General Relationship DiscussionAlthough anyone can post anywhere on Talk About Marriage, this section is for people interested in general relationship and marriage advice.
View Poll Results: is spying (keyloggers, fake profiles) right or wrong for any reason?
Well I'm going to go on a limb and say you've never had a cheating spouse. I saw the crap, my wife denied it, and I trusted her.
The spying is what showed me that she flat out lied for a month and did way worse stuff than she admitted to.
I saw text messages to her old friend, confronted her, she said they were just friends and just talking. So if I listened to you, she'd still be sexting him.
Don't trust addicts when they are using, cheaters are addicts.
posted this on someone else thread and I felt it was worth sharing with the forum as I have not seen this thread.
I have not read all the comments on this post but have been looking at quite a few on this forum that are similar and I hope I am not alone on this and wish someone would tell me that I am WRONG!!! if you are making fake profiles installing keylogger's and spying on your spouse. YOU ARE WRONG. if you do not trust your spouse then just confront him/her and stand by your arguement, if you have jealousy issues go get professional help. if your spouse is going to cheating websites...do I really need to spell it out? so to all the people who encourage these devious tactics, grow a set and grow up.
I somewhat disagree, and this is my reasoning...
If I am deeply involved with someone, to the degree of having shared finances, joint ownership in property, children together, etc., then I have more to consider that just what's best for me. I may have seen something that causes doubt, but I'm not so arrogant to assume that I'm always right. At the same time, it's normal for people to lie rather than caught if they *are* doing something wrong.
Realistically, I'd ask, but if I continued to have a doubt, I would look more deeply, by whatever means necessary, to find reason to confirm one person's version of reality or the other's.
It's very easy to fall for lies, especially when breaking up means traumatizing children, but it's unfair to stay again and again if there are suspicious, unproven circumstances.
my wife and I have full access to eachothers emails, phones etc. im not saying you shouldnt take interest and be oblivious my argument was the fake profiles and keylogging for the reasons i stated before.
I never said dont snoop and/or investigate my argument was specifically directed to those actions (fake profiles and keylogging) because... if you make a profile on a cheating site...you did just that! if you are install a virus to find out what your spouse is doing it is a vialation of privacy as well as trust. if you do not trust your spouse allready then you should probably be talking now or seeing a counselor to resolve these issues.
yes people lie, but that says alot about the foundation of a relationship and the person you chose to live the rest of your life with and maybe yourself.
Not sure I like the poll. Do I feel there are necessary situations that call for the use of such things? Yes I do.
However, that being said, the thread on snooping/controlling is an excellent read in terms of what can happen if you let it overwhelm you.
A better course of action than keyloggers and other such items is for a husband and wife to go "transparent", meaning that you both discuss all your accounts/cell phones/friends openly and agree that nothing good will come of hiding anything.
If transparency is in place and a spouse is violating it, that may be the time to consider using keyloggers and such.
Not sure I like the poll. Do I feel there are necessary situations that call for the use of such things? Yes I do.
However, that being said, the thread on snooping/controlling is an excellent read in terms of what can happen if you let it overwhelm you.
A better course of action than keyloggers and other such items is for a husband and wife to go "transparent", meaning that you both discuss all your accounts/cell phones/friends openly and agree that nothing good will come of hiding anything.
If transparency is in place and a spouse is violating it, that may be the time to consider using keyloggers and such.
If I could, I'd have hit the "Like" button four more times.
Our MC told me, in front of my husband, to install GPS and spy software on his cell phone. And to come up with any other ways I needed to hold him true. He explained that my husband had a strong bond with his emotional affair partner, that the temptation to keep in contact was very powerful, that the spirit might be willing to reconcile with the spouse but the flesh was weak, so to speak.
This is indeed what happened in the past, when I first discovered his emotional affair. He lasted about 3 to 5 weeks without contacting his AP. He then sent out a 'how are you doing' email. She sent one back. A week went by, and then he sent another email, etc. By 6 weeks I can see from these (three year old) emails that they were right back in communication as if there had never been a break.
Here's the thing--I never once verified that he was not in contact. Three years went by this way. Three. Years. Then he accidentally texted me instead of her and the gig was up.
The MC said that the cell phone monitoring (which I also do via the bill) is also intended to reduce my anxiety, and gives my husband a chance to prove himself to me. I definitely find it reduces my anxiety. To ask my husband for his phone and see him hand it to me straight away (vs. before when he would say, let me just check my work emails while deleting their texts).
But you are right--you cannot snoop and monitor and spy forever. In 2012 there are an infinite number of ways to communicate--heck they could trade notes in a hollow log like they did in the old days. Instead, it is a short-term bridge to get the WS past the point of temptation (a window during which their bond is still so strong that it is very hard for them not to break "no contact"--it is a powerful habit and a wonderful fantasy that they long to return to). It is a way for the betrayed spouse to come out of the physical state of hyper vigilance (think of someone slamming a door behind you, making you jump; now think of feeling like that ALL DAY LONG for WEEKS).
I am already at the point where I sense I will be giving up monitoring; I go for longer and longer and longer periods in between.
I DON'T look because I think he's cheating. I will have the divorce papers ready so fast if I ever think that again it will make everyone's minds spin--if I think he's cheating the monitoring will end, **forever.**
posted this on someone else thread and I felt it was worth sharing with the forum as I have not seen this thread.
I have not read all the comments on this post but have been looking at quite a few on this forum that are similar and I hope I am not alone on this and wish someone would tell me that I am WRONG!!! if you are making fake profiles installing keylogger's and spying on your spouse. YOU ARE WRONG. if you do not trust your spouse then just confront him/her and stand by your arguement, if you have jealousy issues go get professional help. if your spouse is going to cheating websites...do I really need to spell it out? so to all the people who encourage these devious tactics, grow a set and grow up.
No one endorses spying on your spouse as a way of life. That's foolish. When people suspect that an affair is going on and need to gather information to determine whether or not to confront a spouse about surreptitious behavior and dangerous deceit, then it is a useful tool. One has to determine whether one's spouse is or isn't trustworthy when that spouse behaves in a shady manner and so such a tool is useful for that. When a spouse continues to lie and not own up to the truth, that is, proves to be untrustworthy, the advice is generally "You can't trust your spouse so decide if you want to live without trust or want to split up" not "keep spying forever to see if your spouse ever makes a mistake". You, OP, are taking this advice out of context, I think. Put it in the right context and you'll see why it's recommended. No one should spy on a spouse unless there is a real reason to suggest something is amiss and if nothing is discovered, then the spying needs to be stopped and the spouse who is doing the spying needs to come clean about it in order to resolve the trust problem.
maybe all of you are right, so i should install a key logger and sign up on a cheating site... just to make sure. 2nd time- so i have never caught my wife in a lie, could it be that she hasnt lied?
i think anyone who has been screwed over is gonna snoop. it just makes sense.... if you overdraw your bank account.. if you're smart, you get linked to some kind of overdraft protection... savings, credit card, line of credit... SOMETHING.
even if you havent been screwed over, you're stupid to "fully trust" your partner. with websites DESIGNED for married people to cheat and with things like facebook to check in on old "friends", the temptation is slapping married people in the face. shooo... if you feel like web cam sex is cheating, your partner doesnt even need to leave the house or hide receipts or spend any money to cheat. they can do it while wacking off at their desk.
to further back moxy's point, there are plenty of books out there about healing after an affair, such as Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass (I had a copy but our MC handed my husband his own copy). You will see in there a chapter where she talks about the ways that spouses start to suspect that their partner is in an affair. Eventually, it leads to detective work (unless the affair is revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt, as it was in my case).
Why in every story does she talk about the spying? Well, that would be because cheaters are LIARS. They have created a fantasy--it isn't real love, or guess what, they'd ask for a divorce! No, they don't want to divorce! They want both the comfort of a marriage AND the fun of an affair. The spying comes about because cheaters NEVER tell the truth when confronted. Some even lie with a video showing their cheating playing right in front of them!
Once the cheating has been confirmed, most affair partners promise to return to the marriage. The problem is, by now, even though they are normal people who pay taxes and coach soccer and hold down good jobs, they have been lying to their spouses for so long (creating a secret private life) that this is what they continue to do. They don't want to give up the fantasy. People educated about the powerful fantasy draw of an affair learn (usually the hard way) that spouses do not simply "snap out of it" and return to the marriage--they might say it with words but they secretly betray those words by their actions.
If you've never had your spouse cheat on you, it is easy to say--oh, they fell in love with someone else, and they're not in love with you. Accept that and move on. It is nothing even CLOSE to as simple as that and I pray that anyone reading this who has not experienced infidelity never shares in that pain. Here is what it's like: I Love You But I'm Not In Love With You. That is, I'm still very bonded to you. I just don't have that feeling of passionate infatuation. That is what I feel for my affair partner.
Nearly everyone over a certain age has experienced infatuation with a boyfriend / girlfriend that cooled as you got to know them better. You "thought" you were in love, but you weren't. Not the deep kind of committed love that you should feel before marrying someone. Affairs are that infatuation kind of love. If you are the loyal spouse, you are not about to just "give up" and "let go" of your spouse who you vowed to keep as a life partner over some fantasy bubble they created to escape their problems (which is almost always how these things come about).
As I already said (and moxy did too) the "spying" serves very narrow purporses: confirm cheating in the face of a spouse's lying, and to hold a spouse, who has promised to reconcile, responsible for a short term to confirm that they are not lying and to reduce the loyal spouse's anxiety.
They say 80% of marriages survive an affair. You can think whatever you want about how you'd handle it, but you really don't know until you are there yourself.
The use of keyloggers and other surveillance software on another adult without their permission is wrong when it's illegal at either the state or Federal level, which is usually the case in the U.S. Title III has been extended to interception of email and the majority of the Circuit Courts have ruled that it includes interspousal relations. A number of states have specific laws against it.
I understand that sometimes you 'gotta do what you gotta do' if you suspect infidelity, but attorneys are coming more and more to people like me to document the existence of this stuff on their client's computers.
The use of keyloggers and other surveillance software on another adult without their permission is wrong when it's illegal at either the state or Federal level, which is usually the case in the U.S. Title III has been extended to interception of email and the majority of the Circuit Courts have ruled that it includes interspousal relations. A number of states have specific laws against it.
I understand that sometimes you 'gotta do what you gotta do' if you suspect infidelity, but attorneys are coming more and more to people like me to document the existence of this stuff on their client's computers.
Well, once lawyers are involved, it's beyond me why someone would spy. Spying at that point is about getting the best of someone in a divorce. That is not what moxy and I are talking about. That is about revenge; moxy and I are talking about saving marriages. And no, of course it doesn't always work. Of course there are marriages that were irreparably damaged, and marriages where the disloyal subconsciously wanted to get caught so the loyal would end the marriage.
But a shocking percentage of affairs are neither of these; the disloyal found an opposite sex friendship that slipped into something more at a vulnerable point; it was not something that was going to work as a long term option; and the spouses reconcile because they have something that was worth fighting for, however much that was forgotten along the way.
Joe, you apparently have no red flags in your marriage. With no reason to suspect your wife has lied it makes no sense to try to snoop.
If you had suspicious activity but no proof would you preemptively divorce? What if there are kids? Or would you accept her stories as true? If the story was possibly true but iffy would you divorce or just accept itt?
At some point there is unresolvable suspicion. I would choose to be informed to make my decision.
Fwiw I learned I suck at determining if my wife is telling the full truth.
Having facts can protect one's rights in divorce in substantial lifelong areas including custody and finances. Why be victimized yet again for the sake of being nice or chivalrous? Posted via Mobile Device
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Re: keyloggers, fake profiles, spying? 
