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I believe spouse has cheated, no proof but plenty of red flags

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Hippo16 ( member #52440) posted at 2:00 PM on Thursday, July 6th, 2023

Woodsracer

Thought? Do you have something (happenings? situations?) in your life history to slant your thinking?

Looking at posts on your thread here:


You say:
I have always been very clear that cheating is not recoverable for me and I feel that if she did and is lying it is because she doesn't want to disrupt our family and kids, not because she doesn't want to lose me. I did offer to her that if she would admit to cheating that I would agree to stay together until the youngest kid was off to college and we would maintain status quo until then once we did separate I would not tell kids why, but that I wanted the truth, no matter what it was. She continued to swear that she never cheated, I said ok, but if I ever have real proof then everything will end abruptly, so telling the truth now was as good as it would get. She knows I kill myself to keep my word so I think she knows I would have honored what I said had she admitted to it. She also knows that I will end it abruptly if I every have hard proof. So I feel like she would have taken that offer. I also never thought I would see a video with my wife showing a pic of her boobs to someone either so...........


If she is not cheating on you then all this snooping and tracking might backfire on you. You will look like jealous, and controlling husband. It will do more damage to your marriage than good. On one other hand, her few actions are highly suspicious and inappropriate.

It seems you have been snooping on her for many years. If she knows you are snooping then she might have learnt how to cover her tracks if she is cheating on you, like deleting texts everyday, deleting call logs or using a burner phone etc etc. My advise is to sit with her and have a mature talk. Tell her how her actions over the years have dented your marriage and reduced your trust on her. Also, you need to ask yourself whether you are just being paranoid because aside from red flags 1 and 5 and changing her password, rest may or may not be red flags. May be you are interpreting things in a wrong way. She definitely needs to work on her boundaries. But, still I dont see any damning evidence or hint of her cheating. So, tread carefully.

I believe it’s way too premature to drag your wife into a polygraph interrogation, unless you want to seriously wreck your marriage.

Reality Blows:
Presently, IMHO, the circumstances do not warrant polygraphs or bugging her car. If she finds a VAR in her car, and she’s not cheating, your marriage will be irreparably harmed.

asc1226
Why the change in passwords? Why don’t you both know each other’s passwords?

You note:
Looking at everything on paper I feel that she probably has not been unfaithful. My gut feeling is that she has. If she did, I assume it is over, as we pretty much know where each other are all the time and there have not been any concerning issues for a bit. But my gut feeling is my gut feeling.

Older and Happier (?!)
I am not an expert. But I think the mistake you may be making is confronting her before you have any evidence. You have no leverage and as all here will tell you, she will just deny and possibly gaslight you. If you read the JFO threads thisis what so often happens. There are very predictable patterns that play out that you need to start to understand.

Engligsh Name:
I don't think it's a good idea to confront, to let her know about your suspicions, unless you have solid evidence of infidelity. If she's not cheating, she'll feel that you don't trust her and she might resent you for that. If she is cheating, she'll try harder and harder to hide anything that may lead you to think that, and it's going to make things more difficult for you to find out the truth.

You say:
Lost of perspective and good advice here. I wish I had know about this site sooner as I would have had a better plan to sort through and find truths. I was reactive and probably blew the window of opportunity. Stuck in a believe her words and stay or pay attention to actions and decide from there.

If kids were not involved the choice would be easier. I don’t want to break up my family over a gut feeling. Nor do I want to be in a marriage with a spouse that had been unfaithful.


Serpico:
Red Flag # 1: Your wife has nude pictures of herself on her mobile telephone that she claims are for her own use in tracking her fitness progress which is helping her to feel good about getting her body back in shape.
...
A wise man once said that a woman who shares provocative pictures of herself (through pictures or social media or whatever) is advertising her sexuality. It is equivalent to hanging a "come fu** me" sign around her neck.

Bigger:
If you tell someone that an action will automatically and unequivocally lead to a certain result then they have no incentive to confess to that action. If your wife knows infidelity in any way or form will lead to divorce… she has no reason to confess to anything that might have happened.

Hellfire:
Regardless of what anyone else thinks may be going on with your wife...trust your gut.

Suggest you read over your thread and note what Bigger posted about giving an ultimatum.

Seems you played your hand cards face up and she called you and you "folded" without seeing her hand. (can that be done? grin )


So the water has already gone way down the creek.

My take, Your option is limited to working on your suspicions as (maybe?) part of your psyche and monitoring her.

Some people do use there phone as a photographic "happened to me" memory store. Storing nude pictures of oneself?
Seems a bit narcissistic - Something to ponder

SHARING? Well - was the shared picture just of her boobs - or? was/is her face in the picture. I guess I'm a bit of the "old code" where folks don't share their private stuff (nudist types excerpted) with strangers.

There was a couple who posted (where?) on some forum that their "bucket list" included going to a nudist beach.
To me, a bit gross as the great majority of people look far Better with their clothes on. Maybe "nudist beaches" only attract the Venus and Adonis types?

Your current relationship appears close to "friends rasing offspring" - not a marriage of two who (should) adore each other for what they are and the job of having shared a life so far.

How do you get to Nirvana with your marriage? You both have work to do. And a long time will be needed.

"People will forget what you said but they will not forget how you made them feel."

peace

There's no troubled marriage that can't be made worse with adultery."For a person with integrity, there is no possibility of being unhappy enough in your marriage to have an affair, but not unhappy enough to ask for divorce."

posts: 992   ·   registered: Mar. 26th, 2016   ·   location: OBX
id 8798355
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 woodsracer (original poster member #83407) posted at 3:40 PM on Friday, July 7th, 2023

Hippo 16, I appreciate the thoughtful response.

I grew up in a very unstable household, moved out when I was 16, went through some ups/downs defining who I wanted to be. Ultimately decided that I would marry one time and have as stable a household as possible for my family. I had never been insecure or untrusting of my spouse until seeing the nude selfies on her phone, then started snooping. I definitely came out of the gate to fast and blew any chance I had of quietly gathering info.

The pic she showed(she shoed on her phone to them) was of her body, not face. It was her as I recognized the pic. I am very private and this definitely threw me for a major loop.

Our relationship was strictly one of co parenting for quite a while, I had some business hardships that added stress and the issues between us made it worse. The last 5-6 months I would say that the ship is starting to right itself in terms of our relationship, with exception of my gut feeling that infidelities have occured. Additionally our children were all very heavily involved in sports that required extensive travel basically every weekend for 6-7 years, which is not easy on a relationship but has tapered off to we can go watch when we want to, still have to travel, but worth it.

I did sit down with her recently and expressed to her that she did things that were inappropriate and that I did expect that she had been unfaithful, how it made me feel, offered to give her house and be very agreeable in divorce terms if she would be totally honest about any infidelities. She swore that she knows how it looked and she crossed lines that she regrets but she was never unfaithful. I also told her that this was a one time offering and that if at a later date I found out she cheated any divorce or settlements would be drastically different. I believe she knows this to be true, as she has seen me negotiate many business deals. I am very fair and reasonable until a line gets crossed and then I am not.

We are at a place that we are both working harder to have a better marriage. Joining this site may seem counter intuitive to that, but I don't think it is for me. I have read many posts on here, finding insight within them and gotten great responses on my post. This pushed me to , among other things, research phone records as extensively as I could without needing attorney involvement and getting to a point where I think I am able to accept that I have two choices, believe her or don't. The don't path is drag this out until kids are all settled at college and then divorce. The believe path is start planning life after becoming empty nesters. If I have proof then divorce is only path I would pursue.

I believe I will trust but verify for a while, not keep searching for "proof" of past infidelity(unless it falls in my lap), and move on with life.

posts: 56   ·   registered: Jun. 1st, 2023
id 8798537
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