DH has hours of calls logged to a number I don't recognise

[livingontheedgeee]

So, we use a phone provider where you pay for a monthly contract then need to add credit for things like calling overseas, dialling non-standard numbers etc. Normally DH and I keep £10 extra credit on just in case.
Last night, DH ran me as he's working away and asked me to top it up for him (he's completely technophobic).Normally I'd just log into the app on my phone but I was sitting at the computer at the time so I logged onto his online phone account to do it from there.

Right there, on the front page, it gave the top 5 numbers he calls with the number of hours associated with each number. One number he'd spoken to for 364 hours over the course of a month! Checking further (of course) he'd also sent 13 MMS to the same number meaning he's sending picture messages too.

Now he does use his phone a lot if he has to speak to clients and there are some clients he calls regularly but looking at the other calls, none of them are more than 10 hours across the whole month.

So, I went to his phone contacts list and lo and behold, here's the number assigned to some woman who I've never heard of.

I want to confront him but neither do I want to look stupid. He's never given me any reason to think he's messing about. Except perhaps he doesn't call me every day like he used to. Sometimes he goes two or three days without a call. This is the only change in his behaviour but thought it was on the back of me saying he needn't feel obliged to call every night.

Question is, do I call this number? Or do I ask him outright? Do I let it ride and see if he continues to call her?

What ever happened to love trust and respect? If you finds out you are 'snooping' through his phone records, spying on him and trying to modify his contacts to receive his messages, at best he'll think you're nuts at worst he'll divorce you and take you to the cops.
Have you tried actually speaking to him? Or is his tried and convicted just because he's a man?

If someone has a phone running Microsoft and they also have an outlook or hotmail account, the phone and email account share contacts and the calendar. It allows you to add new contacts either from the email account or the phone. Just the same with google on android.

Ask him, it might just be a new client who needs lots of TLC or it might be another woman in which case you need to re-evaluate your marriage. Either way trust has become a serious issue due to this.

@Heliophilous and @mumpoints
The way Microsoft Windows phones works allows you to sign in on a PC with your windows account which allows you to see your address book and phone numbers. Its all linked. So any changes made to the address book from any device or PC will all update at once.

OP has changed the woman's contact in his address books to her work mobile number. It will still show as the woman's name in his phone and if OP texts him from her work phone it will show up as the OW's name. But any replies he sends will go to her work mob instead of the OW's phone.

I'm assuming that if he now tries to continue the conversation with the woman and goes into the conversation on messages and texts her, the message will be delivered to OP's work mobile.

Like if I've got a friend called Sarah and she says to me that she's changed her number. So I go into my phone and edit the contact to Sarah's new number. My message history to Sarah is still all there and I can still continue in the same message thread if I want to text her. It'll just be delivered to her new number.

I'm not condoning it, as I still think its a bad idea.
Just wanted to try and clear up some of the technical questions people were confused on.

I wouldn't worry too much about the legality of it all. If this guy loves his wife he won't go to the police because she's been messing around with his phone. And if he doesn't love her and is preparing to leave (just as an example) he might be quite relieved to be found out.

I can't think of a scenario where he would think it would be a good idea to report her to the police?

ChutneyNose
Wouldn't make any difference whether he was my husband or my wife. I wasn't snooping through anything. I have access to his email account because I have to prepare documents and invoices on his behalf. He wouldn't even know where to start.
I do ask myself the same question though. What ever happened to love and respect.

If it IS untoward, its likely he doesn't keep the thread of messages so what you've done could potentially work. How did it come about that he's staying near hers but you know his jobs aren't there? Presumably you only checked this out since all of this occurred? Also if he is near her then I guess he could potentially be staying with her and theeefore no texts or calls will occur until he has left/is home?

But won't it show that a change has been made? I get notifications about stuff all the time, signing on from another device etc. Will the contact be told that she has been deleted or blocked? What shows up her end?

Sorry op if i upset you by suggesting you just ask. I have been cheated on before i found out through phone bills and bank statements and its not nice at all! You have my complete sympathy i remember all to well the gut wrenching feeling and id never wish that on anyone honestly all i meant by asking out right is that you hopefully if its innocent wont have to suffer in this way until he comes home xx

You may as well just hold your nerve at least until he's home a few days and see what happens. If he does notice something odd on his phone he may be wary of using it and suspicious. Give him some time to forget about it.

And of course there could be an innocent explanation. I hope there is!

I can understand why the OP is suspicious and I feel for her. However, I don't think she's going about things in the right way. I think changing numbers, in particular, is wrong. Obviously, if it turns out he has cheated, then it's a moot point. But if he's innocent? I think it shows greater problems in the relationship TBH. Snooping isn't always justified because you have a suspicion, in my opinion.

I have been accused of having an affair by an ex-partner. I wasn't and was profoundly hurt that he had been snooping (through my mail, my phone and so on- only thing he hadn't accessed secretly was FB and work phone/email). He then demanded to see my work phone and emails to "prove" I wasn't cheating. I declined- not because I was having an affair. But because, frankly, I wasn't interested in having a relationship with someone who didn't trust me, basically called me a liar (didn't believe me when I said I wasn't having an affair) and had breached my privacy by snooping through my correspondence. I don't think his being suspicious justified any of what he did. And actually, looking back I can see why he was suspicious, although I think it was something of a stretch and some keenness to jump to a conclusion- more like he put 2+2 together and got 5 rather than 4.

So if OPs husband balks at showing his phone if OP asked, it may not be because he has something to hide. Of course, he may be guilty. I can see where the suspicion has come from, but I don't think it can be said he is definitely guilty either.

OP- if I found out my DH has done what you have done our marriage would most likely be over as I don' think I could forgive him. So if you do carry this through, be aware of what you are risking. You may decide the risk is worth it.

@mumpoints
I don't think so, not for something like an address book change.
But if OP has a Windows phone she can always test it by doing the same on her own address book.

Mine will notify me if my account has signed in on a new device. But there's no way of seeing if my account is currently being signed into on an existing device. If the account has been used on the PC in the past then he won't get the notification.

The issue really is if the woman texts him first, it'll show up as a message from an unknown sender on his phone as the OW's contact no longer has that number in it.

I think it's a potentially risky thing you've done, given that this might still be innocent. That said, I can understand your need for concrete answers. Hopefully you won't have to wait long for a result.

Well you could speed it along. Text him as her contact and say nothing more than "hi, text me" He will text back.

If my DH did this to me, knowing I'm not great with technology he probably could, I'm not sure how I would be able to move past it. Our relationship would never be the same.
In your place, I would like to think I would be able to speak to him and would know by his response if he was telling the truth.
I think there must be issues in your marriage aside to this for you to react like this.

The phone number connected to facebook does not mean that that is where the contact is. My sister is in the States right now, nowhere near her home address. My brother's facebook says he lives in a place he hasn't lived in for five years.

Is it an average of 12 minutes a day that this is about? If so, couldn't it just be someone from work?

I've been with my DH for twenty years and if he checked up on me I wouldn't give a shit. I'd feel pretty awful if he felt he had to.

I'm assuming that if he now tries to continue the conversation with the woman and goes into the conversation on messages and texts her, the message will be delivered to OP's work mobile.

You see, I think this might not work. I think it might go to the sender of the previous messages. Can anyone try it and find out? I don't have a Windows phone or I would test.

Well you could speed it along. Text him as her contact and say nothing more than "hi, text me" He will text back.

What if he's with her? He can just text back something like "Hi, is this about the materials on the blah blah, I'll find out about the project and call you back!"

Well I said it before and will say it again it’s an offence to change numbers to another adults phone without their knowledge. It can ge seen as controlling and cooercive behaviour and if he is up to no good it’s handing him a smoking gun.

By all means check the phone records snd bank statements and then wait until he gets home snd ask him!

Well you could speed it along. Text him as her contact and say nothing more than "hi, text me" He will text back.

What if it is work related? No one would ever text "Hi text me" if it were work!

I agree it’s likely he will still have the thread of messages. He’s away so I don’t see why he’d delete them? Can you see when the last message was sent? If it was quite a while ago (so it would be quite a way down on his messages) I would text him first. But then he’ll eventually find out what you’ve done, so it depends on how you think he’ll react when he finds out (assuming it is innocent).

And to be honest if it is all innocent I would end a professional relationship if I thought my builders wife was intercepting my calls like this.It would unsettle me. Tred carefully op.

What if he's actually with her though and one of the gets a text saying it's from the other?

Fingers crossed there's an innocent explanation.