Husband tracking

[Stopthepidgeon]

Just tought of a novel way of checking up on my DH - want to run it by you all for possible pitfalls.

Use my iPhone touch - register it on my track my iPhone app and leave it his car? I can track its whereabouts from my iPhone.

Yes - I know, I know, if there's no trust then bail out. We are in the aftermath of my discovering his affair - we are talking things through and he tells me it's over with ow. It's just early days for me.

Just to add, I don't want a moral debate on here as to why I want to track him.

Just want to know if this is a realistic way of doing it.

Thanks in advance.

*Dame8 - NEVER on this thread have I felt anyone is trying to do anything but help.

I am in no way offended.

The OP might be. But I am not.

And honestly as a lot of us have been in similar situations really truly there would be nothing we would wish for more than that he would be able to turn around this stuff and stop doing it and you would sail off into the sunset happy forever. The problem with this is that the power someone gets from abusing someone else is difficult to give up. If he can change, knowing that he can do it to you without consequences, means he's unlikely to maintain not doing it. So, whilst I believe that people who are committed to changing may well be able to do it with work, I don't think they can ever be with someone they have previously abused - the risk is too great and potentially ruins both lives.

And it doesn't need to be leaving, divorcing, going to a refuge or nothing at all. Freedom begins in the mind. That's the most useful tool I've ever learned anyone can do anything to my body but nobody can have my mind without my permission. The most important lesson I've learned is that regaining control from an abuser is dangerous but something people can support you with.

All I can say is don't do it. I have found myself google-ing spyware and private detectives at 3 o'clock on a Wednesday morning. Only Madness This Way Lies.

Hi - I'm the OP / I just wanted to say that in no way am I offended as to how this thread has generated. If someone benefits from this then all well and good.

pointtopoint: Have you ever considered that your DH's 'trust issues' are not sincere, but merely a pretext for him to fulfill a need to control you?

hello, OP

I am sorry to ignore you. That wasn't my intention. You got some good advice on your thread. I think you will gain more, even with the derail.

It's not the kind of life anyone would aspire to, is it ?

Hi Any is truely is not. I don't feel ignored at all - and yes plenty of good advice.

IT truly is not - as in life one would choose.

Point I sympathise. What you have written sounds just like my life (especially the deleted texts bit) and i'm sure my dh will too read this.

There are good times when i'm behaving and not talking to anybody at all. But a few weeks ago I dared to comment on a facebook status of a friend and obviously that meant I was shagging him or I wanted to.

It really is soul destroying but my oh knows how badly it messing with my head. He says he cares and doesn't want to be like that but i'm not so sure.

pointtopoint I have rarely been so shocked at posts on MN - been on this forum five and a half years - as I have been by yours.

Please, please for your children's sake, get that abusive, controlling excuse for a man out of your life. Your children will be taking this in, they will see it as 'normal' because it is all they have seen in the way of adult relationships. They will replicate it in their adult lives. Is that what you want? I don't think it is.

You say you don't want to give up on your marriage, that you married for life. Actually, you don't have a marriage. Marriage is a partnership, a sharing of your life with his life and vice versa, caring for each other, supporting each other. You don't have that, so really, you don't have a marriage. It ended long ago. All that remains is paperwork to get it finalised.

You say that you don't want the children in his sole care. He is abusive, not just to you but to his children because he is failing in his duty as a father to provide them with a stable family life, a good role model. He can't cope with them for longer than half an hour. You need to make people aware of this - GP, health visitor, social services, Sure Start, Women's Aid. Basically anyone and everyone. He should then have supervised contact with the children until such time (if ever) it is deemed that he is ok to have unsupervised contact.

Please don't subject yourself or your children to this miserable existence any longer.

Women's Aid contact details

".........Oh, should I mention that the only one of us to cheat within marriage is him????????????? No, I probably shouldn't......"

What, so he's cheated on your marriage and now he's got a problem with trusting you?

OP hope you're doing ok today.

pointtopoint hope you are too.

Look: could everyone pontificating about the awfulness of tracking an errant husband - if your H has never had an affair, you are NOT qualified to comment. Sorry, but you aren't. You are applying normal relationship behaviour, to an abnormal, destructive time and you are compounding the betrayed person's hurt.

Why this is NOT a normal situation, is that people having affairs are addicts. They lie, they destroy anything and anyone in order to get their supply (OW). They do not care who they hurt. It is very, very hard to give up an affair. The lies are appalling. Many a man who has sworn it has ended, is found out having not ended it. This triples the already unbearable agony. So the OP in this DESTRUCTIVE abnormal situation is actually protecting herself for checking he is saying/doing what he says he is. Should he be truthful, it will actually calm down her traumatic hypervigilance and help her know he IS telling the truth and she CAN trust him. If he is not... well, she can take steps to protect herself.

PTP, that was not aimed at you by the way. It was a comment on applying 'normal' to 'abnormal'.

Your husband is abusive. He cheated on you? That is an act of abuse as well.

I also struggle with divorce, but, after a while, one's need to be at peace starts to prevail. I am also told that however nice he is to the children, they are harmed by witnessing the lack of respect. The courts will protect you.

Funnily enough, they aren't interested in his rules. Their rules about what is fair trump his.

Actually I HAVE been in that situation- and it really really isn't worth it. It's demeaning, time wasting, produces even more anxiety and at the end of it- what's the fucking prize??? A man who'll only be with you if you track him everywhere and prevent him from spending more than five minutes alone or with a woman otherwise he'll be off fucking someone else?

I've been in that situation too, please don't assume that people who are against stalking their partners are people who've never been cheated on.

I'm not sure you are qualified to comment really ABWN now you're at it, given your situation is very messed up still and you are still unhappy. No-one has said it isn't tempting to do it or a normal reaction but it isn't productive as mardy describes absolutely perfectly.

"I'm not sure you are qualified to comment really ABWN now you're at it, given your situation is very messed up still and you are still unhappy"

I don't know this poster (or her situation for that matter), but that's a deeply unpleasant comment.

Point - what you have told us is very fucked up, that is not a marriage and that is not a family life

Op - I wouldn't bother tracking him, your H will cheat again if he really wants to. The only way he can stop cheating is to work on himself - you can't control or cure him. I would expect him to offer full transparency if he is committed to helping you recover and regain trust.

Poppy it was a response to ABWN's post discrediting other posters unfairly and when someone is parading themself as the authority on something, discrediting other people and when actually they are giving what can be quite damaging advice based on a quite damaged situation it's quite necessary to point that out I think. That's why I did.

Point It saddens me that I fear I may be reading about you in the news one day.

Could you speak to a trusted religious leader?
Could you make a phone call to Women's Aid from a phone box?

Being a little more assertive doesn't have to end in divorce.
I realise this is difficult for you.

Are you able to post on here safely?

OP Sorry for the not answering your question, but I guess the mobile in car trick might work.

Oh point :( This isn't a man in fear of his wife cheating on him. This is an abusive arsehole who is keeping you in your place. If you're reading this, Mr. Point, shame on you.

Offred can be very unpleasant Poppy, thank you for that.

Offred can you not just finesse a little? Just a little? Point was commenting on s/thing and quickly segued into her own very valid distress. So there is in fact a double thread going on here , probably because Point needs to hide in someone else's topic for her own sake.

The original OP - tracking IMO is very reasonable right now. Many a women has discovered to their trauma, continued lying. Sorry if that opinion is too 'disturbed' for you.