Crafty ways you found partner was cheating

[mannymog]

Gut feeling.
Had this before years ago and found oh had been to the cinema with someone else, next time years later fancy restaurant with different person still friends with now/work colleagues. they know I know but just don’t have boundaries in someone’s else’s relationship. This person still on the scene. Don’t have the respect to f… o.. Pathetic.
Just feeling annoyed about things and the lack of respect for me. I need help to get my head in gear and work out what went on back then as I’m sure there were more things than I found out.
Help me mumsnetters to find out all the tricks and sneaky things people do to cover their tracks.
I still look at them and think how could you lie about where you were, say horrible things to me which destroyed my self esteem and now say you love me. I don’t get it. Also this other person buys my partner gifts sometimes. They are always still there causing niggles. They are married and know I knew they went out with my partner but gaslight me back then as if I’m paranoid but one day I’m happy and a few days later after confronting my partner is going to leave me. I am left thinking what have I done wrong? All I have done is question them about why they are somewhere else other than where they said they were.
The person I loved most hurt me most. It was someone I didn’t know. It is someone I don’t know. I’m sad, broken, gone, invisible and not the same anymore….
I just want to know more but can’t ask.
I want to know all the tricks cheaters have to not get caught.

Burner phone
Hidden apps and apps that delete messages
Work used as an excuse to be away from home
Hobbies used for the same thing
Hidden folder

LinkedIn, he used it like a dating site.

But OP if there is pattern and history, and you feel you are not respected, what the heck are you doing? Just because they cry, show remorse to your liking, say what they know you want to hear in order to keep you and what comes with you, does not mean its love.

So, start showing up for yourself. You do not need proof. You need respect and its not being served by the sounds of things

My DH with wife #1 had suspicions but the final straw was when he was working night shift in the winter and there were size 10 footprints in the frost coming out the house but none going in. It wasn't frosty when he left for work but was a few hours later.

He had form for splitting up families but wife #1 was too thick to see it and she packed up and moved in with the bloke after being caught, he got bored with her after a few months and kicked her out.

She's now an old haggered miserable cow who gave up an amazing caring and hard working guy for nothing, her loss was very much my gain as he's an amazing DH, been married 20+ years.

Why does it matter? Why put yourself through this? Just leave.

It matters to me. I’m not strong just broken now. My best friend broke me and shocked me. I thought they were better than that. I feel old ugly worthless unattractive and everything negative now. I used to feel happy safe excited for life, desired and respected. I felt I was looking forward to things but now I feel so broken that I don’t see the point in things anymore. I pretend but I’m gone….

I'm failing to see why you didn't finish the relationship.years ago. Why are you still with someone who lies to you and doesnt respect you?

I don’t know. Thought I would be stronger but not and difficult when you have been with someone since youngster and also have children and illness in family. Things not as easy sometimes.

You sound strong

Anyway back to the original question of how to find out if more went on?

You might find the Surving Infidelity website helpful.

Thankyou looks helpful

A friend of mine told her stbxh, when he was supposedly off on a solo fishing trip, that she was unwell and the doctors had diagnosed her with something highly contagious. She said he should come home as he was extremely likely to have contracted it from her and needed testing.

The sheer panic in him, and also in a supposedly close friend of hers (who was coincidentally away with work) that he said he called as he needed to talk someone, confirmed who he was cheating with.

@mannymog read first half of your post. .
You haven’t set your own boundaries . This isn’t about them.
Why live like this bloody well end it .

yes I agree never thought I would do this but depressed/lost myself.

I have, for a friend, chatted online to her hubby under a fake fb profile, it gathered all the evidence she needed.
Men eventually reveal all esp when Randy

I'm a bit late to the thread but I want to share my experience because it's a really unusual one!

Two years into a relationship and I thought we were settled into something long term. He emailed and rang me daily, we met up 2 to 3 times a week, he was always happy to see me, and treated me well, so I had no suspicions whatsoever.

One day a single friend told me she'd seen him on an internet dating site. (That was how we'd met.) I took a look and yes, it was him though under a fake name. I challenged him about it and he was not at all shifty or guilty-looking, but very relaxed about it, all smiles and innocence: he'd simply forgotten to delete his profile two years ago when we got together. Now he'd been reminded, he'd delete it.

A couple of days later I went back and had another look. In his profile picture he was sitting on a cream leather armchair. A chair he'd bought only 3 months previously!!!!!

Look you are criticising the OW for not showing you any respect. Why when YOU are not showing YOURSELF any respect. Why expect other people to put you first when you won’t even do this for yourself.

sounding harsh here but you know he is cheating and has cheated. The details are irrelevant. Knowing or not knowing details changes nothing. You either accept it or leave. But expect others to treat you better than you treat yourself

You will never know the whole story of what went on. But the truth is that you have been lied to and your trust is broken. Picking over the fine details won’t change that or make you feel any better. Are you happy? If the answer is no, make changes and stop letting others treat you badly.

I know it’s incredibly hard to leave but he’s slowly killing your spirit. Try to think how much happier you could be one year from now

Other people don't need to have boundaries in your relationship. Maybe their boundaries are that they're quite happy to date married men. Maybe your husband's boundaries are to allow other women into the marriage.

What are your boundaries? What do you accept for yourself?

You are expecting others to have more respect for you than you have for yourself.

Does it matter if there are things you don't know? Really? What would it change?

Maybe you'll feel stronger if you break up with him becuase he doesn't make you happy as opposed to becuase he has crossed a boundary

I get it OP. I am strong and independent generally, but something broke in me when I suspected my DP of cheating. I had plenty of reasons to leave him, but the worse he treated me, the more I hung on. It was as if I wanted to prove to myself that there was something worth saving between us, after I'd invested so much in our relationship.
In the end, I told him that I wouldn't read his messages behind his back, but that he'd given me plenty of reasons to be suspicious, and unless he showed me the messages between him and my best mate I was leaving and wouldn't be coming back. He showed them. They broke my heart. Went back years and years, before he even met me. They'd been in a relationship the entire time.
I STILL didn't leave him. Until, one day, something clicked and I realised that I was giving all of my energy into holding on to something I didn't actually want.
I barely gave him a second thought after that.

Took the keys to exDH's home office (a sort of garden office) when he went out and fired up his computer to check the emails as I couldn't get access to his phone. There were only a few emails there as they obviously mostly just communicated via phone but enough.

It didn't matter as such as I already knew it was going on but he was being insufferable denying it and gaslighting me constantly so the printed proof gave me that peace of mind that I wasn't going crazy and stopped the gaslighting which was totally worth it for me.

I don’t think I’d ever have found proof, he kept things too well hidden. That didn’t stop me trying to find it for years. It became an obsession. Eventually OW contacted me and confessed. If she hadn’t, I would never have had proof.

But I’ll make it clear - Only once I did have proof, I realised that I had never actually needed it! The awful way he treated me over those years was all the reason I needed to leave. I really beat myself up for that afterwards. I was desperate to be ‘proved right’, and hung on for years, but my gut should have been all the proof I needed. I should have left him because he treated me like shit. I knew that was true - it was blindingly obvious. That should have been enough of a reason on its own.