# I'm not sure if he cheated



## MisGuided (Jan 13, 2010)

My husband has always been very naturally flirtatious. He never could see this before and I warned him about his easy going behavior around women because they always seem to take it the wrong way. This has happened right in front of me in grocery stores and gas stations. Once in his ignorance he even picked up a hooker because it was raining and he thought she was stranded damsel in distress on the side of the road. He never had a problem talking to any woman about anything, despite flirtation, because he said if any woman tried to make a move on him he would thwart that. I had convinced myself on a couple of different occasions that I was being the jealous wife and needed to get off his back about it. My depression and anxiety had gotten to the point that our family doctor prescribed medication to me (which I never ended up taking because the side effects seemed a bit severe).

Time passed and I just tried to go with the flow and remember what he had told me. Then, in early December, peak season kicked in at the factory he works at and everyone was doing lots of overtime so I saw him much less for about 3 weeks. Then one day he came home smelling like cigarette smoke and I asked him why. He is asthmatic and allergic to smoke so I was concerned when he told me he had been going to the smoking section during breaks and lunch for "fresh air". I argued that it was not fresh air if he was in the smoking section (and especially since in winter there is a tarp over top that caged in area to keep the warmth in, which also keeps in the smoke). He said usually there was no one out there when he went, so he didn't see it as being unhealthy, yet he continued to come home smelling like smoke for 2 weeks.

Then suddenly, two days after adding a new work friend to his MySpace friends list (I'll shorten her name to "M" here), he took an interest in the Joker as portrayed by Heath Ledger. I know this sounds silly, but he is a major comic book fan and he has professed since the release of the last Batman movie how much he could not STAND Heath Ledger's rendition of Joker. So when he almost bought a t-shirt at Walmart that had that particular face on it, it made me think of the tattoo on M's shoulder. As it turns out, she is obsessed with the Heath Ledger Joker. And when I looked at her profile, I discovered she was also a smoker. This sent up a red flag in my brain because he had been hanging out with her a little at work, given her rides to the gas station and Taco Bell at lunch. So I asked him about her and he said it was nothing.

Another week passed and I was increasingly agitated about the whole thing. It sounds bizarre perhaps, but I just kept getting this gut feeling that something was a little off. I really had little to base that on as far as facts go, except for the tidbits he would tell me of work gossip and the women he knew there and so forth. So I wrote an email to one of our mutual friends who works with him. She was very informative and it scared me how right I had been. He was sitting with M at every break and every lunch and even the bosses had noticed there was a fondness between them. And he would go to the smoking section with her. Our mutual friend told me that whenever he wasn't there in the smoking section, M would ask about him and wonder why he wasn't out there despite his asthma. I ended up giving him an ultimatum when he came home that night. He needed to stop with his flirtatious ways, whether they were purposeful or not, if he wanted our relationship to work. He was going to have to put a major foot forward and actually make a change. He was unusually receptive to this idea, and promised he would put his best effort forth. The next day M asked him to take her to the gas station on their lunch break, which he told me proudly that he declined to do. Another day later he came home telling me that M had been fired for being late to work too many times, which made me feel much better about the situation at hand.

The following evening he was scheduled to come home early and met an unwelcome sight. I was very distraught over a MySpace message M had sent to him on her first day unemployed, in which she had addressed him as "hey sexy" and dropped many innuendos. She ended the note with "you'd better keep in touch since you promised me that much" and "xoxoxo". I demanded to know if he was cheating on me. He swore up and down he wasn't, that she had never spoken to him like that before, and that maybe she thought there was something more between them than there really was. Maybe he had unconsciously led her on. Entirely probable. I made him write her back to fend her off. He didn't want to and protested that he could just ignore her and it would never be a problem again, that she was out of his life so why worry. I insisted and he wrote a very unconvincing reply to her message. He claimed he didn't want to hurt her feelings since she had not done anything to hurt him and had just lost her job at Christmas time. She wrote him back and so there were a couple more correspondences between them, one of which mentioned the fact that he had taken her home from work. He had failed to mention this before, had purposefully covered it up because he didn't want to upset me needlessly. Finally he wrote a satisfactory response in which he apologized for leading her on. Her reply to that was less than kind and she brought up that they'd had "makeout sessions" in his car and how he said he was going to divorce me and leave me for her! I found such dialog to be less than convincing because he'd only known her for a few weeks and we have four children together and what I had considered a happy marriage. I did however think it was entirely possible he might have kissed her, so I pressured him about this and he denied it. He told her via MySpace message that he never wanted to speak to her again and then he deleted her from his friends list. 

After the weekend, M's friend at work informed my husband how mad M was at him. He then began to worry she was going to do something to mess with his car in the parking lot at work. So when M's friend suggested at lunch that he speak to her on the phone, he did. He said this was done in the hopes that she would leave his car alone, which thus far she has. Three times between this phone conversation and her firing he had been offered her phone number, and three times he shot it down he told me.

Christmas and New Year's Eve came and went. Though he was no longer conversing with M, I was still stressed about the secret he had kept. I didn't want to think there was maybe more he was keeping from me, but my mind kept going back to that possibility. I bought a self help book. I talked to a couple of close friends. I tried to get over it but I couldn't. I was having nightmares of his infidelity. Finally, I broke down and decided to contact her myself, ask her for her side of the story. It was very likely she would just spout off more lies about what they did, but I was willing to take that risk based on the percentage of a chance that she might be upfront and tell me nothing happened between them. It was a faint hope but it was there. After I told him my plan, he broke down and told me there were other things he had been keeping from me. He had taken her home on another occasion (it happened either the night of or the night before I issued my ultimatum), and she had kissed him. I was very upset and begged to know if he had returned her kiss. He said he hadn't, that she had completely surprised him and he realized too late that he had led her on. 

I'm completely heartbroken at the thought he might still be harboring more secrets. This feels like a pattern. He confessed to me that he took her home the first time and then denied anything further. Each time he confessed truths it was because he was backed into a corner and bound to be caught in his lies! He said he felt he had to protect me from this, to protect our family. If he had just been honest with me to begin with there wouldn't be any lingering doubts in my mind now. How can I trust him after this? I am very depressed and I don't know how to make this horrible feeling go away. Nearly a month of my marriage was consumed in dishonesty. I love him but I'm afraid he's still lying to me. What can I do??


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## java (Jan 15, 2009)

I think you have every right to mistrust him. He has put himself into this situation and never should have been at her house, let alone sharing every break with her, allowing himself to get to know her better and get closer to her. If he went to her house their is a chance more happened. If she is that attached to him after 3 weeks it sounds like something did happen, maybe just a makeout session. But why would she be leavig XO's on his myspace if they weren't on that level of a relationship. Maybe they did just make out...maybe she put the moves on him and he was caught up in the moment and didn't think anyone would find out...so he went with it. Now things are coming to surface and he doesn't want to hurt you so he only tells you the small things. Do you really want to know what happened? Can you forgive him?

You should consider if knowing will allow you to move on? You can corner him and give him another ultimatum and tell him if he doesn't come clean completely you are leaving....and based on her reactions and messages, more had to have happened. If he doesn't want to lose you he will confess...but are you ready for that and can you forgive him?

If you are friendly with M, consider talking to her anyway and not letting him know....or you could use that as leverage again and say you still want her side since you don't believe him. Maybe he will confess....a kiss on a drive home with her being that forward later...just sounds like a lie. You don't get attached to someone over a kiss...there had to be more....emails? time together? or something must have happened. 

I hope I am wrong and I hope you find peace with this. REmember this is something HE did...you did nothing wrong. You just have to decide if it can be forgiven and can you move on. People do it all the time and it takes a long time to have that trust again. 

I wish you the best....hang in there....


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## MisGuided (Jan 13, 2010)

Knowing the truth and knowing whether I have the full truth already would definitely allow me to move on. The only emails they ever sent back and forth were MySpace messages, all of which I saw with his knowledge and as they happened. The only time together they could have had was when they were at work or taking her home. He claims he has no idea which apartment is hers, that he dropped her at the front of the complex by the office each time. But this is yet again something that is just his word. I have no way of knowing that he didn't take her home more than two times. I wish I could read his mind on this! I did forgive him when he told me she kissed him. I forgave him for being stupid and letting it happen and I forgave him for lying to me about it. I just can't get over the situation as fast as he can. He's known for weeks longer than I have and has made his own peace apparently. He understands that it's going to take me longer to heal from this, even if all I'm healing from is lies. It would take me longer to heal if he had responded to her when she kissed him and kissed her back, because that's more than just ignorance to an impending situation, it's being an accessory. He's been extremely loving during this whole thing, and I know he isn't planning on leaving me. I also feel it in my gut that they never had sex. I am certain that in her final crazy and accusatory message to him, she would have thrown sex in his face too if he had done that with her. Gleaning from his past relationships, he has always seemed to attract stalker type girls the most. I really don't think she's going to be friendly with me when/if I do talk to her. It's going to be more of a confrontation of sorts. I am not an unreasonable person, but from what I know of her she is very...shall we say...uncouth. I know I can get over this if I know both sides of the story, I just don't know how honest she is going to be with me. It's more likely she will just try to say hurtful things.

I think perhaps what I need to do is accept the worst case scenario (makeout sessions) as truth and just try to get over that and his lies. And I need to focus on the here and now and future, and not the past and what he may or may not have told me. That's going to be difficult, but maybe if I start there the healing process can begin. And I guess accepting that it the first step.


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## Atholk (Jul 25, 2009)

My hunch is he's basically telling the truth, but he doesn't want to tell you it. He's defintely crossed some lines of yours, and he knows that, so doesn't want to front up about it unless you drag it out of him. He knows he's been stupid.

Speaking as a man, it's really really nice when women hit on you. The flirting can be very fun. You can imagine stuff happening with you and the new woman and it's a rush. Then once you get kissed it stops being a fantasy thought, and the stark reality arrives. Holy crap am I actually going to do this? I think being kissed was his wake up moment. That's when his line was crossed and it sounds like he backed off.

His threshold for "this is wrong" is higher than yours. You're uncomfortable with everything quite quickly, he got very comfortable after the kiss. You are right that she would have thrown the sex in his face in the aftermath. Very likely it never happened.

I suspect your husband has a strong sexual impulse and probably likes a wide variety of sexual experiences. Perhaps you should talk about this together. I suspect he'd love to see you being "less couth" as far as he is concerned. That could be fun to explore together. I don't mean to sound like I'm blaming you for his actions, but there is an element of truth to the thought that if he gets it a home, he doesn't need to go looking for it.


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