SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Just curious how you discovered your spouse’s A.

Did someone tell you?

Did you catch them in the A?

Was it a gut feeling that caused you to investigate?

xhusband # I really don’t remember all the details of how I found out. All I remember is that his phone kept going off. Can’t remember if he confessed after many questions or what.

Wayward #2 it was a gut feeling. I didn’t follow up on it right away bc I thought I was paranoid from being cheated on by xhusband #1. Combine that with all the gaslighting, I just thought I was going crazy. Until a coworker came into my place of work and said something to me about WS going to the city that day when WS had specifically told me he was going to work . I went into dectective mode and started listening to my gut.

[This message edited by Emotionalhell at 4:09 PM, March 17th (Saturday)]

He was driving and I was using the gps on his phone, to get cleats that I got on Freecycle. A text pinged, I opened it and he said "are you reading my text?". I only got to read the first 2 lines, I was so shocked. The youngest kid at home had just turned 1 not long ago. By the time we arrived home, the text had been deleted because he "deleted all his texts". Kinda. He still texts from the realtor we used 10 mths before. I went on over-drive with the pick-me-dance until 2 weeks later when I chucked him out (he carried on like normal, since I was so accepting of his "friend" excuse ) and I sent an email to the OW to f**** off.

Affair had been going on for 1.5 yrs, not the 1 mth he pretended it was. He was just a regular cheater. Now he's a regular divorcee with a huge chuck of his wage going towards child support.

That's life.

Eta: he still insists that he never had sex with the OW or even held her hand. Just hugged her in the car every day, talked tits and cocks, and even told her that she was one of the best thing that happened to him. And went out of the office with her many times. But NO SEX. My x-h got divorced because I have a wild imagination.

[This message edited by EmbraceTheChange at 4:58 PM, March 17th (Saturday)]

I had gut feelings that nagged at me. Never straight out accused. Didn't snoop. Just would say things like I feel a bit threatened or x, y, z doesn't add up. Always denied and I was totally gaslighted.

In the end, he confessed. It was a 16 month affair she had ended it a few months earlier. Things were much better with us during that time, but it turns out he still had feelings for her and wasn't ready to let it go. Reached out a few times. They saw each other (by surprise, truly, she was actually trying her best to NC him [also married]) and reviewed their confused feelings but that it would never/should never work. He came clean to me a week later. I guess the guilt finally got to him.

On one hand, I'm glad he told me and I wasn't traumatized by finding out on my own. I don't have pictures or words to remember. It had physically ended a few months prior which helped maybe slightly with 'the fog' (although he very clearly wasn't emotionally over it). But... I struggle with the fact that he wasn't the one to end it (feel like second choice).. and am annoyed that if I had been firmer with my suspicions in the beginning, perhaps it would have come to light much sooner. Although who knows how that would have looked and felt.

It's all shit, no matter how you slice it.

[edited because i feel like i overshare details, ha! paranoia.]

[This message edited by gtflng at 9:35 PM, March 17th (Saturday)]

XWH - my best friend told me.

This WH - I finally opened a FB acct and after six months or so finally looked at my husband’s page. He had just finished saying something to one of his ex gfs about how she was sexy times infinity. That is when all hell broke loose. I went through everyone of his FB posts for the last 8 years. Looked up how many times he searched their names, read chat messages, found out every social media account he had and went through them all, found out he had four email accounts. Now he has no social media at all and one email account that I monitor. I hate FB, but I wish I had opened an account years earlier so I could have caught him earlier.

I saw a text message. He was asking her for a quickie. Now maybe the only quickie he is getting is by his own hand. she's still married and he lives two states away now.

Both times was when I paid the phone bill. In 2006 he was talking to her in the phone all the time. In 2016, he got a bit smarter because they didn’t put the texting details on the phone bill, just the number of texts. He rarely talked to her on the phone but texted her thousands of times. I believe Sprint started posting texting details shortly before I caught him.

I get triggered each time I pay the cell phone bill now.

I had a gut feeling but no real proof. WH was pretty careful about covering tracks (deleting messages, using cash for everything etc) I could have investigated and probably found out a lot sooner but I had no reason to disbelieve anything he said. I just thought it was depression.

when he ended it with OW she got angry and sent me an email detailing their affair. She wanted me to get angry enough to divorce him so she could step into my life.

But he dropped her like yesterday's trash. Big surprise.

I saw an I love you Baby text message on his phone from OW. I monitor d thei text messages for 3 days then ask d him to leave. He denied all the way.

Found bondage pix of OW on the computer in with the travel pictures from his last job in a folder called " fun times "

She wasn't smiling, she looked miserable. There were also other disturbing images. How he could get pleasure from them worries me.

keylogger

An email from the OW's ex (she cheated on him, too).

I'll never forget the day my world crumbled...

My wife left for work. I was getting the kids ready for school (my work schedule is very flexible). 10 minutes later, I get a call from a woman telling me she needs to talk to me and that she's in my driveway. It's about my wife.

I figured since she was at my house, I should at least Grant her an audience. She then told me that my wife and her husband were having an affair. I asked what her husband's name was, and I actually laughed. Not only was my wife not the cheating type (whatever that type was), but surely she wouldn't throw away everything we had for this person. I was actually laughing, and told her she was crazy. She then started telling me more and more, including how my wife and her best friend went to the wife's house to allow her to confront my wife. As she was telling me the story, I started piecing things together, connecting hunches and feelings that I've had that I've dismissed thinking I was going crazy.

The affair ended a month prior, but the OM's wife wanted me to know. I knew the guy. I talked to him, although I wouldn't say that we were necessarily friends. I didn't have his phone number, so I asked her to let me use her phone to call him (the AP) and asked him what was going on. He then confirmed that they had an inappropriate relationship that turned physical. I then called my wife and told her to get the F home.

It sucks so badly. This happened in May of 2017, and it still cuts like a knife writing about this.

When she finally came home, she was crying and tried to hug me. I'm normally a pretty well-balanced individual, but I almost went into a psychotic episode... When she touched me, it was like a jolt of lightning struck me with how I jumped back and in a voice I've never heard come out of me before, I told her to never touch me again.

I'm still to this day really bothered that I had to find out that way. I'm angry that I consider myself someone of at least average intelligence, but I never listened to my hunches. Something was wrong, I knew that, but I never acted on them. I'm also really upset that she couldn't come clean on her own.

I noticed my W's becoming increasingly distant and detached about five months after she attended her 50th high school reunion in a distant city. Finally, I took the morally ambiguous step of breaking into her email.

There I discovered an increasingly amorous, year-long correspondence with an OM whom she had dated in high school. He wrote first, asking if she would be attending the reunion. She responded that she would and that hearing from him "brought unexpected emotions." He replied that her talk of "unexpected emotions" nearly "overwhelmed" him and set his "mind and heart racing." He added that he hoped the resumption of their relationship would become more than just platonic.

Knowing nothing of this, I did not accompany my wife to the reunion where she reunited with the OM. After the reunion the correspondence continued and became increasingly romantic.

Finally on Valentine's Day, a day dedicated to mutual declarations of love, the OM wrote: “Just thinking today is a good day to say hello . . . . and might I add that it has truly done much for my whole being to be back in touch with you. . . .”

My WW responded: “Thanks for your greeting. I am touched and hesitant to respond in fear of saying too much. My husband is ‘out of sorts’ to put it delicately. And I have been having fantasies of ‘I wish I could talk to Jack [not his real name]. He would understand . . . .' I love being in touch with you . . . ."

When I read this and other messages extending back for about a year I was crushed, devastated. We have been married for 45 years with children and grandchildren.

I confronted my WW with my discovery. At first she denied everything, but when I showed her printouts of the correspondence she reluctantly confessed. Like other BS's, I feel as if the ground has given way beneath my feet.

[This message edited by SeventyFour at 6:26 PM, March 17th (Saturday)]

Was emptying the bathroom trashcan and found a used condom. Called him at work, he told me it was someone else (that I didn't know), but once he came home I was able to figure out it was a 'friend' of mine -- that is, someone who seemed to be pursuing a friendship with me but was really trying to have an affair with my husband for years . They didn't use condoms all of the time, so I guess I was just 'lucky' they did when they fucked in my bed that time while I was out of town to say goodbye to my dying father. On a related note, I missed my calling as an interrogator.

There was a 3 month stretch between the X's completely insane meltdown, and the actual Dday. On meltdown day, he said we were divorcing. Gave some of the craziest reasons...all of them my fault of course. I knew during that conversation what he had done. It took 3 more months for the confession though.

During that 3 months, there was "the moment" I knew without a doubt.

He was going to an AA event(he loves the 13th step of AA) And, I knew it was probably someone from his group.

After he left, I went to put one of our dogs outside. As I stepped off the bottom step unto the front door landing, I stepped on something.

Turned on the light...it was a little blue pill!!

When he got home later that night, I waited for him to go to bed. I walked into the room, and told him to hold out his hand. I gave him the pill.

He said to me "I was putting that into my truck for down the road, when we are divorced"

As I was walking out, I replied, "I am not that stupid"

What an idiot!!!

Oldest DD told me about OW1 (DD's BFF's mother) and OW3. I discovered OW2 (who was actually OW1 chronologically in terms of As) while in stealth mode after DD told me about OW1.

Learning that Xhole was trying to bribe DD (17 at the time) to keep her mouth shut (for OW1) and it was eating DD up inside made me want to put a bullet between Xhole's eyes for doing that to his own child. DD only withheld the info initially because she was afraid of hurting me. Her sense of morals (and increasing stress keeping it bottled up) finally prevailed and she told me. That was the beginning of the end.

He locked his email in 2009 and it sent red flags to me. I hacked in and found a small email sent to a coworker after my H switched jobs. It was clear nothing physical happened. I confronted him and he apologized and I thought we dodged a bullet. Had I found SI in 2009, I would have seen the red flags:

1. He told me I was over reacting to the email and anytime I felt like it was a form of cheating he shut me down.

2. He would gaslight me when I showed concern about other women at his office. They were "harmless". I was insecure.

Had I found SI in 2009 I would have learned that what you find out is usually just the tip of the iceberg, and that they take A's underground. I would have learned about VAR's and found out much sooner.

Dday 2 was Oct 2014. My gut had been screaming since a text came to my phone in Dec 2013 intended for him. I confronted and again was told "this is just her personality, she is harmless".

But from that moment on, my gut told me something wasn't right. He was VERY good about covering his tracks and he wasn't ever gone late or had any telling pattern and he would leave his phone opened and he and I had a great relationship and frequent sex so none of the typical signs I associated with cheating were there. So I just again thought I was crazy.

Deep down though that nagging feeling persisted. In Oct 2014 I was on linked in and saw a message he sent someone to email him at an email I didn't know existed. So, I hacked into that and died that night.

I saw that he had sexting pictures of one of the OW, I saw he was on Ashley Madison, I saw he was currently in contact with a diff OW that I had expressed concern over.

The crazy thing is this time when I confronted him, he came clean with EVERYTHING. By this time, he had been in his double life for years and was wanting out and was too chicken to come clean because he thought I would divorce him. He confessed to info I never found out about. There was yet a second secret email account that he closed that night and in my naivety, I didn't ask to read the emails. He said they were more sexting emails and I didn't want those images seared in my brain. In hindsight, I should have seen them, although, I don't think they contain any new info of additional women because if he was trying to hide this secret email from me, why tell me it existed. And if he was trying to hide the other OW, why tell me about them?

The past 3 1/2 years he has been rock solid. He has been given the gift of R and is the poster child for redemption. My gut is quiet. Our relationship remains solid despite everything that he did. I understand it was never about a lack in our relationship, rather, his brokenness. And poor coping strategies.

I am still on the rollercoaster though it doesn't do as many loop to loops as it used to.

Both times it was a gut feeling that told me to investigate.

My ex was a real gem.

He ENJOYED telling me every single time he cheated.

He 'confessed' with a sick, cruel smile on his face. He got off on crushing me and reducing my sense of self-worth to nothing.

I really enjoyed having his dumb ass arrested for DV and having LEO present when he moved all his stuff out. Can't even begin to tell you how very satisfying that was!

He accidentally sent me a text that was intended for someone else.