SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

The past 2 days I have felt compelled to read their messages to each other. I have about half of them. I think I am searching for the truth of what happened. H gives me his account, but I believe he is so confused about his own desires and wants during the affair that his truth is murky and clouded. He's in IC to figure it out. He thinks there is nothing I can gain by reading them, they just send me into an apoplectic rage. True, but I still feel as if I'm searching for something. Maybe it is just pain/anger shopping. I don't know. Am I just hurting myself more? The truth is that it happened, and it really doesn't matter what they said to each other. Right?

I haven't done it yet but I sometimes want to. I discovered the A one sleepless night and I heard a text come in on his phone. I confronted him immediately and he deleted them. I found out that I can buy a program to retrieve deleted texts. At times I want to buy it mostly because my H gives me quite a few "I don't remember" responses when I ask questions. Like you, I can't see how it will make me feel better but I wonder nonetheless.

I have gone through periods of reading them and re-reading them. Looking for understanding. I did find some understanding and also reduced the pain, like desensitizing myself.

I wanted to get inside it and be there, understand what and why and how and when. Some stuff still stings but it also gave me more insight to ask really detailed probing questions of my WBF.

I know some members here prefer not to know, we are all different. But I had to go with it when I felt the urge and now I feel the urge less frequently. To m e it did matter what they said to each other and there is a whole heap of stuff said on the phone that I only know if he tells me.

Maybe when your anger subsides you can read something different into them.

As with so much of this stuff, it really is an individual need/choice. Over the last 6 years, my opinions about knowing everything have vacillated. Of course this is coming from someone who is comfortable that I know the gist of everything, and have seen many of the concrete "pieces of evidence." One thing I have learned in my own experience is that perspective really changes or clarifies over time. The texts and notes my H shared with his AP were chock full of things he meant during the A. They were in complete alignment with being immersed in a LTA; they agreed with an A script. Once he got out of the A, those notes and texts were embarrassing, shameful, and deceitful in his eyes. IMHO, just because it was written, doesn't necessarily mean it was gospel truth. Rather than looking at it as a "life truth," I can now see it as a feeling or emotion, and feelings and emotions are often temporary and variable. I also think there's often a language of perpetuation and hyperbole during an A that has little to no basis in reality; it works in the fantasy and helps to sustain the feel-good of the A.

These are just my thoughts on my own personal journey, and they have formed slowly over the last 6 years. Given that, in summary, I'd say the words exchanged between my H and his AP let me see the A more clearly which helped me in the short-run, but began to hurt me in the long-run. It became important for me to find a way to incorporate them into my history without letting them sabotage my future. Early on it was necessary for me to see some of those messages between them, but I was later glad that I didn't need to see all of them to feel that I had gotten the truth about the A from my H. Those words were powerful and hurtful, but my H and I had to put them into context and eventually move beyond them.

I know I'm failing miserably to articulate my thoughts, but I guess it's along the lines of: while the words ended up being "just words," they were significant, powerful, hurtful, and had to be dealt with.

He deleted everything on DD. It upset me for a long time, but now I'm grateful I don't have them. Sometimes when I pain shop, I can't control myself.

I've place her where she belongs: as just one of the ways H's problems manifested. I don't want to give her more power than she deserves. I still ask about her when I need to, but mostly, we are dealing with healing ourselves and our M.

Lostworld, I disagree, I think you described it wonderfully!

I am so thankful that my husbands cheating was sans social media, internet, cell phone, he used the old fashioned methods, you know calls to and from his workplace phone, or use a business' phone on his route and if that failed, she would drive until she found him and set up a hookup....

In fact to this day, he doesn't have a computer,tablet and still doesn't text.

Every situation is different, but I learned way more about the As from reading the messages than I ever would have learned from him. He claimed he'd turned to these women for insight into our marriage, which made it sound as if he was complaining about me to them--an act of disrespect which is particularly painful to me--only I didn't find any of that in the messages I read. I think that was one of his justifications, a made-up excuse he thought would be more palatable than the truth, which was that he was bored and addicted to the attention. The messages were pretty much idle chit chat and sex, sprinkled early on with the kind of romantic babbling I remember from our early days.

I'm one who craves a deep understanding of a situation and I seriously doubt my H understands himself well enough to give that to me so I have to dig. These women may have believed every word he said to them but I was blessed with enough written evidence to see that it was mainly fantasy bullsh*t.

There's a fine line though between digging for understanding and digging for more pain. If you're not getting any comfort from reading the texts then it may be time to stop.

Yup, Almost 7 years later. Every now and again, when I trigger or when some reminder pops up, I look back. Recently it was POSOM showing up in my Linked-in feed as a "Person I May Know."

I have the nagging feeling that I'm missing something about their conversations. And that if I read it again, it'll finally become clear.

But I know that it's just me obsessing. While my FWW is remorseful and is going a fairly good job at R, she does not see the point in working on herself. She just promisses, really hard, never to do it again. That leaves me with the "other shoe is going to drop" feeling.

[This message edited by Twitchy at 10:24 AM, May 28th (Wednesday)]

I don't have the texts so it's not an option. I saw a few FB messages that appeared benign (until I read them after DDay, when everything held meaning) but that's about it. It drove me nuts for months as he texted a lot, particularly with one AP (the others were almost all sexting). I really wanted to read the texts to be sure I understood the nature of the "relationship", but what I have instead is him and his true remorse.

I can't say what I would do at this point if I was presented with the texts but I'm OK with not reading them.

We just deleted his FB account, we had it deactivated a while ago but I knew I could still log in and see the old messages and it was just too tempting. Having it gone for good is freeing for me.

I used to this almost daily early on post DDAY. Figured it wasn't helping me as it was like sticking a knife in my own heart every time I read the texts. I did buy a program that would get all the deleted texts. It did pretty well, but lots was lost. I'd say the BULK of it was lost. I did read enough to hurt my heart beyond belief.

Lostworld said it well. I discovered the A by stumbling upon a long series of text messages that my husband thought he'd deleted but hadn't.

The benefit of reading the texts was that I discovered the affair, and despite the nightmare of that, I'd rather know the truth than be lied to. The downside of having read them is that they frankly didn't help me understand the A any better - if anything, I probably give some of them more meaning than my H or the MOW ever intended.

And even now, a year later, the texts are imprinted on my brain. Even though my husband wrote things during the affair that he'd never write now, it's hard sometimes for me to separate what was past from what exists now. As Lostworld says, you have to put those words in context and eventually move beyond them, and that is hard work for me.

It's a double edged sword.

On the one hand, the texts HURT. I wish I'd never have to have seen my WH telling another woman "In my heart I wish you were mine."

On the other hand, WH DID text those words to another woman and ultimately that action, not the act of me reading those words, is what caused my hurt.

All I have access to are old texts from the first year of the A. What those texts gave me was the truth of what was going on in my life at a time when things weren't making sense for me.

They also helped me see WH with clear eyes and realize that he'd downplayed the severity of what he'd done, and I wasn't going to let him get away with minimizing like that anymore.

WH deleted the most recent texts right before D-Day so I never saw those. Sometimes he wishes I'd seen those when he was withdrawing from the A, but all I saw were the ones from when he was firmly in the fog.

And even now, a year later, the texts are imprinted on my brain. Even though my husband wrote things during the affair that he'd never write now, it's hard sometimes for me to separate what was past from what exists now. As Lostworld says, you have to put those words in context and eventually move beyond them, and that is hard work for me.

My struggle.

The truth is that it happened, and it really doesn't matter what they said to each other. Right

I know a lot of people feel this way but I don't. What they said to each other does matter a lot to me. I wish it didn't but it does. Things started between them in August 2012 but I didn't catch on until late April 2013. So I couldn't recover any of the early texts, which in my opinion were the most important. The ones I did recover were incomplete. Even though I never recovered any texts of a sexual nature, it still makes me crazy! Especially when I see he sent her a text at 130 am saying

surprise :) but I have no idea what it was or meant because it didn't recover all of them. I go back and read them from time to time and it hurts but like you I feel like I'm searching for something. I don't know what it is though. Maybe trying to make sense of it all... I should burn them so I stop torturing myself but I can't bring myself to do it.

I didn't get the full truth until I bought the program and asked for her phone. Probly the worse day of my life. I read and retread the texts over and over again. Searching for answers an contradictions to her story. In a way I think that it made me feel better to know everything but I don't think it helps now. In a big way I wish I never read them because of all the triggers they cause me now. I think back on different things they said to each other and I get sick to my stomach. I would crash for days after rereading the texts. I still have them but I don't read them anymore. I am moving foreword but I couldn't get started until I stopped reading them. In fact I haven't looked at them in 3 months. Our MC told me to delete them. She said having them and reading them will not let us move forward. I agree with her but I am not ready to let go of them. One reason is that in those texts the fucker tells my wife details about one of his previouse affairs. To me it is like having a card up my sleeve. I have been in contact with his wife off and on and she is working hard to save their marriage. She sounded so hopeful. I almost told her about it but she is a very nice person. And l didn't want to hurt her. If he is truly remorseful and they are able to move on I don't think it is up to me to wreck that. But if he ever contacts my wife again.

I'm still very recent (1.5 mos), so take my input with a grain of salt. My WH's 'indiscretions' were sexually explicit emails that happened on & off over a four year period. He deleted the email account on DDay. I currently wish more than anything that it was still there. I read enough of them to create triggers, but I was too shocked/emotional to be rational about what I was seeing.

I want it back to search for so many things- my name, our children's names, his phone number, the words meet/see/love/wife, the name of our town. And to see the dates. He tells me of a few times that make sense when I look back over the years, but I'd like proof that those times are the only times.

So if it were texts, I'm not sure I'd be going over and over them. I really just want to know (without a doubt) the timeline and the extent, which if you've already seen the texts is established.

It could also be a way to bring the pain back so that it stays present for you and you don't move forward faster than you're ready to. I find my good days are when we are together and he's doing all the right things, and after them I need to shake myself and confirm it was a good day, but he's still the man who sent those emails. And one month of fabulous behavior hasn't yet proven he is changed.

I did read and re-read the email messages for a long time before I deleted them all and the g-mail account. He wasn't going to do it. He never went back and looked at them (keystroke logger he doesn't know about)but I told him early on that if I had not read the actual emails... I might not have decided to work it out. The things I read were not love statements or deeply emotional anything from him. As a matter of fact, every time she said she loved him, his reply was "ditto" and then steering the conversation back to sex. Everything I read, confirms what he told me. I DO have a file on my computer where I keep random comments from her before and after DDay. She makes snarky comments about her "ex" and how he done her wrong. Her pain makes me feel better. She's been a bitch to me... calling me names and texting ugly things to me (nothing to him because I think she thinks he'll eventually come back to her, or she thinks I'll get mad and throw him out. Not gonna happen)so I don't feel guilty at all at enjoying her pain. That's what I look at when I'm feeling down. Makes me feel better. I like that I'm in her head. She's in mine (for now) as I work to get past it. She should suffer too. I'm only 6 months out... and it gets better each day. Maybe eventually it'll be gone enough that I won't care about her at all.

I know enough...I also know that he 'loved' her...truth be told he knows he didn't it was all justification to keep it going...none of the bull shit was real....I have enough info to move forward....my H looked at porn ...she most likely helped live it! Not me....I am not and never will be that person....I can live with myself...

I didn't have the option since he always deleted them immediately. I tried to retrieve them, oh how I tried.

I'm glad now. Honestly. Because I would have reread them over and over again. And I did enough to stall my healing along the way on my own.

I read the emails repeatedly for awhile. It was a reality check for me. It actually happened, he actually did this.

It's hard to absorb it all when you're in a state of complete shock. Even though it hurt, I needed to know exactly what I was dealing with.