Found condoms and an odd receipt

[guttedandworried]

Its not good is it??

DH bought me and our 2 DD identical fragrance gift sets for Xmas. All in an indentical gift bag.

He joked with me that it was a buy 2 get 3rd free deal.

Well tonite for some totally random unknown reason I found his wallet on the bed and I dont know why but I nosied through it.

I found 2 receipts for this gift set. It was a BOGOF deal. He paid for the first 2 sets with his debit card, then 5 minutes later purchased another 2 sets (identical) but this time with cash.

3 sets are accounted for between me and our 2 DD. Where is the 4th? and why buy the 2nd 2 with cash not card?

This got my mind racing. So I went through his trouser pockets and found 2 condoms. 2 of ours - well same brand etc ( we use condoms atm).

He has been off work since Xmas eve but on call and has been called into work almost everyday (except Xmas day). He has been gone hours everytime. He has openly said he may or has popped into town to check out a few sales on his way home. TBH - the nature of his job and his call outs mean he could be out for 1 hour or 10 hours - so that means nothing. But the trousers he wore to work this week are the ones with the condoms in.

When he was called in on Boxing Day - he made some comment about not needing/bothering to wear his overalls and just went in his casual clothes. Not too unusual - as he sometimes does not bother with overalls BUT these are brand spanking new trousers he had for Xmas.

Maybe I am reading too much into everything else but the condoms and the receipt alone are enough to make my blood run cold.

I have been snooping since he has gone to bed. I cannot get onto his laptop as I cannot find the power supply for it. But in his laptop bag I found a gift bag (similar but not the same as the ones me and the girls had our Xmas gifts in). I cannot think of anything else he brought me, the girls, his mum etc that the gift bag would have come with.

I want to snoop in the car - but he has brought the company car home tonite and although I am sat here with the keys I am too scared to try opening it etc incase an alarm or something goes off!!

I have decided not to confront him yet and to see what else turns up in the coming days. I KNOW he wont admit to anything even with the condoms etc.

I am not jumping to conclusions am I? . What would you think if you found a reciept like I did (and there is question of WHERE is missing fragrance set)and 2 condoms in you OH trouser pocket?

Sorry for sounding so dumb - part of me is in calm shock the other is in part denial. I cant be doing with this atm - not that I have a choice.

But how can you love your other half to bits but do the dirty on them? It does not add up. To go ahead with having a fling/affair you cannot say wholeheartedly that you love them to bits, otherwise you would not do anything to hurt them. Surely?

I very much doubt that if those who have had it done to them, have never ever looked back and spent months maybe years afterwards with the niggles of doubt and suspicion eating away at them.

It is with you for the rest of your life. You don't just forget and move on, and as for forgiving someone, i just couldnt do it. But that is me.

A bit off track but perhaps illuminating. When my sons were younger they seemed to have quite a large circle of schoolfriends that they went to play with or on sleepovers. There were two families that I really rather envied because they seemed so contented and happy - one two doctors with 4 children and a lovely friendly home absoloutley delightful, the second family were also the nicest happiest family you could hope to meet, always doing things together. I used to go home and think our family life was so boring and mundane compared with the leisurely laid back sociable lifestyles of these two families -
guess which two couples got divorced before the children were 10. I think appearing very happy is sometimes a bit of an act - or maybe all that relaxed parenting and socialising just sends people off into the arms of another ( one was an affair, the other was just one parent having enough of family living)

I'm not joining in the debate about whether you "should" or would stay after an affair. I've been the cheated wife (more than once) and I know how it feels. I've also slept with married men [pause while MN tears Grace to pieces] ... and know for sure it didn't mean anything, as regards their marriage!

As those of us who've been there - on any side - know, there's far more to a marriage than sexual fidelity. People don't throw it away lightly. People do make mistakes.

Also, infidelity is much more common than you may want to realise.

Now, I don't know how Gutted is going to respond to being cheated twice. She must be going through hell right now. I remember it. My own feeling is that his refusal to take her to his locker was stupendously insensitive. That - not the flaming gift set - is more of a worry, I think. He doesn't understand how nervy she is, following the last event, and she needs hugs not yelling.

But. He might have realised that by tonight, or tomorrow. He might be kicking himself for putting her through this again. It simply isn't a straight yes-or-no issue.

I've know people leave their partners, following an infidelity, and be very sorry they did. I've known partners leave their marriages because their DP couldn't forgive. And I've know more marriages continue after an affair, happily & successfully.

Gutted, I hope he does wake up and put your mind at rest. Male pride can be very stupid sometimes. The best news, for me, would be to hear he's understood how hurt you are and goes out of his way to help make it up to you. It really is all about the two people you are, your individual marriage - and your long-term wellbeing. Above all, be very kind to yourself. You matter.

I think that love changes and over time there are times when there are lows and highs.
I think a lot of people can get 'caught' when there is a low, and an affair is an escape from that and i do believe it can happen to many of us.
It does not mean you do not love your spouse it means that at that time you are being very selfish and putting your own needs above anyone elses.
Caught in this self destruct mode it is very difficult to see the hurt that is bound to happen.

After my h affair we both did a lot of work and i think we both know ourselves better.
I hope i never find myself in such a situation but i feel i would be better equipped to cope, and i feel my h has learnt to be far less selfish.
If i threw him out some other woman would benefit from all that work on himself. I think i have a new improved version now.

So, if you took someone back after an affair, surely having sex must be really difficult. I could not phsycially do it without imagining him with her doing the same.

Well, sex is different with every partner isn't it? Whatever it was like with 'her', it wasn't the same as with you! And you're the one he loves enough to share his life with ...

Going back to it after you've discovered an affair IS hard; you can't help feeling weird & insecure about it. But - well, it's like getting back in the saddle after a fall (not literally of course).

We think you have to feel like it before having sex. But, actually, having sex can make you feel like it more

I know sex is different with people, but to put it bluntly if your partner had been sufficiently turned on to go the whole hog with another person, would sicken me more than anything else. To think of that intimacy with someone else,then return to me. No thanks.

To the person who felt 'empowered' by the fact her husband had an affair must be deluded surely?

WDISR, I can only speak from my experience but I wouldn't say my escapades with other people's husbands were intimate. Physically, yes, but not emotionally. As a full-time partner, you bring a lot more complexity to bed with you. It makes a difference

Nope, I believe she was saying it strengthened their relationship because he decided to really get to know her & care about her feelings.

I think the conclusion being here, we all have different views on what an affair does or doesn't do, whether we forgive or do not.

All I hope is that if it happens to me you lot will be here and be nice, and not make me eat my words.

As for the OP, I can only feel very I do believe that if he has been cheating again she won't get over it this time. Reckon the D word might be in order.

Thats the impression I got.

Dit, why are you always so aggresive?

Added: When you said "sufficiently turned on" perhaps you're thinking about a dating situation, with the slow build-up and everything? Much more likely it's a drunken tumble that should never have happened. Which doesn't make it okay but, tbh, doesn't threaten a relationship very much.

dittany my post is 7 above yours. Of course I'm not bragging.

Clearly she does, hopefully she will come back to us and let us know how she is getting on.

Thank you for your forgivness Dittany, that means a lot

I was trying to raise the possibility that the bloke may have done the nasty over the Christmas period - and, if he did, he was totally in the wrong - but should now be getting his head around his wife's hurt feelings.

I'm still not explaining myself very well, am I? I fell into bed with other people's husbands a few times in the past. Both parties were drunk; there was nothing of the 'affair' about it. I'm obviously not saying it was clever of me (or them) but it would have been the most horrendous waste if any of those marriages have broken down because of it. They are still happily married.

I am not arrogant enough to think you care what I think Dittany but I would never have you down as agressive.

Gutted - gut feeling - what do you want to do? Forget for a minute what he may have done, what do you want?

Dittany- er, yes BUT if the OW or the erring spouse says it was not an affair,just a quick bit of sex,that might help the other person get it into perspective.

IMO there are people who have affairs and people who have sex-on-the-side. The 2 are very different.

I think it is very easy to get all Victorian about sex, which is just another appetite. It's not what happens between the covers that matters; it's what is happening in your heads. There are much worse things than a fling- gambling, debt, drugs, murder.....

The OP needs to discover which, if either, is happening here- and what she intends to do about it.

Dit- you simply don't know how the other party would feel it tables were turned. You are making a very general assumption based on...what? Your own perspective.

People have very different values and attitudes to extra marital sex. Some women turn a blind eye- so do some men.

For some people it is marriage breaker, for others it is hiccup.

You cannot possibly know what it means to everyone. You only know how you think you would react ( and I am assuming your reaction is academic rather than based on experience of it from either side.)

If I may say so, you tend to react rather fiercely to anyone whose views differ from yours, as if there is only one way of looking at anything- the Dit way

Now you and I may have had our ups and downs on other threads, but I am fully able to acknowledge that how I see things is not always the same as the next man/woman.

What I do know, being quite long in the tooth and with quite a bit of varied life-experience, is that there are no clear answers in matters of the heart. No 2 couples are alike, no 2 marriages are alike, and what one couple accepts within a marriage is very unique to that couple.

Coming back to your orignal point, the point I was making is that if the erring partner says the daliance was pretty meaningless, then their partner should be slightly reassured, as it can change their perspective somewhat by knowing that.

I think the fact that he wouldn't let you see in the locker is really bad. It doesn't necessarily mean that there's something damning in there, but just the fact that you were so upset and he wasn't even bothered about reassuring you is awful.

I don't know. I think you have a lot of reasons to be suspicious.