Help please, need some strength to do this

[flamencina]

I had another thread about how I found out my wife has been sexting behind my back.

We've been together for 10 years, she has two children and we have one together (I'm birth mother but she is legal parent too). Lots of rows, she has depression, she's been drinking heavily.

I found out that she'd hidden debt from me and that she's been exchanging really explicit messages to someone else and arranging to meet up with him, but hasn't yet. We had a long talk recently after a row, about how to move our relationship on, and how we needed to be 100% honest with each other. She didn't allude to the affair or debt though.

A day or two later I told her I knew about the debt. We handled it well without arguing and she's taken steps to sort it all out. However, she is aggrieved because she knows I snooped in order to find out about the debt. She keeps sending me morose messages about how awful she feels about me looking through her stuff and it makes her feel like she'll have to start locking her phone and putting stuff away because I have violated her privacy.

Is she gaslighting me, is that the term? Is she trying to trick me into not snooping any further so I don't discover the affair? Is she trying to guilt me so that if I tell her I know, then I'll seem like the bad guy for snooping?

I am trying to work up the courage to tell her I know about the sexting, but I am so scared of the fallout when she goes on about the violation of privacy.

I need someone to talk sense into me. My head tells me that what she has done is more wrong but I just know she's going to try to turn it around on me snooping.

Sorry no one has replied yet. Hopefully some people will see your post soon. I think you need to tackle this issue. And if it's got to the point you are scared to talk to her about anything, I think that is so sad and you need to seek some professional help either a gp or counsellor

Thanks. I'm just worried that she's going to make out like I'm in the wrong.

And I know it was wrong to snoop, but this is worse.

I have drafted out an email saying what I want to say. I might just go out for the day, send her it and let her digest it in her own time and get the initial anger over with before I come home.

Yes I think your suspicions are correct and she's trying to manipulate you into believing you're the bad guy for snooping. I think you need to stay strong, stop worrying that you're in the wrong for discovering everything this way and confront her head-on. If you hadn't snooped would the debt continue to increase and as her wife would you be jointly liable? Probably, so you may have saved a fortune when you intercepted that lie.

As for the sexting, she knows you've looked at her communications so you just need to confront her directly about it. I know you don't want to face the truth and aftermath but you're suffering at the moment, so how can it be worse? You have children together and need absolute trust. You don't have that because of her lying, not because you looked at her phone, don't let her twist it round on you, which she's likely to do.

Is this something she's done before? It's a lot of betrayal and I'm not sure I would be able to forgive it. Unless she can show true remorse and rectify her actions is it a relationship worth saving? She seems to be continuing with the deceit and then gaslighting you to believe you're in the wrong, not the usual actions of a loving partner, sorry.

You need to be upfront about it im afraid.

I know snooping is wrong,but imo sexting someone else when you are in a commuted relationship is a lot worse.

Hope you are ok op.

Thanks for the support, I don't really have anyone here to talk to about it.

I don't know if I can forgive it. I really want to but I don't know how it's going to affect us long term, even if she is really sorry, because I know she'll put her accounts on lock down now because of my snooping so even if she is fully contrite, I'll never know what she's doing.

As far as I'm aware she's never done it before, but then I didn't suspect this at all anyway, I wasn't expecting to find this.

I just needed a few people to reassure me that I'm less in the wrong than her, needed to hear it from someone else so I don't doubt myself.

You need to decide what you want the end goal to be.
If you think you can rebuild trust and a relationship then you need to be honest with her. You need to sit her down whilst the kids are elsewhere and tell her you were wrong for snooping but with everything recently you felt like there were things she wasn't telling you. You shouldn't of done it but you did. You found the debt as she knows, but you also found some messages. If you want to stay together you are going to have to be open and honest, and maybe seeing a therapist together could help. But she too is going to have to be open and honest.

However, if you feel that the lying, affair and debt are too much and you could never trust her again then nothing good will come of it, you just need to leave or ask her to.

I don't know what I would do in your situation. I would want to try fix things but I know that I would never 100% get over it, I would never 100% trust my partner again. I'm sorry you are going through this.

If she didn't have anything to hide, she wouldn't be aggrieved would she. 100% trust = healthy relationship = transparency after all. You sound like a perfectly reasonable person to me.

Of course you're not in the same league of wrong. She's continuing to lie and, to make matters worse, threaten you with lock down. This would have been the perfect opportunity for her to come clean, but she's chosen to continue to cover her tracks. I'm sorry but if you confront her now and she says she's sorry, she will only look like she's sorry she was found out, not genuinely sorry for betraying you. You need to put your big girl fighting pants on and stay strong, you've done nothing wrong.

I have always told my oh that he can have full access to my phone, email, Facebook etc at all times because I have nothing to hode, and him me. It's not because we don't trust each other, but we are open with each other. If he suddenly shut me out I would justifiably suspect something fishy was going on.

None of what she has done is OK.
Getting into debt and not telling you.
Now having emotional affairs behind your back.
Sorry, snooping is not OK but when we get that gut feeling and need 'proof' a lot of us do it.
It's how a lot of people find out about affairs etc...
Even unintentionally, when ipads are linked to phones etc...
Her anger also sounds like an issue.
And her drinking.
Does he have any good qualities?
Have you really thought about your life in the next 10-20 years if you remain in this relationship?
Would she agree to relationship counselling because it all sounds awful to live with!

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