Trying to hold it together but screaming inside!

[Missesbumble]

I don't really know where to start, but I'll try to be as clear as possible.

I think DH is up to something but I've no idea what, it's driving me insane that I know there's something not right but can't find any real proof.

Basically DH spends a lot of time on his iPad, chatting on hobby forums, gaming etc but nothing untoward on his browsing history. However, his phone bill tells a different story. I'd suspected something was amiss a year or so ago and since DH has online billing I couldn't check his phone records. It all began over me asking could I use his phone because mine had died and he got all possessive over it. Kept telling me mine would be charged enough to use soon, he didn't want me breaking his yadda yadda. I got a bit pissed off by his response and asked what his problem was, had he something to hide. He got all defensive on me and began arguing shifting it all on to me and accusing me of being paranoid.

He eventually let me use his phone but the seed of doubt had been planted. I asked to see his bills and after him trying to blow me off with, I've got issues, he couldn't remember his password etc etc he eventually remembered his password when I wouldn't back off.

There was nothing incriminating in calls or texts but I did notice a huge amount if web activity on his phone. I asked what he was doing surfing on his phone so much when he was constantly on the iPad and he gave some lame excuse about he knew his obsession with his hobby bugged me sometimes so he used his phone rather than the iPad so I wouldn't get annoyed. At the time I just thought 'muppet' and told him hiding stuff about it is a problem not the hobby as such. (He's a pigeon fancier, if anyone is wondering lol) it's not my cup of tea but it rocks his boat so I tend to keep my gob shut about it.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. I had a weird but feeling that something wasn't right so I tried logging into his online phone billing account again. Strangely he'd changed the password from the original one, so I had to request a new one. I checked his billing info and again nothing in calls/texts but huge amounts of web use. I dug a little further and found he is accessing it when he's out in the garden, when he's gone to the supermarket, if he's nipped out to pick something up, when he's gone up to bed before me and early hours if the morning when I'm still asleep. It all looks very strange. One particular instance to put it into perspective was Monday evening. He'd been on his iPad doing whatever for the evening when he remembered he needed to print off a CV. We tried printing it but the ink cartridge had run out. He nipped down to tesco, a 5 minute car ride to pick one up. He phoned me at 9.45 to tell me he'd got one and to check it was the correct one. The call lasted about a minute. He returned home almost 20 minutes later and on checking web activity he was online on his phone after phoning me.

Having checked now I've pinpointed days and times of when he's surfing on his phone and I'm never around at those times. He's like a secret surfer on his phone and I'm now wondering what the hell he does on there that's so secretive and time consuming.

Am I being paranoid and seeing too much into this. I've got so much shit going on at the moment with work, I really don't need this :-(

OP, hate to say this, but you said He doesn't have much physical access to women with being at home most of the time but online is obviously a different matter and actually, you have no idea what kind of physical access he has to women. He's on his own all day - he could be doing anything.

Cheaters often set up secret email accounts. Dogging/swingers sites could be a possibility.

Also he could be meeting up with OW when shopping or visiting relatives.

You could sit down with him and say because of previous affair, you need to be reassured that he is not doing anything dodgy and therefore could he hand over his laptop/mobile plus passwords. His reaction should tell you everything you need to know.

I think he really needs to be shifting his arse into gear and looking for a job now, but I also think he's too comfortable cocklodging with you.

Skype or similar online video phone calls?

Surely checking email wouldn't use that much band width?

It's kind of irrelevant now though isn't it? The trust has gone, your H treats you like rubbish rather than be a proper loving partner. Something is causing you huge anxiety and stress and he still doesn't see fit to be open and honest with you.

Don't stay together for the pigeons!

He was caught out by phone & texts last time. The bandwidth he's using is not large just the amount of times a day he accesses the web from his phone if that makes sense. The times he does it are strange it's as if he's logging on to check something! Not surfing for huge amounts of time, he could have nipped for a pee and when I check update on his bill he's been online so that's a matter of a few minutes at most.

I have access to his email and he knows I do, nothing incriminating there. I know he'd have learnt from his mistakes previously and he's not stupid (well not in the sense of knowing to hide stuff from me) he knows me well enough to know that if I get sus about something I'll dig and dig till I find.

Tbh having given it a lot of thought today it's obviously over between us, I can't live like this anyway. My friend suggests I keep quiet until after my course in London and check his web usage while I'm completely out of the way and see if there's any difference?

Bandwidth Usage Guide

Might be useful for comparison sake - the order from light - heavy use looks a bit like this:

Email
FB/General Surfing
Gaming/Skype
YouTube (videos)
Downloading Movies

Uploading probably counts also.

OP, do you know how many phone calls he makes? Can you access a record of that?

Before you do anything, think about the legal and financial side of things, OP. Would he have the right to stay in the house? What would your youngest want? Would you have to provide him with a house?

You will find it a lot easier to deal with if you have hard evidence.

When he goes online late at night, when you're sleeping, do you know where he goes to? Which room, I mean. Have you ever woken and walked in on him?

You can find out if he has WhatsApp by down loading it yourself to your phone. He will be on the available contacts list as you will have his phone number in your phone. Does that make sense ?

I'm sorry you're going through this..I won't chant LTB but you do need answers. It's not fair to just brush you off and punish you for feeling insecure. A loving compassionate partner wouldn't do that OP.

Good luck with the business trip x

Dating sites?

Do you pay for the phone? I'd suggest dropping it down the loo cancelling the contract.

Then if he wants to fund a new phone he gets a job. Take the bank card back off him too. Change the wifi password while you are at it.

I'd be giving him 2m notice too, to arrange for rehoming of pigeons and himself.

Yes I can see his calls texts on his bill, nothing unusual there, just family numbers. I've worked out his using just under 500mb per month in data, several texts, hardly any calls. His usage is capped so he can't go over anything.

The phone is in his name, he pays monthly for it. The last one was in my name and I paid, he got away with the EA for so long because he had a cheap PAYG phone he bought to use to contact her not the contract phone I paid for.

Usage at night looks to be when he's gone to bed earlier than me or if he's in bed and I'm in bathroom showering or getting ready for bed etc. early hours in morning I'm fast asleep so no idea unless he wakes for a pee and takes phone to bathroom with him. He doesn't seem to be on for long periods of time in one go, looks more like little and very often.

He will be a nightmare to get to leave I know he won't give me an easy time. Hard facts would make it much easier. There's nothing he can say that I would be willing to listen to if it turned out to be OW this time.

My friend checked whatsapp for me, she has him in her contact list and said he's not on there.

I would put money on it that it's porn.

Yep I agree Tatters - porn, dating sites/chat rooms, or online gambling?

500mb isn't a lot IMO - I use over 1G a month easy (not on porn or gambling btw!).

If he's at home using it does it not just use wifi? So the data may be used out of the home?

You should evaluate how you feel about what it could be, porn etc and then ask him.

Just taking the phone usage issue in isolation. I think it is 'possible' that it is not anything dodge. In fact his phone usage sounds a lot like mine! Whenever I have a minute to myself I'm very likely to use the Internet on my phone. It's a habit! So I go to the loo, out comes my phone. I'm waiting in the queue in Tesco, out comes my phone. I'm cooking dinner, family aren't in kitchen, I've 2 mins, out comes my phone! Basically if I have any window at all, I'm on my own, I pull out my phone and browse a couple of sites I always have open, twitter, that sort of thing! I do this continuously throughout the day. But I never do it in front of kids or DH! Or anyone else.. Cause it's a bit rude.
I have absolutely nothing to hide. I don't have a huge Internet usage, it's mainly a minute here, a minute there.
That said, I may have a look at my phone at night, relaxing in front of tv with my dh, if he was watching something or whatever. So it's not like I'm hiding that I use it or anything.

However that aside I think his attitude to money/work/hobbies etc stinks, and I couldn't live like that. Through an EA in the past into the mix and you're on a hiding to nothing OP.

Think you'll have to put an exit plan I place.

Tbh If you really want to know what he's at on his phone, you are simply going to have to get a hold if his phone. Could you sneak it into the bathroom late at night? Think its the only way to get an answer to that one.

Are you sure he's not just playing games.

Thanks again for all your responses. Sorry this is the first time I've had any proper time to reply properly.

I'd just like to say though that I don't know how anyone can have an affair, I felt on edge all day yesterday. I felt like I was involved in some kind of secret espionage and mission. How you can keep up any kind of secrecy like this for any length of time is beyond me. It felt wrong trying to secretly post and read responses when I would normally be so open about it and feel I had absolutely nothing to hide from DH :-/

Sorry I don't know how to do bold text but in response to bonniebess - I'm the same as you. My phone is always logged into stuff that I check now and then and regularly check emails that I have pushed to me, that's normal for me and my phone is always out around the house somewhere in plain sight and can be easily accessed or used by anyone without me worrying about it.

DH is so different, if I saw his phone out of his pocket more than 5 times a day max it would be unusual, he so rarely uses it. He will send / reply to the odd text now and again and the odd phone call and that's it! Most of his family will call on the house phone, they only try his mobile if there's no answer at home. I usually do all the calling / texting to DC's.

This is what is puzzling me so much, the fact that he's evidently using his phone for net use when I'm not around. For instance, last night we visited our SIL for his birthday. DH had been on the iPad before we left our house, their home is 10 minutes drive away. When we got there dd said they'd decorated GS bedroom and asked DH to go and look at it. I'd already seen it so stayed downstairs with everyone else while DH went up to look. He was upstairs for around 5 minutes and when I checked his online billing when we got home later in the evening he'd been online on his phone in that time for a quick check of something?

He's not hooked up to wifi in our house, I have no idea why he's not done it, everyone else is. Having said that I'm not sure he'd still pick up wifi from the house when he's in the back garden in his shed using his phone anyway even if he was. He went out for animal feed yesterday, he left around 12.45 and returned between 2-2.30. It's a 1 hour round trip to where he goes and normally I wouldn't think anything about the times he leaves or returns from anywhere but with everything at the moment I made rough notes. Checking his bill he was in the back garden just before he left and had accessed the web before leaving for what can only have been a couple of minutes.

I feel so pathetic that I've brought myself down to all this checking up on him, how sad am I that I'm making notes of web use and when he's in and out of the home :-/

Porn just doesn't seem likely with the times and timescales, there are occasional times when there's much more volume used at one time but on the whole it's bits here and there and often. Like he's checking email, messages or something. That's what it looks like to me.

I've spoken to my friend in depth about it all now, before I'd just told her he'd been acting sus. Having talked things through she wondered if he was secretly buying/bidding on auctions of pigeons on sites he goes on. Strangely these things sell for a lot of money! That would seem logical if he was checking his bids or what the price was up to I guess but it doesn't explain why this goes back to 2011 because he didn't have pigeons then.

He plugs his phone in by his side every night and unfortunately it makes a noise when you unplug it from the charger so I'd be too worried to take it when he's sleeping. He's weird anyway, if you go by the side of his bed when he's sleeping he immediately wakes up as if he's about to be murdered or something!

Sorry if this sounds flippant here but maybe he was on mumsnet-or something similar. I wouldn't mind betting that lots of women spend hours on their I pads/phones and feel guilty about it enough to try and hide it from their partners

No not flippant at all apple, I'm open to any suggestions. He does spend hours on the iPad on games apps and forums so I know what he's doing. I think my issue is really down to the fact that he's checking something on his phone secretly. I'm always on my phone as are the DC's.

The only time it really bothers me if he's online on the iPad but has taken charge of the tv remote and trying to multitask. I complain he can't do both and to at least allow me the remote to watch something on tv I'm interested in.

I just think if he's hiding it from me it has to be something I wouldn't approve of or is dodgy?

I can't see I'm ever going to get any real answers or the truth though as I can't actually prove what he's doing online, just that he's on it thinking I don't know about it.

Something else that I found strange was a conversation we had a few days ago. I'd mentioned to DH that my sleep had become very disturbed and I kept waking up at random times throughout the night. I asked him if it was disturbing him and had I woken him up by it and he said no, he hadn't known a thing and sleeps right through from when his head hits the pillow till his alarm goes off and wakes him up.

Now I KNOW that is not true looking at his bills, online access occurs at various times in the early hours on a regular basis and most certainly before his alarm wakes him up!

OP - so , basically, he is a cocklodger who has no problem living off you, your money, and your efforts, who does nothing in the house or for you, who spends his days 'elsewhere' (on iPad, mobile, TV, games etc) and gives very little, if anything in exchange for his lovely comfortable life? And you are more bothered about his internet usage?

Honestly, you do not need an excuse to get rid! See a solicitor, get some advice. Then tell him he must go. He can take his mobile with - you'll probably never know what it is, even if it is an EA again (or a proper affair)
Find out your financial responsibilities to him (if any - if he hasn't worked for the family or home or contributed) and kick him out. Whose name is the house in? If joint, you may need to sell. Certainly do this before he has any 'claim' on your new business.

Stop stalking, and DO!