Porn, prostitutes, reservations - help me

[katekong]

For the background: Dp and I have a toddler who's currently being assessed as the GP suspects she may be on the autistic spectrum. She has a number of challenging behaviours, one of which is only being able to sleep with me there or else waking hourly at best. As a result our sex life has suffered, though it's still at least once and usually twice per week. We have older dc too and I'm 16 weeks pregnant.

This morning I was trying to upload some photos of the dc from the weekend from his phone to our pc. I don't know what I pressed but a display came up of things open on each app - I.e the last facebook page he viewed, the last internet page he looked at, last photo he looked at etc. On one of the Windows was a porn video. Out of curiosity, I looked at his history to see what kind of porn it was. I don't have a particular problem with porn buy he's always said it doesn't interesthim and he doesn't watch it so I was curious.

In the history there was loads of porn, every day this week. It pissed me off unimaginable amounts that I've been laying for hours with our toddler, running around sorting out things for the other dc (including my dsc), doing everything around the house, working and being sick through pregnancy and he's sat about wanking.

Then I noticed something else. There was a Wikipedia page about call girls and before that an FAQ page about prostitution where the first part says technically it's legal as long as not soliciting. Dp would lose his beloved career if caught doing anything illegal so these searches say to me he's seen that call girls are legal and looked it up for more info. The next page is sport so perhaps he put a secret tab on after the Wikipedia search.

There's also a visit to the page of a restaurant with rooms about 1.5 hours away. He's visited the reservations page At present there are no plans for him to go there with work or anything though so I'm confused.

I'm not imagining the worst am I? This is all fucking bad news. The porn explains a lot as when we have had sex it's over in minutes and does nothing for me and he's said it's over quickly because it's so infrequent and he gets excited. Nothing to do with being used to quick wanks then!!

Part of me wants to confront him but then I also kind of want to wait to see if a trip to the place where the restaurant is materialises so I have him bang to rights. I've screenshot the history so he can't deny it. Tell me I'm not overreacting? The kids will be devastated if we split

Is your DH the sort of person that cautiously weighs up the pros and cons of a situation and researches stuff before he commits to an action?

You are hardly imagining the worst or over-reacting.

He's got pages and pages of porn on there, despite telling you he's not interested in it. It's recent. He's been researching whether or not going with a prostitute is 'legal', as this may impact on his career. He then looks at a 'restaurant with rooms'.

I don't know how it could be any more obvious?

Totally. He's the least impulsive person I've ever met. That's why these particular searches make me think the worst. We're meant to be moving in a few weeks, going on holiday too. I can't believe he would do this to the kids. To the baby! The thought of him even considering sleeping with a prostitute while I'm pregnant of all times and he could pass diseases to his own child makes me feel sick.

The restaurant is somewhere near where he worked during his unhappy marriage. I wonder if he did this back then too.

It depends how you feel. If keeping it to yourself will cause you stress I would confront him and ask him what the hell is going on. You are pregnant and dealing with issues with your other DC. Don't sit on the info if your health suffers as a result.

I know Fontella, but you and I both know he'll try and talk his way out of it. I want to be able to stop any supposed reasonable arguments for it dead in their tracks.

Confronting will cause me more stress iggy. I can't bearthe thought of telling the dc yet. They've been planning their bedrooms in the new house, seats in the new car. We won't have either now. I can cope with the dc alone but I have no one - how am I supposed to even give birth to this one?! We'll have no car or anything without him.

Kate, as you say, he is not impulsive, so yep he has at least been in the planning stages. He clearly wants to pursue this.

Does he work away from home? If so, I would be inclined to think that no amount of pre-empting him will work, he will simply factor in the extra risk of you being suspicious. So, you are left with the option of giving him enough rope to hang himself. Which is not great either.

He can work away but usually uses a company car and leaves ours here so without taking ours I don't see how he'd get there. But then the restaurant is expensive so maybe he'd push the boat out and hire a car while saying he's working away.

Are you goign to turn a blind eye, love ? I really don't recommend that course of action.

Or find an excuse to take the car, or ask his boss if he can keep the company car, or combine this little trip with work. Where there is a will, there is a way. Bloody men, what is it with them.

I would probably confront him because I am not good at sitting on my hands. I would though, expect to remain sceptical and suspicious for...well however long it took to be convinced otherwise.

Any no I'm definitely not going to turn a blind eye. He makes me feel sick. He's back at work on Wednesday. The dc and I are living in a rented house before the planned move. I'll remove his house key before he leaves without him knowing, as well as getting any more evidence, then tell him not to come back.

I am sorry

Mini. You can hardly talk when you are having an open affair yourself.

Personally I dont think that you should be advising on relationships. Or have you realised the error of your own ways?

I am sorry op.
Porn is nasty.
I am not sure about the restaurant part.

Prepare yourself for the stupendous amount of bullshit he'll try to get you to swallow, keeping in mind you're vulnerable and upset, sometimes it just seems easier to swallow it but if you know deep down he's betrayed you, then stick to your guns.

If you're already convinced and want him out that's one thing but if you're going to wait to gather more evidence, I wouldn't say anything to him just yet.

I'm so sorry you're going through this. Stay strong. Remember your worth x

Thank you for your kind words. I don't think he's done anything yet. But is what I've found 'enough' or should I hang on for more?

linkery, I am not engaged in deceiving anyone. Neither do I have an opinion about what sort of relationships people should engage in.

Are you buying the new house? can you stay on in the house you are in? can you get the tenancy put into your name? Can you afford to rent this house and will LL give you a tenancy in your name? Will your DH help with the children when you need to go into hospital? I say this because he should be made to realise that opting out of the relationship and making the choices he has, doesn't cut him loose from the responsibility he has to look after his family. Maybe I am a bit cautious, I would be inclined to ensure that he doesn't just get to walk and start a new life unfettered by responsibility whilst you are left burdened with everything.

I would be inclined to lay on the blame and guilt and ensure he realise that whilst I wouldn't continue a sexual relationship with a low life scum bag, that he at least now ensure that I and the children were able to transition out of the situation without recourse to eating beans on toast in temporary accommodation.

Kate,

You came across this 'by accident'. Sheer chance.

It would be one hell of a coincidence if you managed to catch him on the first attempt as it were. Chances are he's got previous form. You mention about the 'restaurant with rooms' being close to where he used to work, when he was in his previous 'unhappy marriage'.

Blokes just don't wake up one morning and decide they fancy sleeping with a prostitute out of the blue, and do a bit of research and look up room reservations. Even if that's what's happened, the chances of you catching him out out first time are probably higher than winning the lottery. You found his recent history, but it could go way back.

You can hang on 'for more' if you want, but to be honest, I would have thought you've got more than enough already. It's hard to come up with any kind of plausible explanation for what you've found (although I'm sure he will do his darndest to think of one).

It's a horrible situation to be in. I am so sorry.

Only you can decide if this is "enough" for you

But the intent is there, isn't it? Just a matter of time until he acts on these "fantasies" (as I am sure he is going to tell you that is what they are)

For most women, that would be "enough". He is seeking sexual stimulation outside of your relationship and hiding it from you.

Incidentally, if I had a pound for every relationships thread that starts with "I don't have a problem with him using porn, but...." and ends up with much worse escalation than a bit of wanking to big titties or whatever, I would be a very rich woman

In my experience Kate, my husband was watching hours and hours of porn every week. I came across it by accident when he'd shut down innocent looking web pages in front of me, forgetting that he had porn pages open behind.
This happened quite a few times and when I looked, I saw the amount of stuff he was looking at to an unhealthy level regardless of what your views on porn are.

I spoke to him about it calmly but he lied to me from the start. Made a lot of promises. I did then go out of my way to check on him. I would find snippets of porn here and there, he would cry, make more promises. I saw google searches for prostitutes and told myself it was just curiosity.

In the end, he just took it all underground and got better at hiding it, which is easy to do on phones etc now.

I installed a web logger onto my laptop called K9 I think. Because I felt it was wrong to stealthily record web searches without him knowing, I set it up to block porn but it was too late by then, he had already stopped using my laptop to watch porn/look up prostitutes.

I dearly wish I had set up K9 to silently record web searches in the background way back then before I had alerted him to my suspicions and it would have saved a lot of time and given more truthful answers.

If you're doubtful in anyway as to what he has or hasn't done, I'd say wait and see for now. Look for more evidence if there is any because if he has/does cheat on you, you will need to be 100% certain of it so you can stay mentally strong if you break up because of it.
And if you're not 100% sure, he will use that to manipulate you into doubting yourself.

From what I've read, cheaters very rarely tell the truth when they're caught and will instead lie lie lie their way out of it.

I'd say there's enough dodgy goings on to warrant monitoring a computer if you've got one. Look up K9. It's totally free and I found it really easy to use. There are different settings so it will run in the background without blocking anything but recording it all anyway.

It all fell down for my husband when he accidentally favourited a tweet from a prostitute on his phone. He tried to deny everything but managed to squeeze some truth out of him before kicking him out. But it was days and days of torture trying to get him to tell me. I just wish I'd quietly gone about checking with technology to save all the drama xx

Or better still, decide you refuse to live like this and tell him to fuck off to his hotel room and stay there.

How much evidence does one need ? Catching him balls-deep ?

(no disrespect, Lucy, I am glad you did what you had to do and managed to extricate yourself eventually)

People make all sorts of mistakes, he has. He might go on and make a bigger mistake and look back and think "I really fucked up" do you want to save him from himself? In which case talk to him now. If not let him go ahead thinking he can get away with it, you might never know for sure, have no further evidence one way or the other and live with a huge amount of self doubt and distrust. As Fontella says, the chances of actually catching him out are slim, he is after all cautious and weighing up that possibility along with all the others.

The fact that he can even think and justify in his own head that deceiving you is fine as long as you never find out, thinking that, what you don't know can't hurt you, tells you a lot about a persons character. Its kind of irrelevant whether he actually goes ahead and does it. For me, no amount of talking, shouting or pleading would ever remove that thought that given the right situation or different circumstances he would pay women for sex, and he would lie to me about whatever he wanted to lie about to achieve his own ends. Its like saying "if I could kill people without them knowing I did it, then I have done nothing wrong to them" of course they wouldn't realise that you had done something wrong, but does that alter the fact that you killed them, no. Motivation is everything.

Thanks AF. I personally agree with you that there's enough evidence already. Even if he hasn't done it yet, just the thought of your partner thinking about doing it is tremendously damaging.

The only thing I'm worried about for the OP is the ability to guard off the inevitable amount of bullshit he'll spout if she confronts him now.
I wobbled a couple of times about maybe giving it another go even when I knew for sure he'd cheated on me (didn't tell him about my wobbles).
She has to prepare herself for that. I can't say enough how hard the mind fuckery he'll attempt is going to be when you're at your most vulnerable.

When I was going through the last few days of torture, a woman on MN said to me that nobody looks up stuff about prostitutes without using them. I didn't want to believe it but she was bang on. No such thing as only being curious about prostitutes, unless you're a 16 year old kid maybe.

So yes actually, maybe you're right. Save all the hassle of digging around and get rid now.

What are you thinking now Kate? xx

I know, Lucy. Op could save herself from more devastation, but I think there is probably more on the cards before she gets to that point. I get it, I just wish she (and you) didn't have to go through it in the first place.

For future reference, on Apple, pushing the home button twice in quick succession brings up all the open apps you thought you'd closed by just coming out of them as that doesn't close them completely.

Personally, I bring up this screen periodically during the day if I think I'm going to struggle with battery life and then swipe the icons upwards as that then does close them and saves on battery.

Sorry you are experiencing this. It might also be a good idea to weigh up the potential stress of leaving against the potential stress of staying to give him rope to hang himself with or that sort of course of action.

Not advising either, but if it comes down to it, you might be able to gauge short-term what will be better for you to cope with. Mostly about giving yourself the least stress possible, and only you will know if that is by getting it all out in the open and leaving or by keeping quiet for the time being.

Neither seem like very stress-free options granted, but I think in your shoes being pregnant and a house move on the cards I would probably think of myself first and what is going to be easiest for me.