is it ok to snoop on husbands texts

[mpi]

my husband has, for various reasons which i understand, has 3 phones, but only uses ones. recently my daughter lost her phone and i asked my husband if she could borrow the oldest of the 2 phones he no longer used. His initial reply was that he did not know where it was, which seemed normal and feasible. so i looked for it and could not find it in the house, although i found the charger. about 1 day later he brought it home from work and said that he had forgotten that he had left it in the car as an emergency telephone. now at this point i thought that seemed odd, since one of us always has a phone with us when in the car in case of emergency...but i didnt consider why this had been said to me. After giving it my daughter to use my husband then kept asking me if everything was okay, that he thought i seemed distant...none of this was true...but combined with the phone appearing and his overdue worrying about me , it made me wonder if the 2 were connected. I accessed the bills on line for the phone and found that he had been texting, during work hour,s a number that i know is not in his or our friendship group, sometimes up to 6 to 7 times a day.
I want to ask him about this, but feel that he would think that i was distrustful and that it would annoy him. however my instincts keep reminding me that something is not adding up.
Shall i try to recover any deleted text messages and see for myself ..or should i ask him who the number is.
ps i have rang the number on several occassions and it just goes to answermachine

The phone not being answered is a red herring, really. It could be that it's not in use anymore. It could be that the owner noticed a strange number had called more than once and has put you on the auto-reject list or just won't answer. It could be that your husband has warned the person that you may find out. The number could be entirely innocent, somehow.

You can spend months searching out "proof". You'll never really know, though, until you ask him. Extra mileage on his car could be innocent. Texting someone frequently could be innocent. Almost anything could be innocent. Equally, it could be a sign of an affair, and your husbands behaviour certainly seems rattled.

I'd just tell him that I know, and ask him if he had anything to say for himself. It seems he is just waiting for the axe to fall, so you may get him to come clean without driving yourself insane looking for things that don't add up, or second guessing everything he says.

If its texts only could it be one of those sex text services ?

if you are snooping you don't trust him
if you don't trust him you don't have a viable relationship anyway

I disagree about the relationship, she only snooped as he started acting weird, it could all be innocent but I would have to find out more as it doesn't quite add up. How recent were the last texts?

The old i need 2 phones
Get hold of the phone and retrieve te messages if you know you way round the computer, it's not hard.
It sounds very very fishy.

I'd be suspicious too tbh...

Keep an eye on it and recover the messages if you can

well my daughter should be getting her replacement phone this weekend....which is where things started flagging up...husband has suggested that it best to destroy the sim card after that so that no one accidentally calls wrong number ...this sounds a ridiculous suggestion for the reason he has given...but one which fits in with he's really concerned about what could be discovered from that sim....so plan is to say that i have destroyed it, which if everything is ok then he wont bat an eyelid that i didnt give it to him to destroy, but then i have it and can find some sort of software to retrieve the messages which were deleted. because frankly it is all pointing to those messages being something he doesnt want me to know about, and even though he is displaying great affection to me at the moment, and if it is what i suspect is true, then i'm guessing he regrets it and fears loosing me....i cant live with the uncertainty.
we have been married less than a year, two times in the past i discovered he had been flirting with women and talking sexually via dating sites, i thought when we were married this would be behind us...but i need to know.
will keep you updated ....any advice re good software programmes for recovery of texts?

It makes even more sense why you would feel suspicious but I am not sure why you would think things would be any different once you were married.

I am not sure if it really matters whether he has done anything or not I think you don't trust him because of his past (and quite rightly so). I now agree with Holly who clearly is much more insightful than me!