I have been together with my life partner for a bit more than 22 years. We’re are not officially married but I refer to her has my wife. One year into our relationship, she emotionally cheated on me, with a person 5000 miles away, using the computer. At that time, online games and chat rooms were recent and magic. It was hard for me but, giving the circumstances, I forgave her and we agreed to implement rules in the relationship, to prevent similar issues in the future. Rules like, no privacy with computers and phones, although at the time, phones were not a issue like they are today.
She has been great and we have been happy. Some minor issues along the way, but no major problems. Daughter came along. She’s now 17.
Three years ago, more or less, we began to have differences that would turn into discussions. I also began to drink more and we all know that this two together are a no-no. Issues can get out of proportion very fast. But we got along.
Two months ago, I notice a change in her attitude. Minor issues would turn into huge problems and the conversions would end with her saying that "maybe we should go our separate ways" . I tried everything to understand why she was behaving differently and why she was so cold and distant with me. Even when I wanted to spend extra time with her, and give her love and affection, she would get mad with me, saying "your doing to much".
Made no sense to me. My person is now a different person that I don’t recognize.
I begun to suspect that there must have been a side reason that justify all of this, so I started digging but I found anything. So, if there’s some proof of anything, must be in her phone.
Because of our past, we have this agreement where there is no privacy on our phones. So, I decided to search the phone but without her knowledge so we wouldn’t fight again.
She went to the shower and left the phone charging so I went through text, calls and whatsup. I found no strange things except for a message that she sent almost two months ago, to her cousin (like sister) saying something like "I need to talk to you about something when we’re alone" and the cousin replied "you were fine before so what’s going on, I’m worried now", and she replied "it’s just things from the heart". Hummm…looking at the dates I don’t recall any stress between us at the time.
Last Tuesday, detailed communications bill arrived. I analyzed all the destination numbers and one was showing up a lot. Long story short, she has been sending text messages and making calls to a specific number that she does not have in her phone book. All messages and calls to this number have been deleted from the phone. I confronted her with all this. She says it’s the secondary (secret) number of her cousin. I called the cousin and she confirmed but did not pickup when I called the secret number. She wanted to stay out of this mess and hanged up.
The explanation for the deletion of messages was to secure her cousin’s private information. But why was the calls deleted also?! There’s no private info there. And why doesn’t the cousin pickup the phone, knowing its me and knowing there’s a huge conflict going on !?
I asked the wife to call the number from her phone and she refused. Then I grabbed the phone and tried to do it myself but she physically prevented me from doing so… for 5 minutes until I gave up. Never my wife was physical with me like that. Like if her life depended on preventing that phone call. She said It was a matter of "her privacy". Keep in mind that we have a phone transparency rule and just 5 minutes back, when I asked, she just handed it over to me. But now she realized I was connecting the dots. So, hands off!
Further phone’s bill analysis shows that all communications to that secret phone happens at the same hour of the day, more or less 14:00-14:30 no exceptions. Also, in a certain day, she called her cousin at 13:58, talked for 44 seconds and 2 minutes later send a series of text to that secret number.
Now, there’s no dialog. She wants to leave and preparations are being made in order for her to go live alone in a small family’s house in the village. The last four days, I have been trying to establish a common ground to have a conversation about our relationship and its future. I demand a detailed explanation of who’s that number and what are those communications, and I want proof. She doesn’t care about any of that, maintains the "cousin’s secret number" narrative, and she wants out.
Although I don’t have irrefutable proof of cheating, I think that, when you put all together, its pretty obvious.
