# Divorcing, but still feel the need to investigate...



## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

I am in the process of divorcing my STBXH after a year-long separation. My latest DDay was September 2012 and was the culmination of years of serial cheating during which I had no real proof and was gaslighted, lied to, etc. Once I had hard proof of his cheating, I could no longer ignore the truth and kicked him out immediately but I finally had the knowledge I needed (usernames, website addresses, etc) to really unravel the web of lies spun by my ex.

After a year of lies and continually escalating cheating behavior I made the final decision to file for divorce. BUT, I still struggle with wanting to continue to snoop and find out what he is doing. I don't know why I feel this urge... nothing I learn can make me feel better at this point. Is it just to continue to reassure myself that I'm making the right decision?

Has anyone else dealt with this? It almost feels like an addiction of its own and I don't want to do it anymore!!!


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## Mavash. (Jan 26, 2012)

I say give yourself permission to do whatever it takes to reassure yourself you are doing the right thing.

Willpower rarely works so go the opposite way give yourself permission to snoop to your hearts content.

My gut says you will tire of it once you take it's power away.


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

I agree with Mavash. I am at the very beginning of finding out about my cheating husband. Serial cheater, liar, manipulator. I to find myself still investigating. I do think its just for confirmation that you are doing the right thing. Trust me with all the emails and text messages I saw there is NO WAY I need to find out any more but I do. I like what Mavash said here, you will tire of it once you take its power away. I will use that for myself because even though I found out my soon to be ex asked his mistress to secretly marry him, I STILL need more information? I must be nuts. Lets hang in there.


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

punkinhead, my story is listed here as "husband cheated but I feel responsible for the children" 
Misery loves company so if you need a miserable story to read please feel free. Im disgusted and its only been 6 weeks or so. Hopefull I'll stop searching for more self punishment. Like I said earlier, lets hang in there.


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

Bacagain,

I'm so sorry for what you are going through. Our stories are so similar and I just wanted to give you a big hug when reading your story. My STBXH also does not want a divorce but also is not willing to lift even one finger to make amends or change in any way. To this day, he spends every free minute on porn and hookup sites while lying to his kids that he's working late and can't come to seen them on his visitation nights. 

I think the reason I still snoop is because he's such a good liar - it's like I have to continually convince myself that every word he says is likely a lie. When I know he's on an adult website, but simultaneously texting our daughter to tell her he can't come see her... it helps me remember that I'M NOT CRAZY!!!


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

That is awfull. The lies are insane. Everytime you think to yourself, no....he woudlnt go to that extreme.........THEY DO! 

He is begging not to "break up the family" and does small things like tells me where he is or where he's going but guess what? He always did in the past! So wherever he says he's going he's most likely not there. He has passwords on his phone, his email, etc etc. So in reality he doesnt want us to "break up" but he still wants his privacy to do as he pleases. What I think.........I think he most certainly want his cake and eat it to. Wait till his daughters are out of HS, then my daughter, then all we have is our son who'll be 5 or 6 at the time. Then maybe divorce and he'll only have one child to worry about instead of 5 of them. Then see our son part time but till then......just business as usual in our home and this way his girls dont get hurt AGAIN and he doesnt have the added guilt. Up to him, he is perfectly fine in having a secret open marriage. 
He's insane.


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## BetrayedDad (Aug 8, 2013)

I stopped checking up on her once I finally came to terms with the fact that I was going to divorce and she was not going to change...

For me personally, all checking up ever did was make me much feel worse. I would want so badly to believe the crap she was telling me and without fail it would almost always turn out to be a lie. She even lies to the OM regularly. It gets to a point where you can't believe anything they say to anyone! As far as I know, she is in full contact with the OM (and probably more) and telling us both exactly what we want to hear. 

I guess the bottom line is if you want to detach then you have to STOP or you will never heal. It's simply not mentally healthy to continually dwell on their whereabouts. If you're trying to work it out and the W is telling you it's over then by all means check to make sure but please PREPARE for the worst case scenario because more often than not the cheater is still lying to you.


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

The lies are insane and honestly, he's done things I would never have imagined. The final straw was when he lied to me in July about having to go out of town for a week. I found out he REALLY went on a $4,000 vacation to Singapore for the sole purpose of screwing some **** he met on an adult hookup site. When I found that out, I was done. This is a man who can't be bothered to take his kids for a weekend trip to an amusement park and never wanted to take family vacations... but he flies half a world away to bang some stranger.

That was the final straw...


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## Thorburn (Nov 23, 2011)

punkinhead, I would disagree with snooping. I say this in that since you are going to D all you are doing is throwing more fuel on a fire that just needs to burn out. 

I am now in R with my wife, but when I was going through the process of D, my wife created a new FB account. I got upset and my youngest son (age 27) told me, "Dad, stop looking at what mom is doing, all it is doing is upsetting me and you". I did stop. When my wife repented and came clean I snooped big time to verify what she told me, to look at her accounts that she willingly gave me, etc. I still look from time to time but not as often.

If I was going through D I would recommend just ending it. THe sooner you do this the better. In D, you really need to work on detachment and moving forward from the relationship. Ask yourself, why do I feel compelled to snoop? If the relationship is ending and you are pursuing D, end the snooping. 

I could give you some insight why you feel the urge. He is the father of your children and you are still co-parenting. He was your husband and you had a relationship with him. You still have feelings for him. You would like answers, etc. etc.

None of you are nuts, you have been severely damaged and hurt. If you are going to D, my suggestion is to let it go, detach and move on. If you feel you need answers then the desire to snoop will be very strong and maybe, just maybe you will stumble upon something that will give you an answer, but in most cases if the WS has not given you the answers you need or want, I sincerely doubt you will ever get them. 

I have said this in other posts, why let this guy rent space in your head when you are going to D him? Move on. Work on co-parenting, schedules, etc for your own sake.


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## Mavash. (Jan 26, 2012)

A family member of mine racked up $70k in debt related to his serial cheating. The BS went digging and found so much it was shocking. This wayward had been living a double life their entire 13 year marriage.

The BS snooped while they were going through divorce but eventually stopped as you will too.


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## Rowan (Apr 3, 2012)

My divorce will be final in less than a month, and I will admit that I do still "snoop" on my husband to a certain extent. Not to the level I did earlier when we were attempting R, but I will check his phone and email from time to time. He's been acting very hang-dog about the pending divorce, asking me to reconsider, wanting to try MC again, begging me to give R another shot. But I can also see from my snooping that he's actively trying to hook up, sexting, discussing our marriage and divorce in less than flattering terms, etc. with a number of other women. For me, it provides further proof that I've made the right decision. The divorce hurts less every day because I can see clearly that he's still lying to me and to himself. It takes away any illusions I had that maybe this time he really wants to be a husband to me. He doesn't.


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

Its almost nuts the snooping. It hurts like hell but at the same time you find confirmation in it. I agree with everyone above that is BEST just to leave it alone. You really dont need the confirmation. I think for me I just feel almost "better / worse" that he still lies. This way any hope I tend to scrape up from the ground is gone and the more I find out he's a liar the better I feel but at the same time it hurts! 
Its an insane cycle. I also need to stop.


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

Luckily I have my IC therapy appointment this afternoon and I'm sure this will be the number one topic for discussion. I really do want to stop - it's not healthy and it's not changing anything. Maybe I need someone to follow me around for a month and slap me upside the head every time I feel like checking up!


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

"Maybe I need someone to follow me around for a month and slap me upside the head every time I feel like checking up! "

Hysterical.......... I needed to laugh today. I feel the same way!!!! 

My therapist says, get all his passwords and make him show you all his emails whenever you ask even if its every night. I tell her, who the hell wants to live like that??? She is very nice but sometimes we are NOT on the same page. I almost dont want ANY passwords because if I have them........i will most certainly look and like said above, I'd be setting myself up for the worst. I know deep inside, if I do look, I will most certainly find. So its better I dont have anything.


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

I know what you mean bacagain. He never gave me any passwords but once I had his username, I found out all the different sites he was on (his username was the same for each one). And the idiot has MY NAME as his password. Unbelievable. 

To top it off, he still doesn't know how I found out so much so he hasn't changed user names and/or password. In a way I wish he would because then I really couldn't look. But I'd have to admit that I know all his passwords for him to change them and I don't want to do that. Catch 22!


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## hard_to_detach (Jun 17, 2013)

My divorce will be final in two months. I still snoop but not as much as I did. I do it because she is being contacted by a lot of guys who have been waiting in the wings so if anything happened with any of them I should be able to find out. For instance, she cheated on me with a couple 6 years ago and even though I grilled her about that night she denied anything happened until a couple months ago and even then she said that she only had sex with the wife. Of course the husband has contacted her over the years and in my snooping just last week I found a recent message thread from a few weeks ago where they were talking about that time 6 years ago. I got confirmation that she also had sex with him and it probably happened on more than one occasion.

She will never come clean on everything so I am still snooping to get some closure. I want to be able to trust my gut and not question everything in future relationships, so by finding out that I was right it confirms my gut feeling and that I can trust it. Eventually I will stop snooping but probably not until the divorce is final or she is out of my house.


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

Update - my therapist told me to get a really thick rubber band and wear it around my wrist. When I start thinking of stbxh or feeling the urge to snoop, I'm supposed to snap myself as hard as I can with the rubber band. Dang it hurts!!!! But it seems to be helping 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

"Update - my therapist told me to get a really thick rubber band and wear it around my wrist. When I start thinking of stbxh or feeling the urge to snoop, I'm supposed to snap myself as hard as I can with the rubber band. Dang it hurts!!!! But it seems to be helping 

I love this......lol lol lol


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

This is off the original topic, but just have to vent! My STBXH took our 8 year old to his school picnic last night (it was his visitation night) and he happened to bump into quite a few of our former mutual friends. When we separated a year ago I had exposed my STBXH to a select few of our friends a) for support from my female friends and b) in the hopes of ending his behavior for a potential R. However, I did not embark on any kind of slander campaign, use Cheaterville, or anything of that magnitude.

Anyway, last night apparently some of these friends gave him the cold shoulder as they disapprove of his actions toward me and me specifically toward our children. Then he had the nerve to whine to me about how everyone treats him like he's the "bad guy" and that our problems should have been kept between us. 

You have to be kidding me??? This man has done so much harm to our family and I'm supposed to feel bad because I leaned on a few friends during the darkest days of my life?? UGH - there is no end to the selfishness...


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## bacagain (Sep 9, 2013)

The victim . They love to play the victim. While they are doing their dirty deeds they feel like big bad grown men. Their ego is through the roof . Once they are caught and have to face the music they turn into idiots. Small little children that cant do for themselves. Crying, walking around with all the shame. Give me a break. Its BS. If you were to fogive and make things easy I give him 3 weeks and he'd do it all over again.


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## looking for clarity (Aug 12, 2013)

Not to change the topic back but I also can't believe how a supposed "smart man" can be so stupid. I really don't have to snoop he's just so sloppy. I think it's their arrogance and belief that we are stupid and gullible.

I remember when this first started, my husband told me I'm naive. I am not naieve at all. If anyone, he's naieve if he believed he could go outside the marriage and I wouldn't know. Their arrogance is their downfall.

I snoop because he lies to me and tells me what I want to hear to keep me in the marriage and because he is still trickle trickle try thing and then in my case there's the whole is he bisexual thing. I'm scared I will now snoop in a new relationship and that's not good. It's just right now his phone and email are like crack cocaine to me. I see them and I have to snoop. When he's on his phone at all it's a huge trigger for me.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## alte Dame (Aug 7, 2012)

punkinhead said:


> This is off the original topic, but just have to vent! My STBXH took our 8 year old to his school picnic last night (it was his visitation night) and he happened to bump into quite a few of our former mutual friends. When we separated a year ago I had exposed my STBXH to a select few of our friends a) for support from my female friends and b) in the hopes of ending his behavior for a potential R. However, I did not embark on any kind of slander campaign, use Cheaterville, or anything of that magnitude.
> 
> Anyway, last night apparently some of these friends gave him the cold shoulder as they disapprove of his actions toward me and me specifically toward our children. Then he had the nerve to whine to me about how everyone treats him like he's the "bad guy" and that our problems should have been kept between us.
> 
> You have to be kidding me??? This man has done so much harm to our family and I'm supposed to feel bad because I leaned on a few friends during the darkest days of my life?? UGH - there is no end to the selfishness...


Shame is a very powerful motivator. This is why so much of this stuff is kept so secret. The shame can't be borne by the cheaters. They want what they want on all fronts, which is to have their affairs, their marriages, and the admiration and respect of the society around them. This is the ultimate cake-eating, in my opinion. It's very sobering to have to see yourself as the POS that your spouse and the rest of society views you as.


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

Just an update... The urge to investigate what he's doing seems to have passed. Something fundamentally changed for me recently. I don't know why or how, but I just don't care anymore. I'm living life on my terms and I'm happy for the first time in years. Yes I'm lonely. But that's ok - it will pass. Overall life feels good right now. Thank you everyone for your encouragement!
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

Just an update - it has been a month since I've checked up or investigated anything and more importantly, I DON'T EVEN FEEL THE URGE TO! This is such a victory to me. I am at peace and moving on and most of the time I'm honestly happy. It is such a relief to have cut this lying, destructive cancer from my life. My dissolution will be final in just a few months and I am so eager to start my new life


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## LongWalk (Apr 4, 2013)

Good for you, Punknhead!

_Posted via *Topify* using iPhone/iPad_


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## punkinhead (Mar 19, 2013)

Well it has been a very long time since I've updated or posted anything and so much has changed. As of today, I am a single woman. I have finally finished the divorce process and I am happier than I've been in years. 

I'm ready to start this new chapter of my life focused on me and my kids! A huge thanks to everyone on this forum for their advice. My only regret is that I didn't ditch his lying, cheating azz years ago


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