Is my partner cheating on me?

[harrierhom]

My partner and i have been together for 3 years, but has started acting oddly around me, being secretive, spliiting out ebay, paypal and shared facebook accounts (and deleting all her friends from it). This started a couple of months ago, before she started coming off anti depressants. She is currently on half a dose. Maybe that?s what?s causing it, don?t know, but last night she had a go at me in front of my son, for using facebook! And asked me why I started using it again now that she had set up her own. So I asked her why she needed to set up her own when we already had one, especially as I (still) only go on there occasionally. Then she had a another go because I had re friend requested some of her friends after she deleted everyone she knows from our original one. Her answer was that she needed her own space and a bit of privacy. That doesn?t sound like a ?couple? thing to me.

So from here it looks like I am not allowed to use facebook, and if I do I am not allowed to have her friends as my friends even though they are my friends. Again that doesn?t sound like a couple thing to me.

I also found out that she had been secretly texting a bloke for nearly 6 months, and previously arranged to meet him about a year ago.

She has also changed her passwords to some 14 character thing, when in the past we shared our passwords (she still knows all mine). That and all the above makes it look to me like she is hiding something and if I share her friends I get to see all her posts which it seems she doesn?t want me to see.

I found out last night that she has friend requested (and had acceped) an old boyfriend who in the past she texted and phoned quite regularly, I didn?t mind previously as she always said he was just her next door neighbour from a few years a go and that was who she got her old hamster from and he was only a friend. Her daughter let it slip a couple of months ago that they went out together for nearly a year and yet my partner initially denied it. So why lie?

So again its ok for her to have ex boyfriends on facebook and in her phone, to secretly text another bloke for 6 months and secretly arrange to meet him a year ago (although I did find out), yet she went bonkers when I friend requested a girl that used to live next door to me when I was a kid and last saw when I was about 15. And I did have nothing to do with her romantically or otherwise.

I dunno whats going on, we were going to set up a business tgether but she has also gone cold on that. So I am going to sort of look out for myself at the moment, and going to invest in my own business. If she doesn?t hurry up and make up her mind with the business, the money earmarked to set up will get spent on the photo stuff that I need to run my own business. She will have cut off her nose to spite her face, and tbh I am not so sure I want to invest in both of us right now. I love her to bits but this is really unsettling me, I don?t need it.

It's a possibility. If she's not cheating, something is going on. You can either sit down and talk openly about how this sudden secrecy is making you feel or gather some 'evidence' before you talk to her.

If she is cheating and you confront her now she will deny everything. If you have some concrete evidence to confront her with she will not be able to deny it. Good luck.

Everyone has their own opinion on what counts as cheating . For some it's a full blown affair for others it's simply lying about a friend of the opposite sex. For me it's a case of being disloyal and unfaithful - and to me that doesnt always involve a full blown affair .
Maybe try and work out whats acceptable to you and whats not 1st.
The try and find out whats going on - unfortuantly this means snooping. If you're not happy about doing than and essentially you trust her then alls good .
However if you don't trust her then snooping or not - somethings up and by that I mean in your relationship (regardless of cheating).
If you don't find a bit of dectective work then go for it - before asking questions , as in my experience cheaters LIE.

Sounds to me though, thats she's just still a bit low and looking for attention and not neccesarily an affair. And the secrecy thing ... well maybe she just feels 'wrong' about it or even embarassed.

On the advice of above i have installed a keylogger on my computer and this morning, i found that there was a unknown facebook account and there was only her and the ex boyfriend mentioned above signed to it. Also a hotmail account i had not heared of and several chatroom accounts setup in her maiden name (which she has not used since 2000), all set up within the last 6 months or so.

Something else that dropped into my mind, tho i dontlike talking about it, was after we went on holiday last year, she was offish with me for the duration and when we got back she arranged to meet this old friend of hers (female she said) that she had not seen or years (and has not spoken too since). The night she went, i decided to wait up for her and when she came in, i was sat in the living room with the lights out.
As she came in she pulled her panties off and stuck them straight in the washing machine. By the time i plucked up the courage to ask why, the was cycle was on and her explanation was that she had wet herself, yet no other clothes went into the machine or were even wet. This was about a month after the secret texting started. I accepted her answer at the time but now lots of little things thati thought were coincidences are starting to come together to make a bigger picture.

Things seem to be looking bad from here.

Recently my partner confessed to having a previous life of affairs and flings before she met me. One of the affairs she had was weeks after she married her husband who she had lived with for 8 years previously, she met a bloke while they were on honeymoon, then told her hubby that she had to go away on a course for a week, but that was a lie because she went on holiday with the bloke! Then she told me i was the only person she had not cheated on ever.

With whats happened above i am starting to think that might not be true and leopards indeed do not change their spots.

I also found out that a bloke she used to work with has been popping round for a coffee on a regular basis, i found out not because she told me but because he popped round unnanounced when a friend of mine was staying with us for a couple of weeks. She now works part time, finishing at 1pm and i dont get home til 6:30, so i am now wondering what she gets upto during the afternoons. The reason she left her last job was because she wanted time to do the housework so we dont have to do it in the evenings. Well, she has been in the job for the last month, no extra housework is getting done, sometimes she doesnt even cook tea anymore, yet she is motstly unavailable by mobile or landline during the afternoons as she says she is "out visiting her friends".

I am starting to feel that I am being used as a meal ticket and roof for her and her kids.

Together we decided to start a business so i have put my notice into work (i am in the RAF and have been for 25 years) but as i said in a previous post she has changed her mind about the business, and that was the reason I was leaving the RAF. Its now too late to withdraw my notice, so I will have to look for a job as my side of the business will not pay the mortgage on its own and if i have to get a job, i will not have time to carry out my own business.

I dont really need this as my previous relationship ended after 18 years of marriage because I had been mentally abused my my wife for about the last 15 years.

Looks pretty damning now i have written it all down in one place. I feel very sad at the prospect that it looks like i will have to start my life all over again

er... call me hard / callous / insensitive but is this real?

The penultimate sentence of your final post says it all.... "I had been mentally abusing my wife for about fifteen years".

I am not trying to judge here and we dont have all facts but do you think your wife is looking to leave you because there is more to this relationship than you are posting here?

Is your wife a MNetter?

Why have you posted this on this forum?

I don't think that's what he meant, BBM. i read it as "I had been mentally abused by my wife for about the last 15 years". Just a typo, I thought.

Hi There,

It would certainly seem that she is unhappy at least. She is withdrawing from you. I wonder if it's possible fo ryou to talk to her, without blaming yourself or her, abtu what you would both like - ideally - from yuor relationship?

I just wonder if she feels she needs attention or excitement and she feels she doesn't get it at home. (by the way, no one does - if that's the case she needs to get real). But it might give you an insight into this strange behaviour? The washing machine incident is extremely odd I agree.

Mentally abusing wife???? WTF??? Sincerely hope this is not taking place now.

it sounds like it to me op...sorry,but she doesnt sound at all comitted to you.

He said HE had been mentally abused by HIS WIFE, NOT that he was the abuser. It happens; some women are psychopaths too, you know (have a look at some of the toxic mothers on the NPD thread, for example).

So sorry Harrier -- it sounds like she's definitely cheating on you, and that this isn't a one-off and isn't going to stop. There are plenty of nice women out there who wouldn't dream of doing such a thing; I think it's time you drew a line under this relationship, sadly.

"The reason she left her last job was because she wanted time to do the housework so we dont have to do it in the evenings."

Yes. I think she is cheating on you. With the ex, and the bloke she has been texting for 6 months, and the bloke who drops round for 'coffee' while she is meant to be doing the 'housework' and most definitely with the 'friend' she is seeing in the afternoons when you are trying to contact her.

Busy lady.

i was mentally abused by my ex wife for the last 15 years of our marriage, but blamed myself for it. Much in the same way as a lot pf physically abused people do. She treat me like i didnt matter and costantly said "you have to be cruel to be kind", embarrasing me in front of people and friends with the thing she said about me. I never stopped her (or my current partner from doing anything, yet while it was OK for her to go out, i got nothingbut grief for even suggesting i was going out. So in the end i didnt bother. I lost my best friend as she did not ike him and basically banned me from seeing him ad my other friends. I completely lost my self esteem and confidence and as a result I ended up on prozac for the last 2 years of that under a psychiaterist. The reason i did not leave before was that i could not face leaving my children. I do not expect everyone to understand what it was like, but those of you out there who have been on the recieving end of an abusive relationship, mentally or physically will know what i mean.

I have tried to talk to my current partner several times about what is going on but as soon as I ask she gets defensive and angry and says everything is fine and thats nothings wrong, our sex life was fantastic until about the time the texting started, then it became a chore for her, she isnt interested at all now, no matter what I try.

Thank you all for your replies, when i moved in with her i uprooted myself 60 miles across the country and bought a house for us. All my friends are miles away and my family over 200 miles away. Where i live all my frieds are her friends because i know no one in the area ad its difficult to make local friends when i work so far away. That makes it diffiult to talk to anyone in an unbiassed fashion.

So thank you all for being there.

thank you beanlet, when i left her she got very angry and she turned violent and put me in hospital after cracking my head open.

Sorry but I definately think she is cheating.

Thank you for being honest, i feel my heart sinking as i love her so much, and i had planned on spending the rest of our lives together.

This all sounds desperately sad for you - I think you need to walk away calmly, knowing you've done what you can to make things work. There are nice, faithful people out there.

What are you getting out of this relationship? Why are you staying? You obviously don't trust your partner, so why are you putting yourself through this?

She does sound like she's either cheating or extremely likely to cheat, she's also a liar and that you already know..

Glad you got away from your ex, but it seems you jumped from the kettle to the frying pan with this one

CB i think you are right, i think i am scared of having to start all over again, again.

I am seeing the friend of mine that my ex wife banned me from seeing today. He is on both our facebook acounts.

Coincidentally he used to work with a bloke that had the same name as my current partners ex boyfriend. I am going to ask him to contact her "unknown to me" saying that a freind suggestion came up with his name on it and that it looks a little odd that its only her and her ex on it, and that he has not said owt to me but he is looking out for his mate.

My partner full well knows that I found out that my mates partner serially cheated on him while he was on deplyment in the Gulf for 4 months, and I let him know. "looking out for him"

He would effectively be doing the same for me.

It will be interesting to see her reaction.

I used to trust her CB until all this started. I wasnt looking for problems or spying, these things just came to my attention. The secret texting hit me badly, but her explanation of "i knew you'd react like this, theres nothing going on" i sort of accepted. Well if she had mentioned it in the first place, oh i dont know, and there genuinely was nothing going on, i would not have all these trust issues now. I think (know?) i have been burying my head in the sand.

But like I said above, it now looks very damning. I can feel my insides knotting up as i type and i feel like crying.

Incredibly sorry to hear that Harrier; my DH's first wife tried to kill him with a knife in an alcoholic rage. It was then that he decided he really had to leave, and that there was nothing left of the marriage to salvage.

Of course she's cheating! Dump her asap. You sound like you have let her get away with ridiculous behaviour. It's only been 3 years out of your life, adn you're not married to her. Unless your son is now uber-fond of her, I'd leg it asap, personally.

Hang in there; many, many people on here have been on the receiving end of what you describe, and it's horrible -- but you will survive.

Incidentally, how long after you split up with your ex did you meet your current partner?

Ah Harrier..

What are you hoping to achieve by enlisting the help of your friend?

If she stops contact with her fella because of your friend's word with her, it will only be because she was going to get 'caught out'? Not because she's suddenly grown some morals.. or a backbone

It sounds as if that's what you want? And then you can continue on pleading ignorance and pretending life is hunky dory?

Why do you think you deserve so little? How can you gain trust back if you sweep this under the carpet? She'll just do it again.. but not be so fucking obvious as to get caught out the next time

I realise this must be a horribly hurtful time for you, but you need to work on what's best for you - and she aint it

Sorry you are going through this, it is not at all nice. Have been on the receiving end of a cheating spouse. Trust your instincts, most cheating spouses lie when confronted and you will get loads of excuses. It is horrible, but you need to know the truth. Look after yourself and put all plans to go into business with her firmly on hold until you can see what is realy happening here. Take care

I am sorry you are going through this too...

Have you ever looked at how possibly low your own self-esteem is? From reading your posts I get the feeling it is incredibly low.

Have you thought you should concentrate on YOU and not your partner...I think you deserve to basically feel good about yourself- everyone does.

AW and CB, I lefy my wife and met my new partner 6 months later, and everything seemed perfect like we were made to be together. I had ever really experienced that feeling ever. I fell head over heels with her and still feel that.

My kids are 18 and 20, hers are 11 and 14 but my kids stopped talking to me when i left their mum. It is only in the last few months that we have got a relationship back and that was started my my oldest kid having a really bad time with his mum and he needed me. So we went and spent a weekend in Germany to get him away from it all and we talked a lot.

They have both come round now and they have even struck up a relationship with my partner.

I am trying to find a way of catching her out, as i dont want to leave her if its all dome in innocence. Any ideas?

The previous relationship she had before me (even though she cheated on him) was bad because he hit her about and she lost all her friends, was banned from going out, not allowed on social internet sites and the like. She got pregnant with him and after she left him had the baby terminated. She then got sterilised so in her words " she could have a bit of fun with less risk"

I guess i am hoping that the reason she is hiding stuff and acting this way is because she is afraid to say as a result of that relationship. Tho i think i may be fooling myself.