# Online and Cell Phone Emotional Affair



## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

I have been lurking around this site since early June. I guess the same as 99% of us on TAM, marriage issues has brought me here. I've never been one to join blogs or online forums, but I have to say, the majority of posters here are outstanding. It took me a bit to realize and that people giving advice here we're not being *******s but rather dishing out hard cold factual truth. But when it comes to marital issues, that is what people need and deserve. That being said, I thought I'd take this time to introduce myself and give you the history of my wife's infidelity and Our current attempt at reconciliation. I did not discover TAM until shortly after my wife and I made the decision to reconcile, I believe finding this site sooner would have made things much easier for me, and even the both of us.

My wife and I have been married for approx 10 years. I am in my late 30's, wife is in her mid 30's. Three children. They are approx 13, 5, 7. The teenager is actually not my biological child, I began dating my wife when the child was approximately six months old. The biological father was never in the picture. And I treat and love my step child as my own. 

About two years ago my wife completely changed her career. This was a huge difference for her, her previous jobs were completely different. We were both surprised she was actually offered the job. 

About two weeks after beginning her new job, her father unexpectedly passed away and I know it hit her hard. I don't think, until recently, she even began to process her fathers death. Prior to her new job, our lives were good. I would have characterized ourselves as a typical loving family who spent plenty of time together. 

Her new job requires her working 12 hours per shift. And she changes from day shift to nights every 2 months. The actual number of days she works each week, vary from week to week. Originally, her getting the new job was great. It was a significant pay increase from her previous job- she now makes almost as much as I do. It set us up for real financial security, and helped make an already good marriage less stressful.

The only real issue that our marriage had the first year on her job was her not dealing with her fathers death. And even that wasn't a weekly or monthly strain on us. I would take the kids to the cemetery and openly talk to them about him- as a way of paying respect to him and keeping his memory alive. When I did this, She would want nothing to do with conversations about him or visit him at the cemetery. She was still in denial about his death. 

We have also had several issues with our house over the past 6-7 years. It was another source of stress. We basically bought a lemon of a house and continued to dump money into it. About a year into her new job, there were some major issues regarding the foundation of the house, so we decided to look for a new home. We bought a new house months ago, and continued to fix the old house to sell it asap. 

The new house was great for us, it felt like a new start in some ways, but we still had the responsibility of doing work on the old one to sell it and be done with it. The double mortgage sucked, but we got a good deal on the new house and felt we couldn't pass it up.

Due to my wife's work schedule and me constantly working on the old house, we barely saw each other. This issue began before we bought the new home, but became very bad when we moved into the new home. As I said, my wife works 12 hours per shift, sometimes many days in a row, and when she came home she just needed to have some "alone time" to unstress. I respected that. My wife, frankly works harder at her job than I do with mine. As time went on, it became normal for me to run the house alone, while she worked days, i saw her infrequently. Basically no quality time. And I basically never saw her when she worked nights. As she work nights, it's basically got to the point where I would see her 20 or 30 minutes a day.

I think she began to take me for granted that I basically did everything around the house and she only needed to work and sleep. I did all house chores, took kids to sports and help with their school work, and continued to work on the old house. As time went on, I began to become resentful that she was used to not doing anything. It was when I began pushing back, basically beginning to tell her that she needed to start helping out more, that I realized we were not nearly as close as we used to be. It was then that I realized that it felt like I was talking more to a roommate then my loving wife. I guess that realization made me realize that we had not been what we used to be and should've been for that last year. It was then that I also had found out that she did not share that same longing to want to be close to me.

From that time forward, I began to put in a much higher priority on our relationship. Wanting to spend more quality time with each other. While she was working nights during a two month period- One particular night that she was off, I was willing to stay up extra late, up till two or three in the morning to hang out with her, even though I had to wake up at 6:30 in the morning. She wasn't used to that, but more disturbingly, I noticed she didn't want me to. 

Let me take a step back, prior to me trying to reengage some quality time with my wife, we had basically started living in the same house together but living two separate lives. As part of her outlet to decompress from her job and to socialize, she began playing online games. I didn't notice it at the time, but I believe she quickly became obsessed over one particular online game. And when I began to try to spend more quality time with her, she became very defensive when I tried to participate in that. As time went on, I believed that both of us were stuck in a rut. I was getting out of the rut, and I had originally thought that she was just firmly stuck into that rut.

But then I realized it was more than just that. Her night shift eventually change to dayshift. I was still seeing that she was being secretive about what she was doing on her online gaming. She did not want anyone in the room while she was playing her games. Her excuse was that she just wanted her "bubble space". But I was soon learning that it was a lot more than that. When she didn't know that I was paying attention, I could hear her playing with other people, and it was very obvious that she was flirting with other people on these online games. We have a PlayStation four. Sometimes she would connect a headset and microphone into the controller, sometimes the microphone would be attached to the controller but I could hear the people speaking over the television. I also noticed that she put a password on her iPhone. It was then that I realize that something had become very wrong, and I began checking the phone records online to see her phone activities. She had been talking to other people, sometimes for several hours at a time and also there had been several text messages between certain phone numbers. I took pictures of everything, to keep as a record. I started paying attention when she went out or when she was home alone and compared the phone records. My heart sank when I noticed she was deliberately contacting people only when no family was around her.

With the knowledge that my wife had been bonding with other people, and originally I did not necessarily think it was only men, I worked harder at trying to show her that our marriage could become what it once was. The harder I tried to make things better- by making myself available to her, by telling her that I would hold off on doing some of the housework until she could help me so we could even try doing that together, and even scheduling things to do with our children around her limited schedule - she became angry and defensive. There were a few weeks where there were several arguments between the two of us. I realized that something was very wrong with our marriage because of one specific night- I was at the top of the basement stairs and I heard her actively flirting with another guy. I could hear his voice through the television, she was on our PlayStation 4. I spent about five or 10 minutes listening to what they were talking about, and then as to not make a bad situation worse with a drag out fight, I went down the stairs as if I didn't hear anything, and told her I thought she was going to come upstairs so we could hang out. This was about two in the morning on one of her days off. She told me that she had no interest in doing anything with me, and she was busy doing something she wanted to do. I told her I had no intention of stopping her with what she enjoyed, but we had not spent any time together as a married couple for several weeks, If not longer. She began to scream and yell at me. As she was screaming at me she began pointing to the television on the online game, as if it were a real person. It was then that I realized that our marriage was in severe trouble. With my heart completely broken, and not wanting to do anything that I would regret like punching a hole in the wall, I left the house not knowing where I was going, and cried my eyes out like a little baby. previous to that, I had tried several times to spend time with her according to her schedule. Each time and it up into a huge fight. This time that I'm describing to you it finally hit me like a Tonna bricks. What happened to my wife? Why did she not care about me? Why would she not give me the time a day when I do everything I can to take care of all the chores so she doesn't have to worry about it with her stressful job? Why doesn't she appreciate me? I went back home later that night And never went back to sleep.

After that I began looking through her PlayStation 4 messages. I found out that she was actively messaging people back-and-forth on that game. I found messages both in the game itself, and on the PlayStation network. The content of the messages made it seem as if she were single. One of the few people that she was actively messaging had me very alarmed. She was calling him her love. She was telling him things like she couldn't wait to get on the game with him later that night. Several messages like that.

It was around then that our teenager began to notice that there was something significantly wrong also. Our teenager was put in a very embarrassing and stressful situation because they did not want to contribute to any additional fighting, but eventually my oldest told me that my wife had a Snapchat and Kik account. Unfortunately my teenager had previously borrowed my wife's phone to call someone, and the Kik was open, and the teenager saw some inappropriate pictures of my wife to somebody. I was able to later put some information together and found out it was the same person during the night I overheard her at the top of the basement stairs.

Things began to get hopeless for me then. I was lost. What happened to my wife? Who was this woman living in my house? Thankfully, I am very close to her mother and confided in her what was happening. I made her promise not to let my wife know what was happening. At the time, I didn't give her much detail other than her daughter was talking to other men and it was getting out of hand.

From that time forward I became completely obsessed on figuring out what the hell was going on. My wife was always an going and flirty person. Part of me found it attractive and sexy. But throughout our marriage there had always been boundaries, and nothing she had done previously made me feel she was crossing over a line in our relationship. Basically whenever we were out together with a group of people, she would flirt a little but never to the point of leading someone on. She would do it while still having her arm around me or holding my hand. 

Somehow, While I was trying to find out more information, I was able to make it seem as if nothing was going wrong in our marriage. I did not let on that I knew anything. Because I did that, I was able to take her phone sometimes when she had just set it down before the screen locked and I began looking through it. That happened very rarely because she was very guarded about leaving her phone out. I felt stupid, because I never even realized that she began being guarded with her cell phone until it became very obvious. I honestly don't know when those red flags started. As I looked at her phone I did not see any inappropriate pictures in the Camera Roll, but I was able to open those messaging applications and did see the names of individuals she would speak to on kik, Voxer and Snapchat. I took pictures of all the names on my personal phone to keep as a record for the future.

Luckily for me, she would back up her iPhone onto iTunes. I did a lot of research on how to retrieve text messages and pictures. I learned that there were programs, like Dr. Fone, that could do such things either on a backed up phone on iTunes, or directly from the phone. Because her phone had been password-protected I could not extract any information directly from the iPhone. But I was able to do it off of iTunes because that's where she backed up her phone. That was her biggest stupid mistake with trying to hide everything. I bought two types of those programs to make sure that I could get everything possibly available. When I extracted the information, I felt my world turned upside down. Prior to that I was somewhat in a state of denial, and I still believed that she was stuck in a rut and would eventually get out of it. I wasn't able to get anything out of Snapchat. But I did find hundreds upon hundreds of messages on her Kik and Voxer accounts. 90% of them sexual. I was also able to extract several deleted pictures. Many of her and Many of other men. I didn't know what to do. It was like I was living in a dream, a horrible dream, and I just thought eventually me and my wife would wake up and would go back to normal. I was still in a thought process that this only happened to other people- not my family. The Kik messages were time stamped. The same way I compared her phone activity to days when she was off work or had left the house, I was able to compare the Kik chats. To my surprise, the Kik chats were not only in the middle of the night while me and my family were sleeping, or while we were out of the house, they were also occurring while she was at work. As I was reading the Kik and Voxer chats, I remember being completely dumbfounded, my jaw was dropped the entire time. She was a completely different person. She had never spoken to me sexually the way she was speaking to these people. There were graphic examples of what she would do to them if she ever met up with them. She teased them about all her sexual "skills". She told them that she would have to take care of herself while on the job or pull over while she was in the car because the other men were turning her on so much. She used a lot of the same dirty talk that me and her would have, but plus a lot more I have never heard her say.

I remember originally thinking that this could not have been her. Stupidly, for a brief time I was actually deluding myself by thinking that maybe someone else was using her Kik account on her phone. Me and my wife had always had a good sex life and we had always been adventurous, but this took it to a whole different level. It took me several days to read all of the chats. If I had printed them all off, it would've been over a ream of paper. The chats basically began about three or four months before we moved into the new house. There were a total of four men she was speaking to in that manner.

I was covertly reading the Kik and Voxer chats while she was asleep. I remember wanting to storm into the bedroom, grab her by the shoulder, and tell her to explain herself right then and there. Thank God I did not. And it was the hardest thing not to do.

Even though I had more than enough evidence to know she was at least cheating on me emotionally, I still needed to know if there was an actual physical affair among any of these people, so I continued to play dumb. The previous phone records that I had found before all this, were from people out of state, several hundred miles away. So I still had hope that she had not slept with another man, but I had no idea if these were the same people that she spoke to over the telephone and texted.

I played dumb. From that point forward I didn't complain about anything, I acted like everything that was happening in our marriage was fine. Ironically, that did make our marriage better, at least superficially. There were a few times that we actually went out to dinner together, we sometimes went on nice walks in the park, and had nice small talk. Basically if I had not known what I knew, I would have thought that our marriage was getting better and better as it should've been. Eventually I felt comfortable enough to ask her why she had a passcode on her phone. She told me it was to keep the two little kids off of it. I acted like that was completely reasonable, but I asked her why she didn't tell me about it. Because I played it cool for over a week, and there was no stress between us, at least no arguments, she reluctantly gave me the password to unlock her phone. Another stupid mistake on her part.

With that information, I waited until after she was well asleep and I plugged in her phone using the two applications to retrieve deleted data. I found even more pictures. More ****ty messages about what she would do with those men if she saw them in person and what she was doing to herself when she saw pictures of those other men. With that new information, I was able to find out that it was happening even as of that day.

By extracting information from her phone, I was also able to get her email passwords from her iPhone notes. I got into her email, and as luck would have it, she allowed a setting on her Voxer account to send a preview of any messages as an email notification. The email notification would be sent if she had not checked her Voxer messages for a day. It help me confirm when she began using Voxer. It Didn't appear that she had deleted any of those email notifications. Obviously, I took pictures of any Voxer message notifications that showed she was being a ****ty *****. Again, it did not show the entire message which she had not yet checked at the time, but it did show the first 10 words of any message she had not checked at that time. Out of the 90 or 100 emails which were Voxer notifications, about 20 or 30 of them had inappropriate messages to her. Those included requests for pictures of her in the shower, or how hot she looked.

As I said, superficially things were actually looking pretty good for us. My teenager actually thought that I had already worked things out with my wife. 

I was able to get my mother to commit to watch all three kids on Mother's Day weekend for me and my wife to actually go on an actual over night date. I had even reserved a hotel room.

Before that weekend, a few days before, I began hating myself. The emotional baggage finally wore on me, and I couldn't keep it a secret to my wife any longer about what I knew. At the time I was still wanting to hold out until I could find some kind of proof if she was having an actual physical affair with somebody. I was looking forward to our date night because I missed my wife so much, and this sounds very sinister, but I was planning on her and I drinking a lot of alcohol, and seeing if I could get any information out of her while she was drunk. Basically when my wife gets drunk she loses all kinds of inhibition, and can't keep anything a secret. Unfortunately the weight of all this wore on me too much and I decided to confront her before I could put that plan into action. Things had been so good with us for that period of time, even though I knew it was only superficial, I convinced myself that maybe we could resolve the issues of her cheating before our date night.

The night before we went out on our date night, I told her we need to sit outside on the back porch and have a very serious conversation. I told her that I knew a lot more than she thought I did. I told her that I knew she was hiding things from me, I told her that our relationship seem to be getting much better, but we needed to be completely honest with each other. I told her that I knew this was going to be very hard for her to admit, but I needed her to confess certain things for our relationship to move forward. She told me that she was very happy that things were getting better with us. 

Side note: And for those of you that are still reading this long thread, please remember that I was making sure things were being much better in our relationship because I refused to argue with her or confront her with anything that I had learned- it was for the sole purpose of being able to collect as much information as I could.

She told me she would be honest with me, she told me she would not hide anything from me during the conversation we were about to have. At the time she did not know that I had a thumb drive around my neck as a necklace. I kept it around my neck during our conversation, because if she was not going to be honest, I was going to leave for the night and leave the thumb drive on the table so she could see what was in it. The contents of the thumb drive were basically many of the pictures she sent out, she received, along with many of the nasty Kik and Voxer messages. 

I told her that I knew she was having inappropriate conversations with at least four different men. I said this to her in a very calm and soft-spoken manner. She basically wanted to know what I knew, but I told her that for our relationship to move forward I needed her to tell me what she was hiding from me. When she first started talking to me, she only told me that she was talking to other people out of state, but it was strictly as friends, basically friendships that she had developed on the online games. I told her that I knew she was not telling me the truth, I took the necklace off with a thumb drive and held it in my hands and told her that I knew a lot more than she was letting on and I had saved it all on the thumb drive. I gave her another chance to tell me the absolute truth or that this marriage would not work. The conversation went on for about 30 minutes, but she did not tell me anything, she would only admit to what I had brought up. My anger began to rise. I could not understand why even though things are finally getting good with us (as far as she was concerned) she could not put our marriage as a priority and admit what had been going on. I told her that this conversation had to be over, I tossed the thumb drive on the table, and left the house.

She called me about 15 minutes later, and told me she would tell me everything, throughout the whole time she was vaguely apologetic. I didn't give her a specific answer if I was coming back home, even though I knew I was. I wanted to make her worry. I came back home about an hour later, and told her if she was really ready to talk and really ready to be honest this was our last chance. She told me that she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she was lonely and bored, and the messages that she sent, the pictures that she sent and received meant nothing. I told her that I thought that was a load of crap, and there were a lot of issues that we needed to work through if we wanted this marriage to survive. She agreed and promised me she would not speak to those men again and she would not get on that game.

We spoke for a long time that night. It bothered me that she basically would not admit to anything unless I had already brought it up to her. Typical trickle truth. When we were done with our conversation, I honestly thought this was a turning point for our marriage. I thought everything was finally out in the open, and we could get on with our lives. I didn't realize at the time that this type of affair was an addiction. I learned that from TAM later. So I told her I would trust her and that I would forgive her, but she was strictly not allowed to get on the game or have any contact with those individuals. Unfortunately, That's not the end of the story.


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## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

For a while, I thought everything was working out fine. Even great. We went out on our overnight date. I had a lot of nice romantic things planned, and the evening went perfect. Even days after that, everything seemed to be getting better and better. 

I guess I was naive, but at the same time I really had no experience in this type of situation. Me and my wife seem to be getting along fine. Our sex life became what it used to be. We spoke all the time again to each other. I thought we were both actively working on our marriage to make it into what it used to be as it was before she got her new job. A little over a week after our serious conversation on our back porch, we were getting into a new routine that included spending more time together. My wife began taking more responsibility around the house. We would spend time with each other before one of us had to go to bed for the night. She would go out grocery shopping, go to the gym, and she would go for walks as a means to unwind from her work.

After about a little over a week, unfortunately I began to see the same red flags as before. What made this even more twisted, was that my wife knew she was showing red flags, and she tried to tell me that it was because she was still trying to process her father's death. My wife went on and on about how she is still trying to figure out how to cope with it. For the most part I believed it. What's worse, I think my wife was beginning to believe her own lies.

One evening my teenager went with my wife to the gym to keep her company. When they returned, my teenager asked me what I was talking to my wife about while she was at the gym. My teenager assumed it was something very important, because each time my teenager tried to speak to my wife, My wife would waive her hand at my teenager as if to non-verbally tell the teen to get away. My older child thought that we were in a serious conversation. Needless to say my wife was not speaking to me on the phone that night. I told my kid that she was not speaking to me, and me and my child both knew that things were only going to go downhill from there.

After that I spoke to my mother-in-law again about my wife's situation. I gave a lot more detail that time, including information about pictures being sent back-and-forth. I didn't get graphic with the messages. My mother-in-law was very supportive of me and told me she'll be very happy to confront my wife about How stupid she was being. Because I wasn't ready to confront my wife yet about her falling back into her affair, I had my mother-in-law promise not to tell her anything yet. From that point on I checked the phone records at least two or three times a day. My up session over finding out what my wife was doing behind my back became unhealthy for me. I barely slept, I wasn't eating healthy, and I began smoking. I almost immediately began smoking a pack a day.

As days went by, I found out that she did cease communicating with three of the four men. But she continued to communicate with one of them. The one she continued to speak Had a Canadian telephone number. I wasn't sure if it was a cell phone or a hard-line phone, but I was somewhat relieved, because at least I had a good level of confidence that it was not a physical affair. We live in the midwest of the United States.

I continued to play dumb, and as time went on she spoke more often with him. Eventually she would speak to him every single day or night. As she spoke to him more often, things became worse and worse in our marriage all over again. She became distant, and lied about what she was doing all the time. An example of her lying would be that she would say she was going to the gym, I would follow her to see exactly what she was doing. She would be at the gym parking lot speaking to him on the phone for about an hour, and never even set foot into the facility. Another example would be that she told me we would lay in bed and watch a movie together. Somehow she must've been contacted by him to let her know that they could speak more, and at the very last second, out of the blue, she tells me she had to go grocery shopping at about 10 o'clock at night. So she told me she was going to a 24 hour Walmart to buy some groceries we desperately needed. Obviously this was a big red flag. I followed her to Walmart, parked my car at an angle behind her so there would be a blind spot if she were to look in the rearview mirror, and again I saw her on the phone for about 45 minutes. Laughing and smiling in the car. After about 45 minutes she literally ran into Walmart for about five minutes and grabbed some stuff. As I saw her come out of Walmart, I rushed home so she would not know that I had followed her. Again I swallowed my pride, I trashed my self-esteem, and continued to try and figure out what I needed to do for myself, my children, and my marriage. The option to contact a divorce attorney was not something I could comprehend at the time. It wasn't even something that existed in my world.

Looking back at everything now, one example of why I wish I would've known about TAM during this hell, is because I would never have thought about putting a voice activated recorder in her car. To this day I really don't know what they have talked about, but it would've been very good to have learned that information too.

The final straw for me before I confronted my wife again, occurred because Of what my teenager told me. My oldest child gets home from school before I get home. One day when my child came home from school, My wife was not working on that particular day. My child had already told me about the Kik and Snapchat apps. So my child knew my wife was doing inappropriate things. Again my child had to feel awkward by calling me at work and telling me that my wife had been on the phone for a few hours in her room with the door locked. My child heard her speaking to another man, openly flirting with him.

I rushed home, and let my wife have it. I blew up, and we had the big drag out fight that ultimately she always deserved, but I was always very careful to not have. At the time I thought that having a big fight would hurt our marriage more than it already was. But as I have learned on this website from all of you posters, it was probably long overdue. My wife needed a reality check.

From there, our marriage got much much worse. From that time forward we openly talked about divorce. We spoke about separating our assets, what we would do with the children, and miscellaneous topics of lesser importance. We spoke of these topics for a few days, and as time went on she began to realize that separating would hurt her much more then it would hurt me. She learned that she would not be able to keep this house. With her work schedule, she learned that she would not even be able to keep the kids more often than I would. I have a regular 9-to-5 job, she did not. The more we spoke about it, and the more that she saw that I was becoming at peace with the decision of us divorcing each other, I think she began to panic. She again tried to make excuses, that her speaking to this man somehow was caused by the loss of her father. Eventually she probably realize that was a stupid excuse, so then she began to try to rewrite history, and say that she had been thinking about divorce for a long time because of things I had done. I pushed back, telling her that she had never told me that she thought we were having marriage problems until she was confronted with her infidelity. None of this made sense to me, it still doesn't make any sense to me now. She was willing to divorce the man who bent over backwards for her - taking care of her children and house because she worked a stressful job. And the stupidest thing was that she was wanting to pursue a divorce, to continue to speak to somebody from Canada- someone several hundred miles away, that she would have no practical way of seeing. 

During this process, she asked me if I wanted her to move out of the house and move in with her mother. I told her that if she ever spoke to The other man again, she would need to leave the house. It was already established that she wouldn't be able to keep the house if we got a divorce. It was already established that the children would have a more stable environment in our current house with me because of her crazy work schedule. She agreed not to speak to the other man until we figured out what we were doing with our marriage. During this time, we both continued to live in the same house and we were very cordial with each other. We continued to speak about how a smooth divorce would go. 

I believe when she saw that I could live without her, and life would go on without her, she gained some respect for me. More importantly, after she realized she would not be able to keep the house and keep the kids as she thought she would, I think she began to fear what I thought about our marriage. 

Eventually the conversation turned from us having a divorce, to IF we had a divorce. She said on several occasions that she felt "torn". At that point, again because I was finally feeling at peace about getting a divorce, I quit trying to convince her how insane her priorities were.

Throughout this whole situation, I think it's important to note that she had never really shown any remorse. Looking back now I don't understand it. At the time, my life was so upside down, I had never really taken the time to notice she had no true remorse. That is another important red flag TAM would've brought my attention to.

On one particular night, we decided to speak of divorce, but I could tell she was having significant second thoughts. What was weird about that conversation was she was more concerned about what I would do if I had learned she spoke to the other man again. During our conversation, She put a priority on what I would do in the immediate future with our kids if we followed through with the divorce. I told her that I did not have a vendetta to try to screw her over in court with the kids, and with her crazy schedule situation I would be willing to work with her on seeing the kids on a regular basis. When we established those facts, almost immediately the conversation seemed to end. I was wanting to go on the back porch just to chill out for the night. She told me that she had something she needed to tell me, and I told her that we should talk outside in the back porch.

I could tell she was hesitant about telling me whatever she wanted to say. At first I thought she was going to tell me that she wanted to seriously work on our marriage. During the days we were openly talking about divorce, I became stronger regarding this whole situation, and the more we got into the details regarding the logistics of our separation, I could tell that she was more worried about everything than I was. 

While we were on the back porch that night, She told me she had spoken to the other man again. The very second those words left her lips I looked at her straight in the eyes, and yelled at her 8 words- "That's it, that's all I needed to hear". I promptly stood up, and headed into the house. She tried to tell me that she was telling me this for a reason. She was basically going to try to justify why she spoke to him again. I wasn't going to have any of that. I was so angry, I literally saw red. Actual red. I could not think and I certainly was not going to speak to her anymore about this matter. My kids were sleeping upstairs, and the last thing I wanted them to hear was me screaming at this screwed up, shell of a former woman, that I no longer recognized. Still literally seeing red, I looked at her and I honestly did not recognize her. I grab the car keys, and left the house. I was never planning on being gone long, because I didn't want her to even have the smallest idea that I would leave this house or my kids behind. But in that moment I would not have acted rationally and I would have definitely done things I would have regretted. As I was getting into the car, she tried to tell me why she spoke to him. At that moment I wasn't processing anything she was telling me. Remembering it back now, I think she was trying to tell me that she spoke to him to tell him that she would not be speaking to him anymore. I left the house, I'm not sure how long, it was for a long while, but as I was able to regain my composure, I was able to remind myself that I had just left my house, left my children in the middle of the night. And I reminded myself that this person that I no longer recognized would not keep me from them.

When I came back to my house later that night, I saw her still sitting on the back porch, this time on the phone. I screamed at her, loud enough for the other person on the other line to hear me. I asked her if she was on the phone with her boyfriend. She told me she was on the phone with her mother. As far as my wife is concerned, this was the first time that her mother had heard that we were having any marriage problems. 

Again I screamed loud enough for her mother to hear on the other line. I screamed that her mother needed to come and get her out of my house. I told my wife to pack her crap and leave right now. While still on the phone with her mother, my wife told me that her mother wanted to speak with me. I told my wife this was a stupid time for me to speak with anybody. I'm assuming my mother-in-law was persistent on the other line, and my wife asked me to speak with her mother several times. I told my wife that I would speak to her mother, to tell her to come and pick up her ***** daughter and get her out of here.

Throughout our 10 years of marriage, my wife and I have been in several heated arguments. Those arguments easily consisted of both of us screaming at each other from time to time. However in those 10 years, my mother-in-law had never seen me lose my cool, and especially had never heard me yell at anybody, or call my wife a *****. When my wife handed me her phone to speak to her mother, I promptly told her mother to come and get her ***** daughter away from my house. My mother-in-law ignored the comment, and asked permission to come over so she could speak to both of us. My mother-in-law said she would not come over and less I gave her permission because of the stress and anger happening in that moment. I again told her that she should come over to pick up her daughter. I tossed the phone back to my wife, and went inside. 

While in the house, I took a small suitcase and began to pack my wife's clothes. As I was packing the clothes, each item of clothing that I selected brought back memories. A few weeks prior to this, that probably would have made me calm down, and dwell on the good times we had. At that time however it did the opposite and I began to see red again. The anger in me grew, and I began to act irrational. I was afraid what I would have done if my wife would have walked in, knowing my kids were upstairs sleeping. I know I would have definitely began screaming at her, And inadvertently would have woken them up and scared them. Because of that I decided to stop packing her things and walked outside again. I refused to stand on the back porch where she was, so I walk to the opposite side of the house and waited for her mother to show up.

When I saw her mother arrive, I remember thinking I didn't want to look like the crazy bad guy. So I didn't immediately go to the back porch where she met my wife. When I eventually walked to the back porch, they were already speaking to each other. My wife was crying, it was the first time she had shown any remorse, and her mother was trying to get my wife to open up more to her.

I was still in a state of being completely irrational, filled with hatred. I told my wife to tell her mother how she had been a **** for the last several months. My mother-in-law continued to play as if this was the first time that she had heard that anything was wrong with our marriage. My wife told her, in front of me, that she had made some big mistakes because she was talking to other men. I lost it, and told my wife to quit being a liar and tell her mother about The naked pictures that I had found being sent to other men. My wife started to get upset at me, but then realized quickly that she could make no excuses or talk her way out of this. I stood there while my mother-in-law continued to speak to her daughter. It was very liberating, because I heard my wife only give half truths to her mother, but because I was there, I was able to correct my wife and provide the entire truth every time. 

The more liberated I felt, the easier it was for me to get more graphic with the messages that I had found while explaining them to my wife's mother. For the first time, I was able to throw the horrible details out in the open for other people to hear. I had never told the entire truth to my mother-in-law. That time I was able to throw it in my wife's face and her own mothers face. I explained to my mother-in-law that when I thought things were actually getting better, when my wife was finally stepping up in contributing to our family, she used those opportunities to continue having at least a verbal affair with the other man. I gave an example of my wife taking one of our children to a sporting event, and later discovering that instead of my wife watching our child at the event, our phone records showed that she was on the phone with the other man. I provided many examples, including an instance where after my wife and I had had sex, she shortly after contacted the other man my phone.

After a while, all my side comments, along with my sarcastic digs at my wife was getting old. I decided to go into the house and let them talk to each other alone. I went back into the house, and I saw my oldest child. They asked me if everything was OK, clearly knowing that nothing was OK. I told the teen that nothing was OK, and I apologize to them for having to deal with such a horrible situation. At the time I didn't know what to do with myself, I was trying to calm myself down. Not knowing what to do I just sat at the computer surfing the Internet. Eventually I heard someone come in to the house and go into the bathroom. For whatever reason I thought it was my wife, so I decided to go outside and talk to my mother-in-law.

When I went outside I noticed that my mother-in-law had already left. Knowing that it was my wife that went inside to go to the bathroom, I refused to go back into the house. I stood outside trying to figure out what I was going to do. My wife eventually came outside and met me on the back porch. She asked me to sit down so we could speak for a few minutes. I was very curious as to what her and her mother had spoken about. I had always respected my mother-in-law. I sat down, but instead of being open to hearing what my wife had to say, all I could think was that she had nothing to tell me that would make this better.

I didn't admit this to myself at the time, but even though I was prepared to go through with the divorce, I still desperately wanted the woman I loved back in my life. I wanted our marriage to work. All the previous conversations I had with my wife about the logistics of our separation had got me comfortable with divorce, but it still was not what I wanted.

I began to listen to what my wife had to say, and it honestly surprised me, because she promised me things that I had not thought to demand of her. Again, I wish I would have known of TAM during my ordeal, because it would've made our lives much better. She told me she wanted to make this marriage work no matter what. That meant nothing to me, because of all her lies and empty words. But then she told me she would give me everything. She would give me the passwords to her email accounts, to her Facebook, her Snapchat, her Voxer, Kik, PlayStation network account, and even her Instagram account. She told me that she would go first thing the next morning to change her phone number, and block the other man's number on her phone. She promised me that she would no longer play on the online game where she met up with the four men. And she agreed to go to marriage counseling.

She was basically offering me full transparency, a no contact agreement, Full rights to get on her phone anytime I felt like it, and the ability to check up on any of her online activities. She agreed to not get on kik, Voxer, Snapchat, or the PS4 messenger. Because she has a lot of family and coworkers on Facebook, I did not prohibit her from getting on Facebook or Facebook messenger.

Because deep down, even with all the talk about divorce, I wanted our marriage to work. So I agreed. I didn't agree right away, in fact without me committing to us reconciling, the next morning she came to me and told me we needed to go to our cell phone provider to change her number. Later the next day, I told her I would be open to giving us one more chance. I told her I wanted her to prove to me that she was committed to going to a marital counselor, and after she went to a few sessions, I would join her in the counseling if it would be beneficial. She knew I was serious, she knew that I was not going to Mess around with this. I explained to her that I had no trust in her. I told her that we had a very steep uphill battle to fight to save our marriage. It was only since that night that I began to see that she was showing true remorse. She acknowledged how much she had messed up with our relationship, she promised me she would do what it took to make up for it. She probably apologize to me at least 100 times that night and the next day.

The next night after she changed her number, with me having full access to all of her accounts, I decided to download Snapchat, Kik, Voxer, PS4 messenger, Facebook messenger, and Instagram onto my phone. My phone is currently logged into all of those accounts. 

Because she had not proven to me that she was trustworthy, I immediately started checking each application. I learned that her original promise not to speak to the other men was somewhat true. She did not speak to any of the other three men since she had promised me back on Mother's Day weekend. I could tell because they left several messages on those applications asking where she was, what she was doing, and why she wasn't responding back to them. 

Obviously that was not true regarding the Canadian. As luck would have it, the Canadian messaged her on Voxer while I was checking it. Because I didn't trust my wife, and I wanted to be sure there was no other way she would be able to contact him, I began to message him as if I were her. He asked what happened to her phone, because it was turned off. I told him that there was an issue with her phone service, and she would be unable to speak to him using her cell phone. I asked if there was any other way he could call her. I was basically trying to find out if there was another cell phone that my wife had that I didn't know about. He told me, thinking I was my wife, that we could speak on voice chat through Kik. I told him I was unable to do that at that moment, but I would reach out to him later.

Over the next few days he must've gotten suspicious. I messaged him a few times, trying to act normal but still trying to get information out of him. But because I refused to speak to him through Kik, and because my wife's cell number was never reactivated, I think he began to know that I wasn't my wife. Since then he has never messaged my wife, and that is a good thing.

The day she changed her phone number was May 27th of this year. From that time forward we spoke a lot about what was going on with her throughout this whole ordeal. I tried to make sense logically as to why she would do what she did. Why would she be willing to throw away our marriage to continue speaking to someone in another country that she had never met?Her explanations were typical with what TAM describes as "the fog".

This unfortunately is not the end of my struggle or story because she was unable to honor the no contact policy.


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## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

For two weeks since she changed her phone number, everything became significantly better. She was very open with speaking to me about details on what she had done. She was very open with telling me how sorry she was. She was also very deliberate when it came to the PlayStation. She actually asked permission to get on it when she wanted to watch Netflix. These were all very good signs for our marriage. It showed that she was taking things very seriously, and she was very thoughtful on how she went about wanting to make our marriage work.

Around that time I had discovered TAM, and I was reading as many threads as I could, to try and understand how things went wrong, what I could've done better as a husband, and how to make sure that the situation never happened again. I had read a few times that people described an emotional affair as an addiction. I took that information in as a mental note. 

Again, about two weeks after she had changed her number, I continued to check up on her emails and all her messenger apps. One night, when she went to the gym, I logged on to her online game to snoop around. I had inadvertently discovered that she had gotten onto the game, and sent the Canadian an in-game message a few days prior. Once again, I felt the pain of betrayal. I took a picture of the TV screen with the In game message to him.

I thought about doing the same thing I had done before. Playing dumb, just to see how far this crap would go. Emotionally I couldn't hold it in. All I could think about was that this was either going to work out or it was not. No more games, no more playing spy or detective. I immediately called her, and told her she needed to come home right away. She knew that I was upset. As soon as she got into the house, I asked her what she had been hiding from me since she had changed her phone number. She was very adamant that she had not been lying to me or hiding anything. I told her that I was not interested in any more games or cat & mouse chases. I could see that she was emotionally upset and that she seemed to not know what I was talking about. I showed her the picture on my phone of the message she sent to him, and asked her what part of no contact did she not understand.

She told me that she did not consider that contact, because all she did was send him some in game currency, since she was no longer going to use it because she was no longer going to get on that game. It sounds very stupid putting it on this thread, but I know she took that online game very seriously. She claimed that it was a waste of Currency for that game. She was very apologetic, but she was very adamant that she did not consider that contacting him because she did not have an actual conversation with him. It was just her sending some fake money to his avatar, with a brief message. I told her I considered it contact with him. As we talked about it, she admitted that it was her way of getting closure with him. I became more angry at the insanity that she needed closure with somebody that almost ruined our marriage. I told her that she should have put a priority on rebuilding our marriage over getting closure on somebody that did nothing good for her life. 

It was then that I remembered TAM describing emotional affairs as an addiction. She became very emotional, and scared about what I would do, and she assured me it would never happen again. She told me to delete her online character then and there. I did not excuse her action, however I also accepted that she had not been acting rationally for a very long time, and based on all the progress we had made, I would give her the benefit of the doubt and not throw everything away over one message.

Since she had changed her phone number, I have jumped the gun and assumed she was being deceptive when in reality she was not. Over two weeks ago I decided to plug her phone into my computer to save all her txt's and to see if there were any text messages that were inappropriate. I saw one text message that I believed was sent from her to another number I was unfamiliar with. 

I thought the message said, "hey Dave, I haven't heard from you in a while, get back with me when you can so we can catch up". I began to grill my wife on what she was doing texting this Dave person. She calmly showed me that it was an incoming message and the message said "hey it's Dave, I haven't heard from you in a while...". Basically, this Dave person had texted somebody that used to have my wife's phone number. It made sense. My wife had only recently received this new phone number. This Dave person must not have not known that the phone number was reassigned. Incidents like that have occurred a few times and have put a strain on us. Obviously I am still working on me trusting her. And I know it will be a long time before I fully can.

During the course of our reconciliation, she also admitted to me that one of the Men she met online had previously been a friend of hers on Facebook. She told me that she unfriended this man shortly after she changed her phone number. She told me almost two weeks ago that he reached out to her on Facebook messenger, and she told him not to contact her again. According to her, she deleted the Facebook messenger chat with him to remove all traces of her emotional affairs from her life. 

This upset me, because I felt she was trying to hide things again. She told me she wasn't trying to be deceptive, because she knew I had the ability to pull up previously deleted chats. She currently doesn't know that the two programs that I used to pull up deleted information does not have the capacity to pull up deleted Facebook messenger chats. Since our reconciliation, we never formally discussed her deleting anything. But we have now agreed that she will delete nothing. I have no intentions on letting her know the limitations of what I can bring back after things have been deleted.

I say all this, and provide these examples of us having some hard times since she changed her phone number, to not make it seem like we are living happily ever after. While I can tell such a huge difference in her since that night her mother came to my house, I still have significant trust issues with her. And she knows it. There are many times where I feel I am being tricked by her, as if she is somehow still in communication with that Canadian. 

I am actively suspicious of a few things that are happening now. And I am actively trying to figure out if my suspicions are based on actual sound logic, or if I am jumping the gun like I did with that text message regarding Dave.

I feel vulnerable when it comes to Facebook messenger. I do not know of a way that I can retrieve any deleted chats on that application. I have my own Facebook messenger app. Basically, if you have friended somebody on Facebook messenger, you can see when the last time they were on either Facebook or Facebook messenger. I will regularly get on my Facebook messenger, only to see when my wife was last on Facebook messenger. Especially when she works nights. It is pretty accurate, down to the hour. Again, that is the only application I have allowed her to be on, because she actively speaks to her family and coworkers on that app. 

The reason I feel vulnerable with her on Facebook messenger is because she has already proven to delete chats from that application. She's on Facebook often, basically because everything else online has been taken away from her. She is very active on Facebook with being in contact with her family and coworkers. My problem, because of my justified trust issues with her,

Is I don't know if she is innocently being on Facebook to speak with family, or if she chatting up with some other guy and then later deleting the messages.

I could just demand that she no longer gets on Facebook. I'm sure it would cause an argument, but in the end I believe she would respect why I can't have her on it. At the same time, I also recognize she does need some type of outlet to socialize. Part of what went wrong in our marriage was that since she got this new job, she has had no outlet to socialize with others. 

I believe that's how she got involved with that online game, and eventually it got out of hand and turned toxic. I don't think taking everything away, like Facebook, would be beneficial for her. Because Facebook keeps her connected to her family, I believe it is a benefit to her. 

Anyway, in regards to our marriage, the Facebook messenger issue is the biggest strain with me trusting her right now. Apart from that, I really do feel like things are moving in the right direction. At the same time, I have to admit that because I know there are so many ways that I can be deceived again in regards to online activities-such as creating a new email account, or any of the other messaging apps, there are times when I really feel significant distrust.

She begins going to a marital counselor later this week. Both her and I have agreed to not rush into picking any one found in the phonebook, we both took the time to find one we would both feel comfortable with. I have heard many horror stories regarding marital counseling. Basically my fear is the counselor deflects all justification onto the betrayed spouse. Basically, The counselor will not hold the cheating spouse accountable for their actions, and just find reasons why the cheating spouse did what they did. This in turn makes the cheating spouse believe they were justified with their actions. Despite that, We have recently received a reliable recommendation for a counselor, and my wife will be going to her soon.

I thank you for taking the time to read this very long post, and I would be very receptive to your thoughts on how I could've made this better or what I could be doing better right now. 

I am still guarded, especially when I keep in mind that her emotional affair needs to be treated as some type of temporary emotional addiction. And knowing full well that if things become stressful again for a long period of time, The same situation could happen again. I know she broke the no contact rule once by sending a message to him through a video game. Since I last checked, the other man never responded to the message. 

I can see such a huge difference in our marriage now, compared to over a month ago. I recognize that I cannot tolerate her breaking the no contact rule again. At the same time, I'm trying to give our situation a true fighting chance, therefore I can't allow one small slip up to dictate the rest of our lives. I am cautiously optimistic and have a real hope for both of us as a couple. 

I hope, preferably the very near future, I can get a few detailed questions answered. What got into her or what circumstances occurred that made her want to think and proceed with a divorce? What prompted her to want the affections of these other men? At what point did she significantly gain feelings for this guy in Canada? How long did it take for her to begin replacing me with him? Why would she not come to me when she realized things became significantly wrong in our marriage from her perspective? From her perspective, what was she getting from that Canadian that she felt she could not get from me, especially after she knew that I knew what was going on?


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

Here is a book that might help the two of you with what needs to be done to help you heal from her affair.

How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair: A Compact Manual for the Unfaithful by Linda J. MacDonald

You two also need to work on restructuring your marriage. Get the books "Love Busters" and "His Needs, Her Needs". The idea is for the two of you to read them and do the work that they suggest.


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## Tobyboy (Jun 13, 2013)

You do know that Facebook messenger has a "secret message" option now. Right?


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## Tatsuhiko (Jun 21, 2016)

She needs IC more than MC.You're correct that a bad MC might just help her find a way to validate the affair. She needs an IC who can help her resolve her need for attention from other men.

Keep a very close eye on her, as you have been. Be aware that she could have a pay-as-yiu-go burner phone that you might not even know about. A VAR in the car is still a great idea.

If she messes up again, go through with the divorce that she deserved a long time ago.


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## TX-SC (Aug 25, 2015)

She needs IC and you need to prepare for the worst case scenario. She has shown that she cannot be trusted and is deceptive. Expect her to find a way around your snooping and detective work.


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## bigjohn (Jun 30, 2017)

Thanks for sharing it all with us .I am going through a very similar experience .My heart goes out to you I know how you feel have a look at my sad story .Mine is much further from being resolved then yours Regards John


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## eric1 (Apr 10, 2015)

Facebook Messenger time stamps are messed up. Don't go by them.

Also, add her Facebook and Messenger profiles to your phone. There is no other way to recover deleted FB messenger messages.

What software do you run on her phone to monitor? Teensafe?


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## aine (Feb 15, 2014)

Sorry for all the heartbreak you have endured, when somebody shows you who they are, believe them the first time. YOur wife has the propensity to cheat, she may do this again.

However, I think you both dropped the ball in the relationship with pursuing money/career etc. No marriage can withstand the lack of connection, that working opposite shifts, etc cause.

Time to prioritize the marriage


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## Mizzbak (Sep 10, 2016)

Dear CT, 

Your posts are heartbreaking to me. My experiences, whilst similar, did not reach the level of betrayal of yours - mostly, I think, because my husband's affair partner (AP) had a very suspicious husband. The most useful piece of advice that I have is that you need to see your own therapist. What you need right now is to strengthen the core of yourself before you start working on your marriage ( @drifting on ). I would actually suggest that you both prioritise IC over MC. 

There is a fairly widespread view that infidelity is actually a type of abuse - especially in a situation like yours where you lived in this twilight zone of distrust and unreality for an extended period. Post-infidelity stress disorder seems a made-up term, but consider the impact that your wife's behaviour has had on you. Where once you believed that the basis of marriage was trust, now you spend your time double-checking her phone, message and internet activity. (My obsession was my husband's Google Location history. Little red data dots, like drops of blood that marked the trail of each day.) Where once you took your wife's words at face value, now you find yourself almost wanting to legally document things, so that you have a non-ambiguous definition of "NC" that you can hold her to. 

You need someone that can help you work through the feelings that you have. And the others that are still to come. No matter what the next few weeks and months hold, you need support. For example, what about when you (both you and your wife) have to confront what your wife's behaviour has done to your oldest son's ideas about marriage and fidelity? TAM isn't enough. It may be peopled by those with similar experiences, but we are all in widely varying states of healing, bitterness and stability. And you need someone to be there for you. Someone whose goal is to get you to a place where you understand what your options and priorities are. And what those mean. And someone who can help you understand your wife better. (And you are unlikely to find that here on TAM.)

If you are uncomfortable about therapy, then maybe consider confiding in a good friend that you can trust. But I personally think that infidelity requires professional intervention. Remember that this is not about trying to fix some character flaw in you. This is to help you heal, as effectively and fully as possible, from an egregious injury. Many make a mistake in trying to heal their marriage before they themselves are healed. 

Thinking of you, CT.


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## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

EleGirl
Thanks for the reading suggestions. I will definitely take a look at those for the both of us. The wife is about to start days again, and it would be nice to read together before we go to bed- as we used to.

Tobyboy 
After looking at your post this morning, I have to say I just looked at The Facebook messenger app. No, I didn't realize that it had that secret message capability. Thanks for the info, I will be extra vigilant when it comes to that.

Tatshuhiko
I believe I will put in a VAR in the near future. I looked on Amazon.com, and I believe I found a good one. It basically poses as a flash drive. I believe that one will work well because I have several flash drive's of my own. I could keep it in my room without her thinking any different, and I could probably place it in the backseat cupholder of the car without her thinking twice about it. I think I'll wait a few weeks before I actually do this, to let the situation die down a little bit more.


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## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

Eric1
I will definitely take your advise and and keep my wife's Facebook messenger account on my phone to easily login. 
In regards to what data recovery I have used. I do not currently have anything downloaded on her phone. I have dr. Fone and Tenoshare on my computer. Those two programs can retrieve data from iPhone back up files (from iTunes) or can sync directly to a phone if the phone is plugged into a computer. 
I've looked into covertly downloading a program onto my wife's phone. I was originally looking into a program called flexyspy and mspy, but I have learned that iPhones block a lot of the potential information those programs can provide. If my wife had an android phone, I would have done that a long time ago, and learned much more than I know.
The way I understand it, programs that are installed onto a cellphone itself require the cell phone to be "jail broken". I guess apple products make it very difficult to allow that to happen.

Aine
Your point is very well taken. My only excuse is that I dont think either of us realized it was happening in the beginning. Our biggest downfall was that after my wife received her new job, we continued to live as we had always done, and did not take the time to recognize or adapt to our new life (with her new work schedule). Originally, I thought we were just both in a "rut". Once I finally realized things weren't as they should have been, I just assumed my wife would snap out of it just as easily as I did. I didnt realize she was taking a completely different path with communication with other men. 

The lesson I've learned is that anything worth having must be constantly maintained. Actively look at your life, because it can be easy to miss that a marriage is begging neglected. Don't mix up stability (thinking we can go long periods of time with no close connection) and neglect/apathy.

My biggest fear is that something similar will happen 3,4,or 8 years down the road. What happens if my job puts me on an assignment that requires me to be gone for 3 months? I ask that cause I may need to do this in the next few years. 

If it happens again, my wife will know how to better hide things. At the same time, I believe my threshold for the proof I'll need will be lower to file for divorce.

I've read a few comments regarding my wife possibly needing an IC over a MC. The more I think about it, the more I agree.


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## hylton7 (Jan 24, 2017)

Canadian trouble said:


> Eric1
> I will definitely take your advise and and keep my wife's Facebook messenger account on my phone to easily login.
> In regards to what data recovery I have used. I do not currently have anything downloaded on her phone. I have dr. Fone and Tenoshare on my computer. Those two programs can retrieve data from iPhone back up files (from iTunes) or can sync directly to a phone if the phone is plugged into a computer.
> I've looked into covertly downloading a program onto my wife's phone. I was originally looking into a program called flexyspy and mspy, but I have learned that iPhones block a lot of the potential information those programs can provide. If my wife had an android phone, I would have done that a long time ago, and learned much more than I know.
> ...


she has no respect for you bro was the other man married?


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## drifting on (Nov 22, 2013)

I'll come back with a more detailed reply, but you need to do some things now. 
1) you have the info on Canada guy. Ask your wife if he is married. That's it with your wife. Say nothing else to her. Dig up info on Canada guy. Employer, relationship (married, single), expose to OM's wife or girlfriend. Do not tell your wife.
2) ask your wife this and to give you the answer tomorrow. How would your dad see you now? Would your dad accept she blames him (dad)? Did your dad raise you to be this type of person?

Your intention for asking this is for two reasons. One, a hard at what she said. Two, a hard truth for how she is.


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## Tatsuhiko (Jun 21, 2016)

Canadian trouble, I would not wait on placing the VAR. A lot of people have good results with a Sony model that costs about $50. See the http://talkaboutmarriage.com/coping-infidelity/209754-standard-evidence-post.html for more information. You can install it under the car seat with Velcro. Even better, cut open the headrest and stuff it in there. She will not find it, nor even think to look for it.


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## drifting on (Nov 22, 2013)

Canadian trouble

It took longer then I expected but I will finish what I was trying to say. Your wife was deeply involved with this OM, said she got from him what she couldn't from you. Bull. Had she put the effort she did towards you OM wouldn't have remained. So in essence, what she says you didn't provide, she could have only gotten from OM or another OM. I know I sound confusing, but it's emotional, and once she gave that to OM nothing you did or could do would matter. That's why it's bull, because you are in a no win situation. Real nice of your wife to compare you and OM and make it so you can't even win. That's what your wife needs to understand, why, why did she compare you and now that you know, suddenly you are respectable again. Get her to answer that. 

As for breaking no contact, that's bad, and for that I think you should talk to your mother in law about her daughter returning to moms house. Stop monitoring your wife, instead tell your wife this, I am not a warden, you are not a child, go to your moms and learn to be an adult. If you do anything that involves OM in any way shape or form, your permanent residence will be your mothers. Then send her away.

Do a hard 180 on your wife, this is for breaking no contact and file for divorce. Tell your mother in law you will have her served at moms house as opposed to her employer. That is the only compassion you can show towards her for now. You can always stop a divorce if you decide otherwise. Separate your financials, do this with your lawyers advice, then go dark. 

Your wife needs consequences, and while some will hit later, she needs immediate ones. If you do the above, those are immediate, the other consequences come when she realizes all she missed with her family. One thing to remember OP, now is not the time for nice or indecision, now is the time to stand firm with your family behind you. I'm not saying to be mean and cruel, but your wife isn't close to remorse. If you want to know if she is, ask her if she misses OM. Of course she will say no, but I'll bet her body reaction shows she does. 

No more gaming for her, no social media that can allow contact with OM. By that I mean, if there is a way, the will soon takes over. She omits this from her life until she has earned trust from you. If she argues, say I wish I could trust you but look what happened when I did. From now on until trust has returned these are my boundaries and if Facebook is more important then your marriage, so be it, the divorce continues.


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## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

I just want to say thank you to everyone that took the time to post your thoughts on my thread. I've read each one, and taking all of them to heart. The reading suggestions are so far great, and the needed reality checks from you guys are appreciated.

I will be buying two Sony VARs by this weekend- one for our bedroom and the other for her car. I believe the timing for the VARs are perfect, because it's been a week or so since we have talked about her EA- so in a best case scenario, we are moving forward successfully with our reconciliation. In a worst-case scenareo she will believe my guard is down. She has recently begun to work during dayshift's. This will leave her with plenty of time to prove herself to me on days that she is not working
( with the help of the VARs). 

She's going to her second counseling session in the next day or so. Prior to her going to the first one, we agreed that I would not pressure her to go into what her and the counselor would speak about. We agreed that she would have at least two or three sessions before we would begin to speak about what the counselor is saying to her. 

She is currently being very transparent about all of her online activities. Maybe even a little bit too much, she still lets me know when she plans to watch Netflix on our PlayStation. She also tells me anytime that she messages somebody on Facebook messenger that is not her own family.

As for me continuing to agree to her using Facebook and Facebook messenger, I told her that I May need her to quit using those also. I did not say I for sure needed her to quit, I told her it would depend on how my trust and her was progressing. We got into an argument about it. She had a point because I just brought it up less than a week ago, and she told me that if it was a dealbreaker I should have brought it up In the beginning. my point was, that I was trying to be fair and not seem to keep her from her family because I knew she used the Facebook messenger often to keep in touch with family. I recognize that I made a mistake by not demanding she drop the Facebook messenger also. But in all honesty, because I check on it often and don't see anything suspicious on it, I am not certain I will demand that she quit using it. 

Things are actually progressing quite well for us. I'm a little apprehensive about what the counseling sessions will produce. And I seem to still have a compulsive need to check on all of her online activities. Eventually I'll need to either begin to trust her more and quit checking every day, or admit that things are more broken with our marriage with the damage she did to me, then I thought. 

Even though I fully expect our marriage will survive, I still have a game plan if I find out she broke the no contact rule or has begun seeing anyone else and appropriately. I have currently opened a bank account at a completely different bank then we use. It's basically on standby if I have to move liquid assets in a quick manner. I am also looking up more information on what an actual post prenuptial agreement is. If I find her stepping outside of the boundaries that we have in our marriage, my intentions are for her to sign a post prenup agreement ASAP. From there, I believe I have become more at peace with filing for divorce. Of course like I said this is a worst-case scenareo for our marriage.

Depending on how everything goes and these next couple weeks, I may or may not add much to this thread. If you guys don't hear from me for a while, I will definitely give everyone an update, however to keep things on topic I may create a new thread regarding our reconciliation.


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## TDSC60 (Dec 8, 2011)

Your wife is addicted to validation she got from these other men. She knew it was wrong and would hurt you thus the secrecy and denials.

Addictions do not disappear overnight. You may have to be on guard for years after you think she is over her addiction.


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## GusPolinski (Jan 21, 2014)

Jeezy Chreezy.

Anyone got a tl;dr version handy?


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## Tasorundo (Apr 1, 2012)

Here you go: His wife is a serial EA/Text/Sext offender.

He will spend the rest of his life married to her, constantly checking up on her and never knowing if she is still doing it.


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## Chaparral (Jul 17, 2011)

I'm courious why you haven't mentioned a skype acct. I think they come on iPhones preprogrammed.

I'm also courious about you not getting any information on any of her boy friends. How does she know she hasn't been catfished? 

I'm also wondering if she has met up with someone. Have you checked the phone numbers to see if they actually were real. There are apps to hide ones phone number.


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## Chaparral (Jul 17, 2011)

If you are serious about a possible divorce and she knows it you are doing as well as can be expected. 

Just know that we have had instances here where wives have left their husbands and children to go across the country to live with men they have ne we met. Your wife is definitely in an addiction. I would also be worried about coworkers since that are the hardest to catch.

What have you found out about their Facebook accts and are they real? Do any of them have families? Did their pictures include their faces? If so, do a google search on them.


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## Canadian trouble (Jun 30, 2017)

TDSC60
I agree completely that she became dependent on the validation from these other guys. I will not allow myself to have to look over my shoulder for the rest of our lives. I'm hoping I have learned from the red flags that she has displayed. I won't allow myself or family to go through what we did.

Chaparral
To my knowledge, Skype was never used. She had never used it before, and wasn't on her phone during the months she was talking to other men. As I looked through her emails, I never saw skype referenced.

As for the other phone numbers. Everything seemed to match up to what I discovered and what she admitted to. There were 4 guys - also four numbers. Our phone records showed that they were all out of state, the nearest one being about 6 hours away. Also, digging through the Kik and Voxer messages helped confirm That all of them were from out of state.

Two of the four guys have a Facebook account. I was able to confirm their Facebook pics to the dirty pics she received from them in the past. One of them is married. The other, the one she couldst let go of (the canadian), is single. She has blocked both of their accounts.

As for the catfish idea- I'm not very familiar with the term, but from what I can tell, they were getting exactly what they wanted from her. Naked pics and sexting. There was never any talk about her meeting up with them. All four of them knew each other on that online game, but I don't think any of them knew that she was sending pics to any of the others. I believe each of them thought they were the only one.

I won't allow myself to look over my shoulder forever. My hopes are that with her counseling sessions and her transparency with me, we can close this dark chapter in our lives. I believe it will be a long time before I will completely trust her again- both of us know this.

In the mean time, I will be verifying she is honoring the NC rule. My hope is, each time I check her activities, it will reinforce my trust in her. For now I am verifying.


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## Tobyboy (Jun 13, 2013)

I hope you have educated yourself about the way secret messaging works on Messenger. If I'm not mistaken, secret messaging occurs from device to device not account to account. She could be sending/receiving secret messages and you won't see them on your device even though your logged into her messenger account.


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## TRy (Sep 14, 2011)

Canadian trouble said:


> I did not say I for sure needed her to quit, I told her it would depend on how my trust and her was progressing. We got into an argument about it. She had a point because I just brought it up less than a week ago, and she told me that if it was a dealbreaker I should have brought it up In the beginning.


 When she says that "if it was a dealbreaker I should have brought it up In the beginning" about this or any other thing that you may later think up, you tell her that since you never expected to be staying in a marriage with a cheating wife, she needs to understand that you are learning as you go, that you will not always get things right the first time, and that as the cause of all of this crap, she needs to just deal with that fact.


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## farsidejunky (Mar 19, 2014)

TRy said:


> When she says that "if it was a dealbreaker I should have brought it up In the beginning" about this or any other thing that you may later think up, you tell her that since you never expected to be staying in a marriage with a cheating wife, she needs to understand that you are learning as you go, that you will not always get things right the first time, and that as the cause of all of this crap, she needs to just deal with that fact.


This.

A cynical smart ass like myself may also tell her that, following her logic, now is as good a time as any to begin looking for another woman to enter into a polyamorous arrangement with the two of you. Or maybe two more women. 

Or was that discussed as a deal breaker for her at the start?

Or, if it was discussed, then three of four may be the answer because that number was not specifically discussed either.

Do you see how allowing the madness of an excuse like that will drive you crazy?

She wants to argue like an attorney getting her off on a technicality. Whether you choose to follow those silly rules in her childish game is completely up to you, but it is a recipe for madness.


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## Absurdist (Oct 10, 2014)

farsidejunky said:


> This.
> 
> A cynical smart ass like myself may also tell her that, following her logic, now is as good a time as any to begin looking for another woman to enter into a polyamorous arrangement with the two of you. Or maybe two more women.
> 
> ...



The sad collateral damage in all this is OP's stepson. He's probably lost all respect for his Mom because of her addicted and outrageous behavior and respect for OP for tolerating this crap. He's out on an island alone. Caught between two worlds.

Tough stuff for a young teenager.


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## JustTheFacts (Jun 27, 2017)

I'm sorry that you are in this situation and that children are involved. 
The truth is that your wife has some major emotional problems at the very least. She has a HIGH LIKELIHOOD to cheat in her current state. I don't see this changing anytime soon. You have to decide if it is worth it for you to wait around and see if she gets better or not. Having to constantly watch her like a hawk (and even that's no guarantee that you will catch everything). You currently don't fulfill her needs. All it would take right now for a full blown PA would be for somebody (coworker, random encounter etc..) to pay any attention to her whatsoever and she would be gone. How long do you want to cross your fingers and hope that her very core changes? If she stays as she is I can tell you that by the time your children reach adulthood, she will have cheated on you again or she will just flat out leave you. I do hope that she changes. I really do. But at this point.... Good luck


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## drifting on (Nov 22, 2013)

Absurdist said:


> The sad collateral damage in all this is OP's stepson. He's probably lost all respect for his Mom because of her addicted and outrageous behavior and respect for OP for tolerating this crap. He's out on an island alone. Caught between two worlds.
> 
> Tough stuff for a young teenager.




Actually no, he is seeing how a man confronts an issue, by not making a decision based upon a knee jerk reaction. He is being shown by the OP that a man considers everything he possibly can BEFORE he makes a decision. OP's stepson is being shown that although his mom makes poor choices, his step dad makes an informed decision from strength. Just because a man has determined to reconcile and not divorce does not make him any less of a man. If anything at all, the step son is being shown that a marriage can have very rough times, and to get through them you need to be strong.


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## drifting on (Nov 22, 2013)

farsidejunky said:


> This.
> 
> A cynical smart ass like myself may also tell her that, following her logic, now is as good a time as any to begin looking for another woman to enter into a polyamorous arrangement with the two of you. Or maybe two more women.
> 
> ...




QFT

OP you need to tell her what you will accept and what you won't. In other words put some strong boundaries in place, and that your boundaries are not to be questioned in any way. That's a consequence to what she has done.


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## jlg07 (Feb 24, 2017)

Canadian trouble said:


> ....
> Two of the four guys have a Facebook account. I was able to confirm their Facebook pics to the dirty pics she received from them in the past. One of them is married. The other, the one she couldst let go of (the canadian), is single. She has blocked both of their accounts.
> .


I would try to find out at least the married persons wife -- and forward those emails/messages to her.
I would also suggest installing a key logger on any PC your wife has access to -- would show if she has other hidden email accounts, facebook pages, etc.). VAR in the car especially since that is where she did most of her talking from what you've said.

Sorry you are going through this.


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## TDSC60 (Dec 8, 2011)

Be very careful of other means of communication. Now that she knows how she got busted and that you are watching she could be looking for another way to stay in touch with OM.


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## sokillme (Jun 10, 2016)

You should detach and not make a choice to reconcile so quickly. Your thoughts may be very different from this a year from now when the trauma dies down.

Unfortunately reading many of these posts there is a very good chance that you don't have the half of it. People who behave like your wife don't just change because of a job. It is a pattern of poor character. It usually is in effect for most of their life. This is not a ops I got drunk and had sex, which is bad enough. This is a long term pattern of continuous actions. Their go to is lying, deceit and selfishness. What do you really know about the oldest child's father. What really broke them up. 

Here it the thing, you can believe that or not. Doesn't matter, if I am right you are going to see it manifest. The only thing is, you will be wasting time. This is why you should detach and also don't trust a word she says at this point. I would ask for a poly. I doubt this kind of behavior just began with the new job. 

Others will disagree, and I hope I am wrong, but I have been proven right on here before. Broken people don't make good spouses. There is a very good chance that your wife has some very serious emotional problems, maybe even emotional disorders. Much more then needing validation. Meaning it's like being married to an alcoholic, there will always be the possibility of a relapse. There will need a lifetime of work, that means the desire to do the work. This is what you are agreeing to at least go into it with your eyes open.


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## sokillme (Jun 10, 2016)

drifting on said:


> Actually no, he is seeing how a man confronts an issue, by not making a decision based upon a knee jerk reaction. He is being shown by the OP that a man considers everything he possibly can BEFORE he makes a decision. OP's stepson is being shown that although his mom makes poor choices, his step dad makes an informed decision from strength. Just because a man has determined to reconcile and not divorce does not make him any less of a man. If anything at all, the step son is being shown that a marriage can have very rough times, and to get through them you need to be strong.


OP you need to get your child into IC. You can hope for the best but seeing the mother act in such a terrible disrespectful way to you will most likely have a lasting impact, especially when it comes to thinking about marriage and spouses. What you wife is teaching them is that spouses are not to be trusted. Or that being honest and loyal is not important, even more true if there are no consequences. Finally be careful that you don't teach them that marriages must be kept at the point of your own dignity. This makes marriage seem like a trap to be avoided. If you want to turn your child off to the idea of a marriage that is the best way to do it. All your decisions should be made with the idea what is best for the kids. Staying in a broken abusive marriage is not best for them. Better to have the possibility of one stable parent an a possible good marriage, then both stuck in an unstable one.

Does your wife know what she has done to her child? Does she know that her child knows?


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## TaDor (Dec 20, 2015)

"She told me that she knew what she was doing was wrong, but she was lonely and bored, and the messages that she sent, the pictures that she sent and received meant nothing." - you got time to spend with others - then you have time to spend with your husband and not be lonely.

Yeah, locate the Private messaging mode... It's pretty much its own channel.

Normal messaging = Your messages & content are in the FB cloud. You can review them on any device.
Private mode = It's not actually encrypted, but it only sends messages from point to point. ie: one device to another *ONLY*. No copies. They can be deleted without affecting the normal messages.


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## Talker67 (Apr 7, 2016)

it is more common than one might think....finding an EA partner thru a game. Words with friends i have heard is one where people find random partners to cheat with.

It seems triggered by two major events....a new job and death of her father. 

So maybe trigger a true reconcilliation by a major event...her NEVER playing these online games again. If she plays the games, it will be too easy for her to lapse back into the bad cheating pattern, like putting on ab old glove.

She needs to quit the gaming cold turkey--find a NEW hobby.


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## TDSC60 (Dec 8, 2011)

I shudder every time I read that a BS "trusted her totally". I have learned that total trust in a long term relationship is a train wreck waiting to happen. You should know the red flags and be prepared to investigate when one pops up.

People change. They can be changed by friends, family, life events, damn television shows, books or the simple passage of time. You always have to be aware of what is happening in a marriage and how your spouse is being influenced. If you notice a change in behavior and don't know why - find out why.


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