Shall I confront DH about his googling?

[NomenMutante]

Have name changed for this, as my "D"H knows my posting name.

He has a number of friends and acquaintances that he has met through a hobby of his. He recently mentioned to me that one of these is a woman who is a burlesque dancer. Not too sure what one of these is really, so I didn't think anything of it.

Then I was using our laptop today and he had left a page open with details of this woman and some performance she had done. I looked at the browsing history and he had been googling her name and following various links with pictures of her, reviews of her shows etc. Some of the pictures, whilst not pornographic, were of the more exotic nature, eg, tassles on nipples kind of thing.

He then came in and he could see that I would have seen the page he left open. He looked a bit shifty. I just left it open and carried on doing the online shopping that I was doing. I decided to not say anything. Then later in the day, I looked at the browsing history and he had been looking at the same sites again.

I'm feeling very sad. He obviously has a thing for this woman. I am torn between asking him about it and telling him how hurt I am or just keeping quiet to see if I can "catch" him out chasing after her somehow. He is obviously a bit stupid about covering his tracks and I don't want to just put him on guard. But I don't know if I've got the fight in me for this. Things haven't been brilliant between us lately, and it seems he is looking elsewhere. We've been together 20+ years and have 3 DCs.

Any advice please?

If I knew someone like that I would Google the shit out of them! Then again if anyone read my entire Google history they would find all sorts of odd stuff over the years and I'm sure they could make up all sorts of things about me!

It sounds to me that he is just being curious to be honest. He told you about her, what she does, and never tried to hide his browsing history (even after he realised you must have seen it).

Why don't you just mention it in a 'by the way' kind of way, so you don't sound jealous, but he knows you know -and are aware.

"Oh, I saw the pictures of the burlesque lady when doing the online shopping. I guess that's the friend you mentioned? What do you think about her other hobby then?" (with a little laugh if you can so he thinks you find it amusing rather than threatening).

By getting this out in the open in a relaxed way, you get the "naughtiness" of looking at the pictures in secret out of the equation, and the whole thing might then become less interesting to him.

Yes I must admit that looking at google history certainly could cause anxiety where none is warranted.

If he googled her once I wouldn't be bothered, it's the fact he keeps doing it together with the fact he sees her and has mentoned her.

The amount of wired sexual practices I have googled on the advice of mn could make me look abut weird if anyone checked my google history. :)

Pearla - no I am pretty sure it wasn't my google history but was him visiting again.

It's a good point everyone makes about googling though. I have googled quite a few dodgy things in my time. Wouldn't like to be accused of anything on that basis.

Anyway I spoke to him. He said he was curious, fascinated by this woman and her unusual occupation. He said he was sorry and it must have looked bad. I can see that I overreacted. It shows that I don't trust him so I jump to conclusions. We will probably talk more later.