after that.

Possibly the most unfortunate butt dial (or call and not properly hang up when it went to voicemail) ever. I'd of likely never found out otherwise.

I have tried to come up with this answer for years.

But he came home from work one afternoon and said that he and some co-workers were going hiking the next morning. Did we have plans and did I mind? I don't know what it was, what he said, or how he said it... but it was off.

My guard was up beginning then.

It was all downhill after that.

Left a pile of songs written 11 years previously about 21 year old co worker that he wrote and sang and played on in a drawer. One had an Arabic title and I remembered that a painting she did for him 11 years previous had the same title, pieced it all together. I am told it was a one sided crush and she knew nothing , but there was a helluva lot of texting between them at that time and for quite a few years after too until she went abroad. They had tons and tons of opportunity and I'm still not sure I got the truth.

My WH turned ... no other way to describe it. COMPLETE PERSONALITY CHANGE!!!

Everything and everyone who was important to him were pushed out and the superficial became front and center. The way he looked (trendy beard, style of clothes, manscaping, excersize- he had a child to impress - AP is 10 years youngerr - had to become and stay competitive), the way he acted (drinking more, heavily doing recreational drugs - visible signs of sweating and erratic behavior), working more (LOL), hiding his phone... all that and it happened quick.

So quick, I thought that he was having a nervous breakdown (to explain his change in appearance and personality), dying and not wanting to tell his family (to explain the alienation and sweating - plus he was feeding me his lies of illness)... see, this man - I believed him and began to give him space and kindness even when he should have been alienated and disowned.

Hindsight - I would trust my gut... all the signs were there but LOVE is blind... and I loved him blindly! All of these signs are straight from the cheaters handbook and were stupid things that should have tipped me off - makes me feel foolish NOW!

[This message edited by Thislife at 9:45 AM, November 12th (Sunday)]

Mine just changed. Became obsessed with his weight, changed the way he looked, got a tattoo, became short and irritable. Disconnected from me and the things we did together.

Then, he was ALWAYS on his phone and while I use to have the password for it, he changed it and tried to convince me it was due to an Apple upgdate.. Ummm....we both had apple and the same softest updates. Mine didn't require a new password. He thought he was being smart: if he had left his password alone, I never would have been suspicious of what was on there. That's how I eventually found out was by snagging his phone and receiving his deleted messages.

Lily

I got 6 emails in a row announcing the changing of my email address (which my XWW used as well bc she didn't want her own) to an email address that was the OM's name@yahoo.com for all of my XWW's accounts (phone, jcpenney card, Lerner card, etc). She was supposedly staying at a female friend's house that night. I immediately recognized the OM name, as he was a co-worker of hers.

After a couple hrs of investigating, along with my 2 daughters, I packed up EVERYTHING she owned into about 20 huge lawn bags and put them on OM's porch. She never came back home.

[This message edited by GoldenR at 2:17 PM, November 12th (Sunday)]

My WW changed drastically within about 2 weeks right after the New Year this year...all the red flags...became obsessed with her looks/hair, started dressing provocative, working out like crazy, started getting very distant to not only myself but our son as well, then I noticed the cell phone usage, ALWAYS on it, ALWAYS hiding the screen, double lock (pw and finger print)...one day it all clicked though and the thought started drifting thru my head. Decided to jump on our laptop since she had been working from home up until a few days prior to this. Found that she was still logged into FB, didn’t see any out of the ordinary posts, but then something told me to check FB messenger....and there they were, 2 chains with female coworkers talking about the guys she had went on dates with already, including pics of them...decided to check her email after that and guess what?...still logged in, yup, was even worse, exchanging pics and videos with a guy she was planning on meeting up with....

Well I hope this is not tmi but my XW did a really stupid thing. I got home from traveling for work and she got a haircut cut but not on her head. As a matter of fact she was now sporting a bald beaver 😳!

Now last time she had done it she didn’t like the itching and I prefer a little “grass on the playground. So I asked her why she did it and she said for me. Well I did not believe it for a second.

The night before I came home her iPhone showed she was somewhere else with her bald beaver. That’s when I knew our lives wouldn’t be the same.

Still pisses me off she did that for a piece of shit.

My WW and her AP organized a BBQ at his house and had both of our families together! What nerves did they have!

A couple days later, my sixth sense kicked in and was wondering what they would have talked about on their own. I decided to check her phone while she was in the shower and it didn't have a single text messages with him (b/c she deleted them all).

I became suspicious - why zero text messages when they had to organize the logistics of the get together just a couple days prior.

I then logged in to our cell phone data plan and saw the record of thousands of text messages and numerous calls they had.

That's when I called her out on her BS. Lots of TT and such after that, but that's when everything snowballed.

We shared a vehicle. I saw a yellow disciplinary form from his employer. I picked it up to see what he'd been disciplined for and it had a strange woman's name on it. That was the start - and I caught him hiding his phone before his shower while on vacation. When I asked to see the phone he readily agreed but first deleted a bunch of texts....right in front of me.

There were so many clues. By the end, he was practically rubbing his philandering in my face. But the first clue, the one I ignored and will always feel stupid about, was the manscaping.

It's easy to say, hey, if I had reacted to the manscaping right there and then, none of the rest would have happened. But that's just not true. For reasons which defy reasonable comprehension, he was determined to cheat. And he kept on until he did.

My WW who was having a EA was not tech savvy enough to understand internet history. So when my 6 year old was on my WW's laptop, looking for a video on your tube she watched the day before, I said I could find it on the history..and whoa, what's this? After I went to sleep at night wife was spending hours on another man's Facebook site. I could not access her site, or his private messages, but the internet history showed she was looking at his pictures...nothing sexual, just pining away dreaming apparently. So then I snuck a look into her email when she forgot to close it out. Nothing in her inbox, but in her trash...wow. Apparently she did not know that when she deleted something from her inbox, it went to trash, where it stuck around for a few weeks before being deleted.

You know, hindsight 20/20, the entire time period of the affair, everything he did was a tip-off. But because I was so trusting and stupid I honestly believed he was having an early mid-life crisis! I started seeing an IC right around the first time they had sex, unbeknownst to me! Now I am so happy that I did that because when D-Day came around I was more prepared, I guess. And in fact, on D-Day we had what was going to be our first MC session! We were both so happy to go and really start working on making our marriage better. Then Slutty Sally called and that appointment went a whole other direction!

He was so secretive with his phone. Anytime I touched it he would freak. He'd take it to the bathroom with him if we went out to eat instead of leaving it on the bar or the table. For awhile, maybe the middle third of the A, we rarely had sex. And then in the last third when we did he was weird about it. Partially because he chose to sleep on the couch for 3.5 months so he'd go back downstairs to it after! I asked him several times if there was someone else and he always said no and would get upset at me for asking. I always just believed him.

I cannot believe I was so stupid.

Common story - overly protecting phone. Then when she went on a trip to help out a friend. She wouldn't answer calls or texts. Calls me and pretends phone is on the fritz. Just seemed strange, so i checked if she was getting or making calls online at the phone carrier's site and found so many calls and texts to and from the same number, I couldn't belive it. Called the number and yep, some guy.

Took a little more investigating, but that was what broke it open.