General Relationship DiscussionAlthough anyone can post anywhere on Talk About Marriage, this section is for people interested in general relationship and marriage advice.
I think you should validate her reaction. Her reaction to your snooping is not out of line quite frankly.
Wife, I understand why you are angry. I know you feel I betrayed you. I can see why you would be very upset with me. I can only tell you that I did this because I love you, I love our marriage, and I love our family. When you came to me out of left field with the feelings you expressed to me, it seemed very out of character for our situation. I felt a need to protect all that I hold dear which is my marriage and my family. I did it from a place of love for you and what we have. You can choose to allow feelings of negativity about your marriage take over your life, or choose to be in a productive, loving marriage and family. The choice is yours, but I wanted you to understand my intentions behind doing what I did.
Geesh. His wife has a secret account! The ONLY way he found out was by snooping!
And now you want him to go on his back foot. All that will do is take attention and focus AWAY from her abusive behaviour!
Which is EXACTLY what she wants to happen.
It is called BLAME SHIFTING!
He will one day WAKE UP one day to the fact that from the date she opened that account and started stashing money into it she has been planning on leaving him. So if that was say five years ago for five years she has been withdrawing her love from him and planning to leave him!
Bob,
I have been on the receiving end of that statement a small number of times during our marriage. My best reaction was to wait a few days - and revisit the event and sequence that led up to it.
And yes - a few days later she repeated she didn't think she would EVER get over it.
So I started at the beginning of the event and said in a soft voice. It is now 10 years later and we are at a party and I mention that while typically not grudge holders we have both CHOSEN to hold onto an incident for a full decade. My resentment is about "xyz" from that incident and her 10 year resentment is over a text message that literally read:
And then I put my phone in front of her and let her read the text message I had sent. She was quiet for a while. And then she asked me - "did I really say XYZ to you" at the start of this fight? And I replied - you did - and I handled it like a child. This is not about beating you up. Your statement was hurtful and out of line. AND you really meant it in the moment. My reaction to it was what you would expect from a poorly reared 10 year old. We have a great marriage because neither of us "clings" to injuries for use as leverage with the other.
She nodded and I could see the anger seeping out of her body. She asked me for a hug - the fight was over.
A lot has been written about how people perceive time. Fortunately in our house, it is possible for NEVER to equal 3-4 days.
One cannot love passionately without injury - making passionate love unsustainable without true forgiveness.
My wife said it a few times as well. Each time it seriously hurt me and took a long time to work through and get over.
The last time she told me she’d “never ever forgive me” was, well the last time. I couldn’t tolerate it any more. I now consider those words massively abusive and a massive betrayal.
Paulination should ask his wife to forgive him for the things he got wrong, for the times he hurt her in the past.
If she tells him she’ll never ever forgive him, he should believe her. He should believe that his wife will forever be bitter and resentful towards him.
If she told you about the bank account, why did she lie about it when you asked her why it took so long to balance?
I don't think she's clinically ill, I think she is just being irrational because she wants to be manipulative and its not working. Like a two year old who doesn't get their ice cream, and throws a tantrum.
you're handling it well, if you want to up it a notch, give her some papers. She led to you and isn't remorseful and is blaming you. If she senses her security blanket leaving shell have a change of heart.if not, she want going to change anyway. Id definitely not go back to the MC together, shell reinforce you as the bad guy
Every single day that she had that secret bank account she has been lying to and deceiving her husband.
Imagine that. So let’s say it’s been open for 5 years. Every day for five years she’s been lying to and deceiving her husband!
She has been leading a totally different life to the life Paulination thought she was leading. She has well and truly deluded him!
But is her behaviour pathological, in that she simply cannot help it? For a starters she has become a habitual liar. Lying for 5 years does become somewhat habitual. And she’s now probably a compulsive liar to boot. She will tell lies in a compulsive way such that her secrets are not fully revealed!
I say it’s pathological. If it wasn’t pathological she would have been full of remorse once her secret activity had been discovered.
But she is not in any way whatsoever remorseful! Until she is remorseful, until she has realised the magnitude of her betrayal her behaviour will never change for the better.
"Most" people are not mentally ill or deluded, although it does happen and if it has happened to you, your personal insights scream out.
OP, sometimes overthinking everything has consequences.
So what does your wife say about the lying? Is she cooled off enough to discuss it?
If it makes any difference, her reaction is pretty normal. Anyone who finds out their spouse is spying because they think they are cheating (and they aren't) is likely to react with the same thoughts.
Not everyone would verbalize it, but it seems normal to me that your wife would be mad and have those thoughts.
It doesn't excuse the lying. Just that right now she is focused on being mad about it, and it might be hard to move forward right now.
How would you feel if it happened to you? And you know without a doubt you are faithful, and she spied on you "just to be sure" because there are issues in the marriage? YOu would be mad for awhile, but you would know you have nothing to hide.
You didn't suspect she was cheating... TAM advised you to check anyways. YOu didn't find anything. That doesn't mean she is deluded or ill... she didn't fall into the 90% category of posters here. You are lucky, if you ask me. I think you took action soon enough to save your marriage from an affair. Maybe that's all gone now though.
She is not at all REMORSEFUL about her betrayal with the bank account.
I'm one of the few that are not concerned about the secret bank account. I'm more concerned with her reactions. Either the MC you are seeing is validating her responses and making it worse or she has more to hide that you haven't found. Really need another MC, her blame shifting has to stop.
My wife gave me much the same kind of reaction to me asking her if the lady's razor in the car was hers. She was over the top. I tried to rationalize with her "Just because something is suspicious does not make you guilty. I agree with you on that. But just because you are innocent does not mean something cannot appear suspicious".
She argued passionately that my position was impossible.
Don't get emotionally attached to her having a rational reaction to your statements or actions. Posted via Mobile Device
I've been doing a lot of foreign language study lately and let me see if I can translate a few things for you:
she said "because I'm pissed that you spied on me".
she meant "I'm pissed that you caught me"
she said that our relationship will never be the same because I betrayed her trust
she meant "because I betrayed your trust". This is classic projection
She told me she hated me, doesn't want to be married to me, wants to leave and doesn't care if she dies. She drives away and then shows back up 20 minutes later accusing me of taking her thyroid medicine so she'll get fat.
This is internal rage bottled up from the past. Eventually she builds up to blaming you for everything she feels is wrong with her
I am taking the hard stance of "if you want to leave, then leave" and all that does is make her make her more pissed and crazy.
She will continue to rage when she doesn't get her way
I've been in counseling for 9 months and my wife still does this. I think when a skilled counselor identifies a severely broken person they tread lightly for fear of making things worse
Uncontrolled raging is a sign of internal dysfunction
She is not at all REMORSEFUL about her betrayal with the bank account.
That shouts of a mental illness.
No Empathy. No Compassion. For her husband!
We can't see into her head. Only know that she is pissed as hell that he was spying and she found it on the computer.
Look go back to the original threads.
You guys HAMMERED this guy into thinking his wife was cheating. He insisted she wasn't... but went ahead and spied on her anyways. Because you guys insisted he should do it.
He didn't find what you were sure he would.
If I play fly on the wall long enough.. I can find SOMETHING on anybody. Wanna bet?
The rest of these threads are about encouraging the OP to work on himself, and that didn't go over very well.
I find this thread sooo out of place.
Only information you have to go on is the OP.
Can't say what the absent spouse feels, or anything. You can't. All anyone can do is ----- encourage the person who IS here to take accountability for their actions. And there are a lot of things one can do in that avenue. Books, counselling, etc. How far are you going to push this one?
If my husband gave me a very large amount of money to pay off debts that we had incurred as a married couple
And I opened up a bank account (or used a separate bank account I already had) and put a substantial amount of money in there
And I kept all of this secret from my husband and never told him
And he found out by snooping
I'd be mad too. I'd be embarrassed, mad, and afraid that I got caught, and I'd feel guilty, too.
I would know that I had seriously breached his trust in me and betrayed my duty to openness that I owe my spouse with regard to finances.
To avoid this guilt, I would tell my husband I had told him about the account (which might even be true), ignoring the fact that I had deposited a large amount of money there that I could spend at will on whatever I wanted without my husband's knowledge.
I would also deflect as much guilt and blame that I felt for keeping this secret by storming about and yelling loudly in the hopes that distracting him by accusing HIM of betrayal of trust he might just forget about mine.
and if I didn't have a job, I would expect my own husband to be FURIOUS at me, because every penny I spend without just cause means that he will have to work harder and longer and put off retirement that much further into the future.
I don't have any idea what my husband would do with such a discovery--demand MC? leave for a week? move out? and I have no intention of ever finding out, because I love him far too much to hurt him and disrepect him in this way.
Well MC went better than expected today. Earlier I talked with my wife about what happenned and she ignores the part where she lied to me and is fixated on the fact that I snooped. She wanted to bring it up in MC so I took the lead and explained to the MC what I did, why I did it and what I found. I expected to get hammered for it but the MC did a good job of puting into perspective for my wife.
She didn't agree necessarily with what I did, but said she understood and let my wife know she has seen much worse and crazier behaviour from a suspicious spouse.
Well MC went better than expected today. Earlier I talked with my wife about what happenned and she ignores the part where she lied to me and is fixated on the fact that I snooped. She wanted to bring it up in MC so I took the lead and explained to the MC what I did, why I did it and what I found. I expected to get hammered for it but the MC did a good job of puting into perspective for my wife.
She didn't agree necessarily with what I did, but said she understood and let my wife know she has seen much worse and crazier behaviour from a suspicious spouse.
What did the MC say about the secret bank account and how your wife responded to its discovery?
Did the MC give you any insights into why she thought your wife was secretly stashing away money?
Did she ask your wife to tell you both why she secretly stashed the money away?
Did she tell your wife she should deeply apologise to you for betraying you over a number of years?
Did the MC explain to your wife that she gave you “good enough” reasons to be suspicious of her and that your snooping in those circumstances was fully justified?
Did the MC tell your wife in no uncertain terms that she must now fully disclose to you all of her secret activities and give you passwords to her email, phone etc. etc?
Did the MC give your wife a detailed plan of how to regain your trust in her. Did the MC explain to your wife that it may take two or three years for you to fully trust her again but even then you may never fully regain your trust in her?
Doesn’t seem any of the above happened. Which means all you are doing is accepting crumbs from their table. And you seem pleased about that!
Look. You are the breadwinner. Sure you have responsibilities wrt your wife and children and while they have a roof over their head, bread on their table you are doing a good job! But that good job is being abused by your wife.
And sure you should maybe step up your game in other areas of your marriage. But never underestimate the job you are already doing by being the breadwinner. Because as sure as heck if you underestimate it you WILL be taken for granted and have people like the MC and your wife chipping away at you.
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Re: Caught Snooping 
