Husband has emails from Match.com

[CluelesslyCurious]

Hi all, have name changed for this one as quite frankly it’s embarrassing! For the sake of this thread I will refer to husband as “DH” although he’s far from that.

Was getting the DC ready for school yesterday when DD handed me DH’s phone. I was reaching to put it on the bedside table and happened to glance down at the screen and see that he had an email from Match.com. Just for context I’ve never looked through his phone or felt the need to. Immediately my heart began to race for reasons that are obvious!

I waited until he had come back from dropping the kids off and confronted him about it. He acted confused and said “I don’t know why would I be on match.com? It’s a spam email.” I told him to pass me his phone so I could see if it was just spam as I feel I was entitled to look to see if what he was saying was true. I typed in “Match.com” in the search bar of his emails so I could scroll through.

There were lots of emails, most of them unopened but they all mentioned him by NAME! For example, Hi , you have two profile views. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I clicked on the link and it did in fact take me to the match.com login page. I told him to login and he claimed there’s nothing for him to login to. I continued to scroll through the emails in an attempt to find a potential email that would show if he had signed up but couldn’t find anything.

May I add whilst I was doing this he was berating me calling me “insecure” and “crazy” although I hadn’t gone fishing for anything nor suspected him of such a thing up until I happened to see the email. I feel I had the right to look as his wife because if I had emails from a dating website I am pretty sure he would have something to say. I felt like I was being gaslighted. As I had somewhere to be I left it at that and as for now he thinks I believe his version of events but I have a horrible feeling in my gut that there is so much more to uncover.

Wise users of Mumsnet please give me some advice! Am I crazy?

Doesn't Match cost money? Wouldn't most men looking for a sleazy affair go to a free site?

“Me thinks he doth protest too much” is a saying for a reason (thank you Shakespeare). I’m always very suspicious when someone becomes aggressively defensive about something.

I personally wouldn't jump to conclusions. A friends or work colleague could have signed him up as a prank, someone could have accidentally typed the wrong email. The fact that they are unopened shows he is not interested in the content of them.

I don't believe there's enough to go on here.

do you think he’s gaslighted you before? Have you worried he was cheating before? Has he ever reacted like that before in response to something different and you later found out you were right?

If his email address includes his name, it’s perfectly possible that this is spam, even though it used his name directly. My late DH’s email address was (for example) biker1972 and he used to get spam emails for dating sites addressed “Dear Biker” all the time.

Search by age and area

His email address uses the formal spelling of his name and the name the match.com email used was a less formal spelling which leads me to believe that was the name given when the profile was created. Doesn’t seem like spam at all. I think it’s past the point of trying to prove if he had signed up or not.

I have had spam emails from match.com and I have never had an account with them. I assume they were scams though and just deleted them.

Now that this has happened it reminds me of something I noticed a few months back. I had noticed that when he was spending time with me in the evening when the kids were asleep, his phone was put on aeroplane mode. That’s not something he’s ever done before. I was really naive then because I didn’t really suspect anything and it was just an observation I had made. It could be nothing but it could also be something…

I know Mumsnet has quite a strong opinion on people who go looking through peoples phones but at this point I feel it necessary because if something is going on I would rather know than drive myself insane just wondering.

Why not ask him to forward you one of the emails?

What a wanker.

The airplane thing is very very weird. At this point I would be demanding his phone and locking myself in the bathroom to do the password reset and know for sure what’s going on, but I’m crazy and wouldn’t be able to live to sleep if I was in your current shoes without knowing

I think at this point if I demand the phone he could just refuse if he is hiding anything else. I have behaved quite normally after yesterday so I’m hoping he hasn’t thought of deleting anything at this point. I think I will choose a moment where I can look without him knowing, will screenshot anything and send it to my phone before he has the chance to deny it.

Sorry you're going through this. It gives such a horrible feeling 😔

I'd say by now he's deleted anything you could possible find - especially as you (rightly) took his phone yesterday.

If you get chance to look through it, don't be surprised if you don't find anything.

Also - the airplane mode is a huge 🚩

This happened to me! I kept getting emails to my name saying women had been looking at my profile (and I'm a straight woman). I've never signed up.

I tried logging in but it kept failing - eventually I found out our internet had some security settings on it which meant dating sites didn't work!!! Anyway before I realised this I contacted the match help email address and they said they couldn't help because it was the American site. Eventually I found the details of the American help email address and they sorted it for me.

Basically someone must have set up the profile but I never got a chance to see the profile and have no idea why it was done! I'll see if I can find a copy of the message from Match after they had sorted it out.

The same happened to my (ex) "D"H a few years ago ... I didnt believe his excuses, but I didn't act on my suspicions.
Wish I had, could have saved myself a few miserable years.

Glad to hear his is an ex husband and you did eventually come to your senses! 💪🏼

Here you go! A screenshot of their email to me - I've scrubbed out my email address

I also meant to say that if you think he suspects that you don't believe him then make sure he can't see all these messages on here. He may take a look at your phone just to see what you have been looking at☺

@ShirleyValentin3 yes, would definitely describe it as an uneasy feeling. I haven’t been able to concentrate properly all day.

His actions when you asked him to hand over his phone would he told you everything. If I had an old Match email show up (my wife and I met on Match), and she asked me to show her, I'd say sure, it's probably a spam email, but wouldn't really hesitate.

If he was nervous and didn't help, or tried to justify messages etc, not great. I'd ask for a quick look at his WhatsApp or whatever the kids are using these days. You'll know very quickly the names you don't recognise and even from the home screen you'll see obvious messages, questions, pictures etc.

As I said, there's a chance it could be an ego thing, an old account etc, or pure morbid curiosity, so don't lose all faith. Truth be told, I actually created a fake account a month ago due to Mumsnet out of curiosity... the vibe I was getting here was that most 'good ones' end up being married by mid 30 so I had a look... couldn't get put of there quick enough! Zero intention, would have done it with the wife watching had she been there! Kinda like looking up exes on FB... you want to see the train wreck more than anything.

That is interesting… if he hadn’t responded so angrily I would have put it down to this.

Yes I can see why you're unsure because of his response.

I actually told my husband when I first saw the emails as it made me panicky!!

But I don't know what I'd have done if he'd seen them and then asked me about them..would I have got defensive or not, I honestly don't know.

I hope you get to the bottom of it x

Definitely spam! I get them telling me hot ladies have looked at my profile!
I'm a woman and not into women...