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Does this seem suspicious?

75 replies

SpellmansLuck · 28/04/2020 21:03

DH’s phone was charging on the bedside table while I was in our bedroom breastfeeding our youngest dc/getting the baby to sleep. Throughout the feed, DH's phone buzzed a couple time’s, so after I got the baby to sleep, I tapped the phone screen to check if the notifications were anything important work wise that DH might need to see.
Anyway, when the screen lit up, there was a standard junk email alert, as well as a notification saying:

Parallel Instagram App: (persons username here) has requested to follow you.

Now my phone is an iPhone and I hadn’t heard of a parallel app before, so I quickly googled and the phone that DH has, can run ‘clone’ copies of apps which you have to set up by going in to the settings area.

Thinking this was bizarre - and also a major flashback to something DH and I had gone through before a few years prior, I’ll get to that - I searched the username of the requested followers profile on my phone, to see who might be trying to follow my DH on a parallel version of instagram, and the person only has a one post, but it’s a body shot of them in a bra.

Here’s where my guard went up - a couple years back, I unearthed a separate Instagram account that DH had set up against my knowledge, a few months after the birth of our first dc, purely to follow what were essentially profiles of nothing but basically naked women. Some professional ‘model’ type accounts, but the majority were just general women who like to get their kit off frequently and pose in suggestively. The amount he was following was staggering (over 300 accounts of nothing but these 'sexy' profiles), and the deceit of doing something that seedy behind my back, massively pissed me off. He ended up deleting the account, and we put the situation to bed.

Upon seeing who this requested follower was, coupled with the fact the notification was from a parallel app, I decided to breezily ask DH about it. I simply said ‘oh while I was feeding the baby, your phone went off a few times, so I had a quick look and weirdly, there was a notification from a parallel app? What’s that?’. He went and got his phone off of charge, came back and went ‘uhhh, oh errr, it’s just an email and my mum tagging me on something on Facebook’ - completely ignoring the blatant IG notification that was sitting right there.
I told him I’d saw that it was an Instagram notification and again said that I thought it was weird he had a cloned account. He then sat there for a good 15 minutes acting confused and pulling ‘hmmm what IS this!??’ faces. I say acting, because I can tell when DH is pretending to be miffed about something when he actually knows the answer. He kept saying he didn’t know that he had a cloned account, that the notification must’ve been for his work Instagram account, despite the fact his work account is linked to his personal account so operate from the same, single app and notifications for both don’t appear as ‘parallel’ if that makes sense, they just show up as a good old regular Instagram notification.

I rarely get a chance to look at dhs phone for long, but I’m now wary he’s got another separate account - on this clone, parallel account - and being off of work, bored at home with me and the DC’s has caused him to start cataloguing a library of Instagram nude accounts again.

What do you think?

OP posts:
tarasmalatarocks · 28/04/2020 21:21

I can almost bet your bottom dollar that’s what it is. What makes these guys do sleazy shit like this? I can’t quite get if it is they are just sleazes who enjoy collecting wanking material
or if it’s that they get a buzz from knowing they are doing something iffy behind their partners back. At one time I thought it was just something a certain ‘type’ of bloke did, but it seems not as friends have had similar issues with men of all ages and social classes

SpellmansLuck · 28/04/2020 21:29

@tarasmalatarocks ugh I just don't know. I get that guys are partial to porn etc, but it's the creating a secret, separate account to follow these women that gets to me. Obviously at the moment, I've no idea what's on that parallel account, but I can't think of any other use for it, other than to be a place to hide shit from me!?

OP posts:
IamADude · 28/04/2020 21:36

This reply has been deleted

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MaryAnneMumof2 · 28/04/2020 21:39

SpellmansLuck I think your intuition on this is correct, and what he has done while you are still feeding his young baby is going to be very hard forgive.

SpellmansLuck · 28/04/2020 21:40

It is when I told DH I don't approve of that behaviour long before he created the first separate account.

Why the need to follow these women!? He's a married, family man. What's more, I know with absolute certainty he wouldn't be happy if I had a secret account full of guys purely to get off to. It's just grim and weird.

OP posts:
peach1234 · 28/04/2020 21:54

I think as long as he's not messaging and directly interacting with these women it's nothing but porn really?? If he's taking it further by actually getting to know them it's crossing the line. He wouldn't want to follow those people on his normal account I guess as it's embarrassing the same as anyone wouldn't advertise the fact they look at porn? Also these aren't women that are looking for men they're models/pornstars most likely with thousands of followers and being paid to post?

SpellmansLuck · 28/04/2020 21:55

@MaryAnneMumof2 part of me is saying 'listen to your intuition' but the other half is saying 'you're being silly, nothings going on'

OP posts:
SpellmansLuck · 28/04/2020 21:58

@peach1234 by why the need to follow individual women? With porn, you'd just search for a video, boom done, the next time you watched porn it'll probably be a different video altogether of different porn stars that you hadn't seen before. It's the coming across these women, some which are literally average women with regular lives, they just like to be provocative online, and deciding he likes their bodies enough to save them away in a secret account and look at them again and again whenever he feels like it.

OP posts:
tarasmalatarocks · 28/04/2020 22:10

I’m sorry I don’t agree with other posters, it may not be a ‘crime ‘ to do so , but it’s a guaranteed turn off for a great many women to have a partner doing this.

cosmicbabe · 28/04/2020 22:26

I wouldn't be happy with this at all. But you can't control him. If he chooses to repeatedly do something you don't like it's up to you to leave.

OoohTheStatsDontLie · 28/04/2020 22:54

Yes it's very suspicious otherwise he wouldnt have lied. I agree it's different to porn - its not as anonymous, I've heard of people getting together after 'meeting' on instagram but never heard of getting together after watching someone in porn. Also porn is so readily available why does he need Instagram?
Whatever the rights or wrongs I think every person will vary on what they think about it. But the fact is, he is doing something that

  1. Has caused a massive issue in your relationship previously
  2. That he promised not to do again
  3. That he has lied to you about
  4. That he wouldn't like you doing
SpellmansLuck · 29/04/2020 06:48

I've woken up this morning and realised that I did quite blatantly catch him in a lie.

He told me the notification - after initially trying to pretend he never had an IG notification - was for his work Instagram account. But I've just remembered, his work account isn't private, it's public, so anyone trying to follow that account wouldn't need to be approved by him.

FFS. Why does he do this shit over and over again?!

OP posts:
SpellmansLuck · 29/04/2020 06:51

@OoohTheStatsDontLie that's exactly it! It's the 'I won't do it again, I promise you, I don't want to hurt or upset you'. I'm almost 90% sure that he has another secret account on the go.

Whether it's a porn based account, or an account to talk to other people, I just don't know right now. But I don't feel good about this situation either way. He tried to dig himself out of something last night, and I need to know what it is.

OP posts:
peach1234 · 29/04/2020 06:54

@SpellmansLuck I'm definitely not saying it's ok at all, it's creepy and would make me feel weird too BUT I don't think it's the worst thing in the world. Is it something to do with his confidence? It seems to be happening just after you've had a baby? Is he feeling like he's not getting your attention when there's a new baby? I would sit him down when you've calmed down and just say look I'm not happy about this and I know what's going on so don't deny it and I just want to understand why? Then he might open up to you about it? I think if he thinks he's being accused he'll just deny deny.
I just mean be careful of the usual "don't put up with that shit" and "why are you even with him" responses you get with everything on here!

Sadiesnakes · 29/04/2020 07:00

Ignore the obvious men and cool gf's insisting it's A OK to be a sleazy disrespectful liar.

Most women are not ok with this, at least not if they consider themselves in a mature long term relationship, where trust and honesty is paramount.

Most of these nude models are barely even in their 20s with little sense or respect for themselves and I don't give a shit about the woke folks that will come along spouting on about how pro woman and liberating it is to show your tits off to sleazy wankers like your dh.

I'm not sure what you can actually do at this point op. He's a proven liar and you've already done this before. It's either be content with a lying sleaze that does not respect you or any other woman or leave him.

Sorry Op.

SpellmansLuck · 29/04/2020 07:05

@peach1234 I'm just not sure how much sexual attention - be it vast amounts, or little - pays in to and allows him to create separate, secret profiles in order to follow women? If he's feeling sexually frustrated in any way, shape or form, one would assume he'd do what the majority of blokes do and look at porn. It's the deception and the deceit and play here. We've been through this before, he knows my stance on secret accounts, he knows they upset me and break my trust, but you're hinting that this is somewhat ok for him to be doing because there's a chance I may not be paying him enough attention? I'm a little confused here...

OP posts:
SpellmansLuck · 29/04/2020 07:07

@Sadiesnakes yes to the age of them! That's something I brought to dhs attention the last time we went through this. He said back then that it didn't register with him (bullshit) and that that fact alone was reason enough for him to no longer do it. Porn use is one thing, some can look the other way at that, some can't, we all have different morals and boundaries of what we can and can't accept in relationships. But for me, my line is drawn with sneaky behaviour involving changing the settings in your phone to clone accounts and continue seedy behaviour he knows upsets me.

OP posts:
peach1234 · 29/04/2020 07:13

@SpellmansLuck I'm not saying it's ok I'm just saying discuss things to try and understand what's going on in order to work through it but I think your reaction says it all so I'm not sure what actual advice you want? The responses from people saying how disgusting this is aren't going to help you they're only going to make you more angry and upset that's all I'm not sure it helps. I'm not a "cool girlfriend" thanks I'm a wife with a young baby too so I know how much your confidence can be knocked but you know your options, kick off and leave him or discuss it, you've got your evidence and know it's definitely happening so not sure what you want people to say?

MashedPotatoBrainz · 29/04/2020 07:18

If you aren't paying him enough attention he needs to address that with you not go off and create sleazy, secret accounts to connect with naked models. It's wrong and he knows it's wrong, otherwise he wouldn't have hidden it and lied about it.

Hohohole · 29/04/2020 07:19

It's not alright for him to lie to you. And it is fucking sleazy and sneaky. Who wants that? I'm sorry your partner is doing this to you again.

SpellmansLuck · 29/04/2020 07:20

Well I just told DH that I suspect he's lying. I told him that public accounts, such as his work one, don't require follower approval, so something was amiss. Also the fact he tried to hide that he had a notification from a parallel account.

He got angry. And defensive. Called me paranoid. Said he didn't know what the parallel app shit was, despite the fact you can't have parallel or clone apps on his phone without actively setting it up to do so. He said the whole thing was crazy, but couldn't give any logical or rational explanation as to why Instagram sent him a follower request for a public account - that just doesn't happen and isn't the way IG works.

OP posts:
Ughmaybenot · 29/04/2020 07:25

I mean, honestly the sleaziness is one thing, and one thing that would certainly put me off him, but the lying is the real issue here for me. I couldn’t deal with someone who was so deceitful, like you say, there’s a reason he’s got this separate account and it won’t be a decent reason. He’s shown you he will continue with behaviour that you find to be unacceptable, it’s up to you what you do with that information.

JasonPollack · 29/04/2020 07:31

Make him give you his phone to look at.

SpellmansLuck · 29/04/2020 07:37

Oh there's no point me asking to look at his phone, I know he wouldn't let me check it.
He'd call it an invasion of privacy and that I should 'just trust him' or 'I'm being ridiculous and making this all up'

OP posts:
LiteraryType · 29/04/2020 07:38

Classic deflecting. Blaming you for hysteria rather than simply showing you he's innocent. Get him to open that phone before he deletes it/them.

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