Cannot believe this...what a cliche

[OhTheCliche]

I've been with DH for 8 years, 2 kids (one newborn). I have always trusted him implicitly. I am not one to be jealous of female friends, check up on him when he is out or look at his phone/email etc. That's just not me.

He went out a little while ago and left his phone behind. Toddler DS was messing about with his phone and I snatched it away from him and glanced down briefly at the screen as I did so. I swear. That's all I did, is glance - and saw it was open on an IM conversation between DH and a woman. He was explaining why he couldn't meet up with her on Friday (he is ill) and she ended the conversation with 'Hope you get better soon. Let me know or I will have to come and make you feel better.'

I searched through his phone but there are no other messages from her. I searched his email (I would NEVER have done this in the past - have never in all our years together touched his computer). Only messages I found from her were a handful from 2004, in which my Dh was saying 'he just wanted to be friends' as his life was already full of complications, and 'hope she hadn't got the wrong idea', and she had agreed and said 'no, glad we've cleared that up'.

I find it very strange that they are the ONLY emails from her, and they are 5 yrs old and allude to an attraction between them, possibly? And now he has only ONE (jnstant) message on his phone from her, and it is obviously flirtatious. it smacks of someone deleting other messages - maybe more incriminating ones?

When he came in he notcied someone had been looking at his computer. I said very coldly 'DS was messing around with it' (he often does play with the keyboard, much to both our annoyance!). DH looked visibly panicked for a few minutes. He also noticed that I was being cool with him, I know he did. It felt like he was acting guilty.

I feel so let down.

Ask him outright if he's seeing someone else. There's no point worrying about something that might not even be happening, but wouldn't you rather know if there was than be played for a fool. Good luck

so sorry to hear this...my mind works the same way yours does i.e why the thorough deleting of other correspondence?

however...you will only really know what has been going on once you talk to him.

dont tell him what you know (always keep something up your sleeve.You need to have something to measure his honesty by aswell)...ask broad questions that are open i.e. that you cant answer yes or no to.

i hope you get some answers.

who is she? do you know her? does he mention her atall?

Confront him.

Hmm. the tone of the message implies a familiarity. And, as you say, there ought therefore to be other evidence of emails/texts. And there isn't, Which Is Odd. How would you feel about confronting him? Has he ever done anything like this before, or rather, have you ever had cause to doubt him before?

IME, someone who's up to no good would never ever leave their phone behind!!!

Could it be that he knew you might have seen the message and got the wrong idea and that made him uneasy, rather than actual guilt iyswim?

Seems like he's pretty on the ball in terms of deleting any evidence, and he's just slipped up this one time.

His reaction for me, would have said everything that his deleted messages would have.

I'd wait a while and get some evidence - they always deny it unless faced with something concrete and may try and make you out to be paranoid (see hundreds of affair threads from days of yore on here)... can you access his email remotely via a mailserver, do you know the password? Could you get the phone and IM her with something leading (eg 'had to delete the message you sent earlier for obvious reasons - send it again asap as I want to read it again to be sure you meant what you said')

This is bad advice and you have the option of not using it.

There is a very small program which you download for free (I will have to find the link if you want it). It takes less than 5 minutes to download and install.

The software records every keystroke and if you get the uprated version, you can have screen shots of the screen saved.

Once installed, the software runs in the background of the PC and is not detectable unless the man is a Unix or Linux user and knows the windows DOS system.

Leave the computer for about a week.

To get your installed software brought into use, so you can see the content of the users, you need to press a sequence of keys, then enter in a password.

You will have a list of keystrokes pressed, a list of websites used and possibly screen shots.

While this idea might sound tempting. at the moment you have a suspicion. You might find out more than you want to know, then it's to late, you already know. If you confront the person, you might be asked to explain about how you got the incriminating evidence. Can you answer honestly? Sometimes knowing to much causes to many problems.

MSN sometimes keeps a chat history. I can't remember the path to get to the history, but if you are remotely computer literate, you can trace the history folder and look up the chats.

You can gather evidence or you can confront the man.

Before you take the next step, you might want to have a good think about what you plan on doing if you don't find anything and if you do find something....so you have a plan.

It is a cliche because it's so often true . Do you have any reason to suspect him apart from this? Did you know he was supposed to be going out on Friday - where did he say he was going? Do you know who this woman is? Could he have been meeting her for purely innocent reasons?

Of course the problem with confronting him is that you put him on his guard, if there is anything to hide. But of course there may not be.

Sorry for you having to go through this.

N1 For once I agree with you. Whysoworried, IMHO they are so wrapped up in themselves (players) that they often take their eye off the ball.
I do not have (or want) a P or H but my DCs are old enough for me to date.
I am too long in the tooth to waste time and if they are stupid enough to leave their phone, I am straight in there. I have saved a lot of time and heartache this way.
I just hope the OP thinks about her next move first before looking for evidence though.

I have also phoned OW and asked what her game was. It's all extra ammo for the big showdown, but I'm not talking about long term relationship's here and that's something entirely different.
OP please think about the consequenses of finding out more (or not).

"IME, someone who's up to no good would never ever leave their phone behind!!!"

Dont agree - My h always left his phone lying around even during his affair because, like the op, I would never have checked his phone because I trusted him, and he knew it.

If you want to keep quiet and watch what happens I have the following advice...

1. If he doesn't save sent texts, alter his settings to save them. I have found some useful info doing this.

1. Set the message counter to zero, then check if the counter changes. If there are no texts saved but the counter shows there have been texts then you know that he is deleting them.

Also, as Abedelia says, you could text her from your h's phone and see what the response is. I must admit I found some interesting info by doing this and I am not ashamed of this at all.

Sometimes a girl has to do what a girl has to do

Changing to save sent texts is easy on some phones and he won't notice. Agree with Stirling (from other threads I know she and I have both been there and have not just got the tshirt but the souvenir mug also!) - my H also left his phone around and computer open with no password protection as he knew I had total trust in him and would never snoop. He even told me he was going to meet just her alone for drinks when he went to the city for business (and had changed his hotel booking to be away from his business partner at the last minute) as he knew damn well it was the last thing I thought he would do. I thought she was just a friend cheering him out of his 'depression'. Obviously, now I hate myself for my own cow-like trusting stupidity. even writing it down here makes me want to batter my head on the keyboard. I have 4 A-Levels and two degrees FFS!!! Anyway, back on topic, if I were you I would just set my mind at rest, find out though be prepared for the worst, and stop fretting about what it might or might not be. It will make you ill.

I agree with HoochieMomma. I should've trusted my instincts ~ in fact I think I did, but stuck my head in the sand when he denied there was anyone else...there was. At least one . Definitely trust your instincts.
I hope you are ok. I feel for you.x

I agree with Solo trust your instinct. I done pretty much the same thing, had the gut instinct that there was someone else but believed his constant denials. I was right in the end.

For those who said he wouldnt leave his phone at home, my H did leave his phone at home several times while I now know he was meeting the OW and I checked it so many times but kept coming up with nothing. Probally why I believed him as although I had the feeling I had no proof. Turns out though he bought ANOTHER phone just for the OW and staff at work to ring when I rang his work place looking for him.

As for the OP I probally wouldnt confront him just yet but would go looking for more proof but thats just me.

Good luck with whatever you do from here.

Hi everyone, and thank you for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate it.

I confronted him last night when the kid's had gone to bed. He completely denied it all and said his heart and life is me and the kids and he could and would NEVER cheat on us. The woman is a childhood friend who turns up out of the blue now and then and usually wants something (last time it was a job with his company, this time some help for her nephew with his CV). He admits that she is inappropriately flirtatious sometimes and that he isn't always firm enough with her (ie. he reckons he had no intention of meeting her on Friday as he was looking after the kids, but was just giving her the kiss off telling her he was ill). I said I thought he was playing a dangerous game allowing her to be so familiar with him if nothing was going on, and that he needed to be more firm - or cut all contact. He agreed, said he would do anything I wanted, he would never hurt me etc etc.

I am mostly satisfied that nothing is going on, but I am fighting this fact: that although my gut says he wouldn't cheat, he has never given me any reason to believe he would, he is a loving and attentive husband and father etc, there is a tiny, logical bit of my brain that thinks his explanations don't quite add up. I still feel slightly uneasy.

What do you do in that situation? No way could I install spyware on his computer. Just not me. Plus he is a complete techno geek and would probably suss. Obviously he will now keep his phone and computer close if he is messing about.

Oh, I hate this! I am suspicious now, and I have never been like this I would rather just walk in on my Dh in bed with someone than have to go through months and months of sneaking about and wondering 'what if?'

Oh, and he said the IM messaging ended with her message about 'making him feel better' because he didn't know what to say to that, thought it was a bit off and just left it at that. I said 'I am married, so let's not have this conversation' would have been appropriate . Then he said 'Look, I have made it clear to her in the past that I wasn't into the flirting thing. I thought she had got the message'. I suppose I could construe the email conversation between them - where he said he didn't want any 'further complications' - that way if I were giving him the benefit of the doubt. but it just wasnt explciit enough for me. I was pregnant in 2004. Surely he should/could have said 'I am married, my wife is pregnant. Not interested!' if he wasn't, rather some guff about 'complications'.

Oh, I dunno.

I would try to move on from it now. You asked him about it and he has said there is nothing in it and when you asked him to cut contact or be firmer he seems agreeable.

If its only a tiny bit of you that doubts the story id try to put it to the back of your mind. If there are no other big changes in his attitude and the way he is at home give him the benefit of the doubt.

If he has previously been open with his phone and computer and now you have mentioned this to him he suddenly changes his behaviour I would probally have to ask him why the changes. See how things go from now.

Tbh, I think I would've made a note of her phone number and email address and confronted her.

I hope you get to a satisfactory conclusion for you to be able to put this all behind you. It's not a nice place to be at all IME.

The anymore complications thing would make me think he would like to be with her if he wasn't married.

So sorry for you having this worry.

It sounds to me like he's on the level. OK, he didn't say explicitly "I'm not interested in you, I'm married" etc but so what? At worst, there may have been some very mild flirtation on his part as well, but not necessarily. Being very blunt with her could be a bit hurtful to her - kinder to say 'I don't need any complications'.

I suspect you will now be a little more inclined to check his phone and emails, but hopefully you'll soon see that there's nothing to worry about.

It's up to you whether you ask him to cut off all contact now - I know that I would.

Good luck. I am usually ultra-suspicious, btw, but his explanation is perfectly plausible.

Out of interest, was he at all annoyed with you for looking at his IM, phone and emails?

at best it sounds as though you need to do a bit of 'relationship fortification'..he has made a couple of bad moves (in good faith or otherwise)e.g. not sharing this stuff with you before,and the 'kind' way he let her down.

Both of these dilute your bond a bit...he need to remember who he is commited to and HOW TO BE COMMITED.

i found a great book recently called ' not just friends: how to regain your sanity after an affair'(or something similar) it has great chapters on alot of peripheral relationship issues re 'affairs'

really hth x

I think it sounds as if you believe him.

It may be that he is enjoying the attention but it may be nothing more than that, and he would feel guilty about that if you confronted him cos that is innapropriate, but you have confronted him and that may be enough for him to realise his silliness.

Good for you for being firm.

Hope this all works out well.

(btw women who flirt with other peoples husbands are really unnatractive saddos)