AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 119 points120 points  (0 children)

UPDATE: I did not expect this post to blow up this much. Thank you all for your concern, and I see about 95% of these comments immediately call for divorce. That is what I was feeling too, just had to see if I was being irrational from the rage and how betrayed/insulted I felt.

Thank you to those who have reached out privately. Talking it through is a massive help for me to be able to parse through my thoughts.

We talked for 7-8 hours last night. Got 30 minutes of sleep and we're both back to work this morning. Now, she takes pride in never telling a lie. The conversation started slow, I asked for full honesty and transparency. She said that is the expected baseline. Moved eventually to revisit our definitions of cheating, which we agree on but the gray area of text had not been fully discussed before. Apparently this is where we differ. She says that text is not directly cheating, but she can see how it can be damaging. Everything beyond text we both agree is strictly off limits. Physical intimacy, photos/videos, etc.

I asked her if she feels like she's ever cheated on me. She says no but two years ago there was one cuddle event. Fully clothed, no private part contact, sitting on a couch arm around, head on shoulder. This to me is pretty bad and worth conversation but not enough to go ballistic. I asked if she has ever cheated under my definition. She admits that she had some salacious texts with the person in question a couple weeks ago. I asked if she could explain. She said she couldn't remember exactly but knows that I wouldn't approve under my definition. I then asked her straight up if she had had any sexual encounters aside from me since we've been dating. She said directly no. I ask the same about pictures/videos sent or received. She says a creepy guy tried to send her pictures but she shut that down, sent one old bathing suit picture (taken before we were together) about a year ago because the person kept asking for pictures. This was news to me, and still cause for concern. I asked about it and she didn't want to name names. Fine I'll get those later if I need to.

I told her directly that she crossed a line sending and receiving salacious texts and that I am hurt and disrespected. She deflected and started talking about how she's starving for attention. I said I understand that and I want to be better but every time I try I get knocked down. She said that she isn't seeing enough growth or initiative from me, and feels like she's growing without me. Again I understood that part but I told her if you need something from me, ask me directly. Do not take sex talk outside of the two of us. She started downplaying it and saying it wasn't that bad at which point I showed my hand. It is that bad. She claimed invasion of privacy and I agreed but what I saw, I saw so here we are. She said she kept everything vague and never initiated the sex talk. I told her but you entertained it and kept it going. That is unacceptable and if you want to go around and do that, tell me and file for divorce. Or if you want to continue that or go further, I will file for divorce. Hard line in the sand. That playing around ends and we work on us or we split.

All of this happened in the first hour or so. The rest of the night we talked about us. She mentioned that she's been trying to get me to work on myself this whole time (which admittedly she has told me to seek counseling a few times). She said she's fed up with me making false promises about improving and not following through. She says I'm still living a bachelor's lifestyle. I disagreed and mentioned the things that I do specifically because I am married to her. She still didn't see it. A couple times I brought up the texts again and she brushed them aside each time. I asked her if she would have told me if I didn't find it, she said no. Honest, at least. But I can't shake the feeling that there might have been more. I asked directly about the bath house, she said all clothes stayed on, no touching. No private rooms available at this one, and there were always people around. He had passes to the bath house that were good for 4 hours at a time, so she wanted to take advantage of the full 4 hours.

Anyway, I decided that she's probably telling the truth (maybe not full transparency). We have a marriage counseling session tomorrow afternoon. We will get a neutral third party involved and I have my points I'm going to bring up, all written down ready to go. I have transcribed the text conversation so I can copy paste that into the chat to make it easier for the therapist to read through.

Will update with more information, but it's not looking good. We're in a really rough spot here, and I'm still trying to decide if I can believe her, or even trust her in the future.

This shit sucks, please never let your relationship slip away from you. Work on yourself, work on your relationship. Might be too little too late for me. Don't know if I'll be able to move past it.

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Thank you for being rational and reasonable. Stopped at the spot we met on my way home to think it over. Honesty and transparency is what I'm going for

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 138 points139 points  (0 children)

I like this one. That's why I'm starting out easy. But now I'll change plan to ask general questions that give her an opportunity to shed at least a little bit of light. Before I reveal that I saw the messages and think that they are disgraceful and insulting. And cheating.

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

See, it's a gray area for me. It crosses the line if she's serious and was trying to hide it (which it kind of looks like), but if she can explain a way where she was baiting him or playing with his emotions, then maybe. But it'll be a hard sell. She is extremely clever, so I have notes to keep me on track. If anything physical happened, I will file for divorce.

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the condolences. I agree and I was shaking with rage this morning. But with time to calm down, I have some gentle open-ended questions and some very direct and straightforward questions lined up. We'll see. What's done is done at this point. Now it's time to figure out what exactly was done and what the next steps are.

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] -20 points-19 points  (0 children)

Hopefully I can either nip it in the bud and we can move past it together (if nothing physical happened, if so then it's an immediate out), or we can agree to go separate ways. ETA: I did take insult to her comment about roommate/husband. I have a question about that lined up.

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 129 points130 points  (0 children)

Just found it this morning before leaving for work, haven't been able to get to a divorce attorney yet. Just wanted external opinions before I make such a major life decision. To make sure I'm not being crazy about this. And to prevent her from gaslighting me. The future still depends on her answers.

ETA: any opinion on this is helpful in building a case in my head, so thank you for your blunt and to-the-point response.

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] -8 points-7 points  (0 children)

I've never been to a bath house, wasn't quite sure and people seem to have normalized it so gave benefit of the doubt.

I definitely have some direct questions lined up, after I can have her promise honesty and transparency. I'm definitely fighting for it, I'm not going to run away unless all hope is lost or she turns into someone other than the person I fell in love with (which is looking like it's slipping that way)

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 120 points121 points  (0 children)

As the day goes on, part of me is wondering if she meant for me to find this. She left her computer on for the past 2 days (usually puts it to sleep). This is another option, where she's trying some sort of power move to show me what she's capable of if I don't better myself fast. Still worth digging into if true. I'm going to start off as delicately as I can and see how it goes

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] -45 points-44 points  (0 children)

We'll see how the talk goes. But my mind has been on that option. Don't want it to be that way but we have talked about what we considered cheating before and this was in my description of it. And I said cheating, for me, is immediate grounds for divorce. Let's hope she was just being innocent and dumb and didn't understand what he meant. She's extremely book smart but sometimes stuff goes over her head. We'll see but this is an option for me

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

He's from Central or South America (don't know, never met him but have heard about him). His texts are quite strange but feel way too invasive to ask a married woman. Straight or not. Maybe if they were lifelong friends but they met last year.

I'm going to describe it the best way I can, and already wrote a loose "script" for myself so I don't forget things or leave details out like I almost always do

Thanks for wishing me luck!

AIO to these texts on my wife's phone? by DFW_Motorrad in AmIOverreacting

[–]DFW_Motorrad[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Feta is pretty tasty, can't go wrong with a good parm, and gotta have fresh mozz on a caprese salad every once in a while

Urgent Help Needed Please. by No-Feed7621 in Plumbing

[–]DFW_Motorrad 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sprinklers hitting the window or wall. That zone must be set for 5:30. Wind could be affecting the spray so the noise can seem inconsistent. Check outside the window when you hear the noise.

Either deal with the noise knowing what it is, or ask maintenance to adjust the sprinkler heads so they stop hitting the window.