# Wife's Past- Trust issues



## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

Recently I discovered messages on my wife's old facebook account between herself and her married boss (who she always talked about extremely negatively). The messages were them meeting for sex. This sex happened several time, about six years ago, right before her and I got together. My wife and I met and got together in Iraq. I found a message she sent to him while I was home on leave, saying that she wanted to go drinking with him when she got home. We were in the reserves, and when we got home (and got engaged) she was still in his unit. She says nothing else happened, and I have no evidence that anything did. I still feel enormously betrayed, sick to my stomach and am having trouble concentrating on things. She has displayed some behaviors that I thought were deceptive- immediately deleting the messages and closing the account, and claiming not to remember the message about getting together after deployment. I am going to call a counselor tomorrow. We have two kids, and I love her so much it hurts, but this whole thing is making me sick. I want to believe her and move on, but I am really struggling with this. Any thoughts or advice are greatly appreciated.


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## sammy7111 (Apr 19, 2014)

make sure this are old messages if there not you got so problems coming


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## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

For sure old messages.


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## See_Listen_Love (Jun 28, 2012)

OP, you have to dig out this problem, otherwise the doubt and mistrust will kill your relation anyway.

Can you give a more specific timeline with all the relevant events you remember?


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## aubreyg (Dec 18, 2013)

Hey there.

I have had a similar problem with my partner. I found messages that I thought were evidence of him having an affair, but it turned out that I had overthought the whole situation completely. I became almost obsessed with the thought of him having an affair and made up all sorts of possible scenarios in my head that I thought he might be up to! It lead to me being extremely jealous of everything, and being untrustful and not a good person to be around.
I think the thing with these types of situations is that you need to make sure that you don't become obsessed with thinking about it and making up situations and stories in your head. Its ok to be concerned, but bring it up with your partner, talk through it and share how you feel about it. And after you've discussed it then let it go. Repeating the same argument or conversation about some messages will just push your partner away and make her feel as though you don't trust her. 
If you still can't move on with this issue then maybe its a good idea to talk to a councillor about it and find some ways to help you move on and look towards the future, not the past.

I hope this helped a little bit, 

A


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## DoF (Mar 27, 2014)

OP, 

You made a HUGE mistake. 

Your wife's dating/relationship history should be something that's completely off limits. 

Why you might ask? Because it has NOTHING to do with you AT ALL. Whatever happens before you 2 got together is irrelevent and worthless.

NOW that you found stuff, yes you will feel like complete crap. You did this to YOURSELF!!!

It's no different than asking your wife and demanding her history. NOTHING good can come of that, trust me.

You DO NOT want to ask or know, OR be prepared to feel the way you do.

You owe your wife an appology!!! Make sure she knows that you made a mistke searching for her past and tell her that it's none of your business what she did before you 2 were together.

Leave it at that.

As for your feelings, I've been there. When they creep up into your brain, you deflect them and don't think about ANY of it.

Keep reminding yourself about "Everything before us is irrelevant".

Best advice I can give you.


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## harrybrown (May 22, 2013)

Tell her you would like to get this resolved and over and done.

Have her take a polygraph, so she can prove her innocence to you. Tell her it will clear the air so that you can move on and begin to enjoy life with her and your kids again. 

Ask her to let you get copies of the emails from the email provider.
Then also find out if the OM has a wife. Tell her you want to get this out of your life. Get the contact with the OM. Find out when her last contact was with the OM.

She love you, right? She wants to clear the air and show that you are not her backup plan.

Hope things go better for you.


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## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

Alrighty- all the folks who keep saying this is none of my business, please refer to my original post. She had a message to him stating she wanted to go drinking with him when she got home, which is also when we got engaged. Beating me up about this is not constructive, and if you think it is none of my business I ask you to remove yourself from the conversation. So....DoF- your advice is based on inaccurate assumptions, is unwanted and unneeded. Timeline- Sep 28, 2007, they met at her friends house and had sex (he was married). January 28, 2008, she says she wants to meet him and go drinking when we got back from iraq (we had been together for a few weeks). There were several other back and forth, not sinister exchanges when we got back, with one in June of '09 with her saying he could text her, presumably about work, but with the history between the two who knows. We have been to talk to a counselor, but this is still hard to handle.


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## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

harrybrown said:


> Tell her you would like to get this resolved and over and done.
> 
> Have her take a polygraph, so she can prove her innocence to you. Tell her it will clear the air so that you can move on and begin to enjoy life with her and your kids again.
> 
> ...


I like this course of action- I just doubt he will have any electronic evidence, it may just be he said she said.


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## Fordsvt (Dec 24, 2010)

Just download the Facebook Data from that account. It will give you the dates of those Msg's. Be smart and investigate before accusing her of anything.


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## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

It was an old account she reactivated to get some pictures from. She told me to go on it and get any pictures I wanted, and look at our old messages (courting stuff) and gave me the password. I saw her messages to him when I went to look at our old messages. When I confronted her, she deleted the entire conversation and closed the account again.


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## Fordsvt (Dec 24, 2010)

Well. How convenient of her to do that. Ask her to re-open the account.
What is she hiding? Did you not save the conversation to MS Word or something first???


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## Machiavelli (Feb 25, 2012)

Poly


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## lenzi (Apr 10, 2012)

JB3 said:


> She had a message to him stating she wanted to go drinking with him when she got home, which is also when we got engaged.
> 
> she says she wants to meet him and go drinking when we got back from iraq (we had been together for a few weeks).


This part I don't understand. 

It seems that you got engaged a few weeks after you met. Is that right? Not that it really changes anything about it all being in the past..

Too bad you tipped her off, now any evidence has been destroyed. 

If she was hiding something, she wouldn't have been so quick to give you access to that old FB account. She probably forgot all about those messages because they were meaningless.

If you were in fact engaged, and she did message him about going out drinking when you were together a few weeks, and she didn't ask you first, then I view this as a minor forgivable transgression but you really need to let it go. It was in the very beginning of the relationship, many years ago. The only issue I see is that she was not honest with you regarding their past sexual history. She is perhaps guilty only of "omission of past events" and while I wouldn't be thrilled if I was in your position, it wouldn't be a major issue. There's no rule that we have to "tell all" to our current relationship partners. The past.. is the past. A private matter that may or may not be shared. 

Unless you've got something recent then you're just going to have to accept there's nothing more there and this entire thing is old news and as others have not so gently suggested, for the most part, none of your concern.

This whole thing about demanding a polygraph test, and contacting the OMs relationship partner, and getting copies of emails.. is way over the top. If I was her I'd be furious at having to defend myself over something that, in reality, is no business of yours.


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## manfromlamancha (Jul 4, 2013)

OK three things stand out here:


First of all, your wife is a person of very low morals if she had an affair with a married man (where kids were involved I believe). So not a good person to marry. If she had told you this at the start, would you have married her. As such, I disagree with those who say that her past was not your business and you should not ask her about it. I would be severely pi$$ed off if she conned me into thinking she was a good person to marry. Never marry a cheater!

Secondly, she still tried to get together with him - if she slept with him when he was married why wouldn't he return the favour ? And she tried to downplay it with you - disrespectful to say the least. Her character is getting worse by the minute!

She is a liar and is deceitful. She deleted the FB message exchange when you found it and then re-deleted the FB account. Why could she not be open about it if she thought there was nothing wrong with it. See what I mean about character getting worse by the minute.

OK, I know that you say you love her and this is probably hard for you to hear, but she is not a good person. Just because you have kids with her is not going to make her a better person. Be prepared for the worst.

Explain your feelings to her and watch to see her understanding and acceptance of her wrong-doings and then her actions of remorse. If you do not see this, this is not the woman to spending the rest of your (one and only) life with.


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## lenzi (Apr 10, 2012)

^ Ok, then again the counter argument makes a lot of sense too.

Her history and actions of deleting the messages and account do not put her in a good light. 

You're going to either have to let it go or blow the whole thing wide open. 

Good luck man.


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## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

Thanks all. There are even more twists and turns to this- she was an officer in the military, and he was a superior officer in her chain of command. Both that, and adultery are both crimes under the UCMJ. Also, she was evidently banging and enlisted Soldier when she was stateside. I know that you are all thinking, because I think the same at times- what a *****. However, after speaking with her at length, many tears and some anger, I think we are getting to the bottom of it. She went through a few years after a nasty breakup where she pretty much did whatever she wanted, coupled with a miserable home life (bad parents), she kind of lost herself for a while. It is so painful for her to even acknowledge that time in her life that she hasnt shared all of her bad decisions from that time with anyone, even her closest friends. She said she saw me as a fresh start, and that my affect on her was to bring her out of that "lost" time and back to the person she should have been. I believe this. If a woman feels like she lacks worth, sometimes she tries to fix that worthless feeling and tries to feel valued through sexual intimacy, which leads to a downward spiral. As long as pretty girl is looking for **** to fix her problems, someone is going to give it to her. I am not going to pretend it doesnt hurt, because I thought she had a few rough patches, but didnt think she was near that far gone. The fact is that NOW she is a beautiful, smart, hard working woman and a great mother, (trust me, I know- my first wife was the opposite of all this). We are going to counseling separately, and hopefully I can learn how to better deal with this, (because it is a bitter pill), and she can get right with her past too.


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## Thor (Oct 31, 2011)

JB, I think you should search on TAM for an article about what real remorse and real reconciliation looks like. It is written in terms of a cheater, but the basic concepts apply to your situation I believe. I think it is termed something like False Reconciliation vs Real Reconciliation.

The issue seems to be that she may have had sex with this guy while you were dating her, plus she has a history which is different than she represented to you before marriage. The first is cheating perhaps, depending on the details such as if you were exclusive at the time. The second is a trustworthiness issue. Can she be trusted today?

True remorse and reconciliation means that she is open and honest with you about what happened. She does not hide information from you. She answers your questions.

On your side of things, you have to try to not blame and shame her. Try to work through in your mind how the context of the situation played into her behavior. She was single, so having some sex is normal. Coming out of some difficult past experiences may have played a part in how she was viewing things. In some ways her behavior may have been a key part in overcoming those difficult past events.

It may be that the real issue for you emotionally is the surprise finding out the way you did, plus the discovery that she had deceived you about her past. Thus you may be questioning her character and questioning whether you can trust her.

You have to relearn to trust her. My biggest recommendation is to trust your gut about who she is. You have years of observing her and you know who she is today. Her past mistakes or past actions may not be who she really was even back then. If you feel in your gut that she is a good person and she is loyal to you and the family, then your gut is almost certainly correct.

Writing seems to be a very healing way to process things. Take time to write regularly. If you start getting all upset, either write about it immediately or tell yourself to stop thinking about it now and write about it later. You can even set up a regular time every day to write, and then when you have thoughts or worries during the day just jot down a brief note to remind you what to write about later at your designated time.


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## Thor (Oct 31, 2011)

Someone touched on this before briefly. You can download the entire history from Facebook. She has to re-activate the account. Then somewhere in the control panel there is an option to download the entire history. FB sends everything to her email account.

This will give you every message she ever sent or received.

If you have worries she is still hiding information and is acting deceptive with you, it may be worth getting the history. But if you are confident you have the whole truth about who/when she was involved with, it might be better not to retrieve the history. You don't need all the gory details if you already know she had sexual relationships with those people.

If you're having mind movies then you need to work on that issue yourself, possibly discuss it some with her, but don't get the FB history.


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## JB3 (May 6, 2014)

Thor- I think I am good with her explanation. Some of the things that looked mighty shady (I am a police officer, so these things stand out) had good explanations that made sense to me. I think where we are at now is her working through the "why" of her rough few years, and making peace with it. Right now it feels like she wanted to cut it out of her life like a tumor. Clearly that is not very possible. I think she will be able to move forward a better, stronger person once she is able to make peace with it.


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## Tobyboy (Jun 13, 2013)

JB3 said:


> Thor- I think I am good with her explanation. Some of the things that looked mighty shady (I am a police officer, so these things stand out) had good explanations that made sense to me. I think where we are at now is her working through the "why" of her rough few years, and making peace with it. Right now it feels like she wanted to cut it out of her life like a tumor. Clearly that is not very possible. I think she will be able to move forward a better, stronger person once she is able to make peace with it.


But....she didn't cut him out her life!!! She continued to pursue him for more than a year into your relationship. Through facebook...non the less!!!

I bet her old phone still has all the old text massages during that period.


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## 6301 (May 11, 2013)

What bothers me is why she suddenly shut down the site. If there was nothing to hide, then it should have stayed there. 

Like the others, I say get her to take polygraph test and if she tells you no, then you know that there's more to this than meets the eye.


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