Has anyone's instincts been wrong when it comes to cheating?

[reservoirdog1]

StartingOver, your posts are illogical and at odds with each other.

 

I agree that generally a couple should not keep secrets from one another, though there are some things you should never tell your mate. For example, if you have a dalliance or a full-blown affair and end it before your mate discover it, you take that secrete to your grave. You don't cause your mate the unspeakable pain s/he will endure when they learn of the affair just to assuage your guilt. That's the price you have to pay for cheating.

 

Sally, if you mistrust you man so much that you feel the need to spy on him, you should not be marrying him in one month, since there is something fundamentally wrong with your relationship and you marriage is doomed to failure.

 

So, what you're saying is, you're in the wrong if you don't trust your SO/finance/spouse and shouldn't marry/be married to them. So, if you want to stay married, you have to turn a blind eye to any suspicions you may develop.

 

At the same time, you're saying that the cheater is stupid to be honest with their spouse as long as it ends before the spouse discovers the affair.

 

What is wrong with everyone anymore? Nobody trusts one another and based on the postings on this site and cheating seems to be almost acceptable.

 

Perhaps trust wouldn't be as much of a problem nowadays if there weren't people who, like you apparently, believe in lying and deceiving their SOs and never coming clean about it unless they get caught.

 

Sorry to flame, but I don't understand how your statements can be reconciled at all: "If you're suspicious, you shouldn't be with them." "If you cheat, don't come clean." "Why don't people trust anymore?"

 

Welcome to Bizarro World.

[StartingAgain]

Well, I've been callled many things in my time, but never illogical. My statements are not at odds with one another. Indeed they are complimentary.

 

So, what you're saying is, you're in the wrong if you don't trust your SO/finance/spouse and shouldn't marry/be married to them. So, if you want to stay married, you have to turn a blind eye to any suspicions you may develop.

 

No, this is not what I'm saying at all. I didn't say you are "in the wrong" if you mistrust someone; I was only saying that you NEVER marry someone you don't trust, since marriage necessarily is BASED on mutual trust. What causes the mistrust is not so important as the mistrust itself. And no, I never once suggested that you turn a blind eye to suspicions. If you have suspicions, you confront your spouse and discuss them. You just have to make sure that your suspicions aren't groundless. But you see, here's the problem. I don't know about where you live bt the average American couple spends a mere 15 minute per week talking to one another. They scarcely know one another, much less how to discuss a problem of such magnitude without descending into chaos. So rather than face so potentially serious a question head-on the way they are supposed to, they start spying on one another. It's absurd.

 

At the same time, you're saying that the cheater is stupid to be honest with their spouse as long as it ends before the spouse discovers the affair.

 

No, I never said this at all. You used the word, stupid. Please don't reinterpret my words with your own colorations. I said that if you've had an affair or a dalliance and you've ended it, you do not disclose this to your spouse and cause them the exquisite pain it will invariably cause them. Rather, you handle your guilt silently and you take that secret to your grave. The information sill serve no useful purpose. Every marriage therapist on the planet would agree with me about this. If, on the other hand, you are discovered, you have to fess up. You never overtly lie to your spouse when confronted -- never. BTW, I used to believe the way you do about this. You know who changed my mind? A priest. His logic was quite clear. If you've committed the sin of adultry, you have to square this with God. If you tell your spouse without cause to do so, you cause him/her great pain, and have compounded your sin. His point of view is religious, but it's the exact same logic that the marriage therapists use.

 

Look, my friend, I don't speak in a vacuum. I am the ex-husband of an adultress. I saw the affair coming, tried to warn her off, but whe wouldn't listen. I won't go into the whole long story, since I've posted pieces of it before. But one afternoon, I came home from work and she was acting strangly, kind of distant and wouldn't look me in the eye. So I asked her straight out if she had sex with her friend that day (I knew she was meeting him for lunch). She hestated and admitted she had. I asked her to end the affair and she said she would. She told me and our marriage therapist several times that she'd ended it. I suspected that she hadn't, but I never once read her email, scoured her cell phone, monitored her use of the computer, etc. I certainly would have been justified at that point in doing so. As it turned out, I was correct; she had curtailed her affair, but she hadn't ended it. But I didn't know this until my lawyer obtained a copy of her cell phone records.

 

Now here's the kicker. Cheaters always have a justification for their waywardness. If you read my earlier post in this thread, you will know that she went into my email account (we had each others passwords) and found a link to a porn site in my browser history. As friend had sent this link to in with a "man, you gaotta check this s*** out." She immediately assumed I was into all sorts of weird stuff. I wasn't - I don't even like porn. I explained the matter to her, even showed her the email. But she said later that after finding that, she just knew I was up to no good and distrusted me. We had had a good marriage up until that day. It deteriorated from that point forward. She convinced herself that I was probably having an affair and that I was communicating through a secret MSN or Yahoo account. She'd look over my shoulder as I pulled up phone numbers from my cell and ask me who's number this or that one was. I use my cell only for business. Anyway, her "woman's intuition" told her I was up to no good and she figured that if I was doing it, she could too. She was wrong. Wrong on so many fronts.

 

Why she went into my computer account to begin with is a mystery, since I'd never done anything that would give her any cause for mistrust. I spent nearly all of my free time with her. Unless their was an emergency at work or a rush-hour traffic jam, you could almost set your watch by my arrival time home in the evening, and I always called if I was going to be more than a half hour late. I would always answer either my office or cell phone and and could always be found where I said I would be. Yet she violated my privacy, found something she hadn't expected, jumped to bizzare conclusions, allowed it to destroy her own integrity and, eventaully, our marriage.

 

So, so you flamed me. Big deal. I've been flamed before and probably will again. I don't mind being flamed when I'm behaving like an a-hole. I don't particulary appreciate being flamed by someone simply because he doesn't appear to understand my logic and takes the rather clear things I have said and twisted them into something I didn't. So consider yourself flamed back... Just a tad, since we're all here to discuss issue, not bully one another.

[reservoirdog1]

SA... okay, now that I know that we're approaching this question from the same perspective (as men who were betrayed by their XWs/TBXWs), things make a bit more sense. I wasn't trying to flame, I simply commented on what I saw as an inconsistency. Also, though I used the word "stupid", I didn't intend to imply that you'd used it. Sorry about that.

 

Part of our difference in approach with regard to disclosure is evidently to do with faith. I'm not religious, and most of the advice I've heard from counsellors is that a healthy relationship requires fidelity (obviously, no argument there) and, in the absence of that, honesty. In this context, the honesty is vital not from a moral perspective, but because there are always reasons (though not excuses) for cheating, however selfish or unfair those reasons may be. A person who has an affair but keeps it secret is probably ultimately either dooming the marriage or dooming him/herself to continued adultery, because the problems that led them to stray haven't been addressed. The betrayed spouse has no idea what the problems are because they don't know about the symptom. How can they be expected to build a healthy relationship without that knowledge? How can the betrayed spouse solve the problems that led the other to cheat if they don't know what the problems even are?

 

In my case, TBXW was miserable for pretty much the whole marriage and had multiple affairs. I didn't know about any of this till she finally confessed last summer. If she'd told me years ago that she was unhappy, or right after the first time she cheated (during the engagement, as it turned out) maybe we could have addressed the problems and fixed them. But she never did... she relied on marriage to solve the problems. But, marriage doesn't do that; it simply serves to amplify existing problems and make them worse. In my situation, I always thought TBXW were on the same page. Turns out, we weren't even reading the same book. Or, I was reading the book and she was watching TV.

 

Of course, in my view, the second reason for coming clean is that the betrayed spouse has a right to know who they're with, and to make their own decisions as to whether or not they can trust the cheater again or take further chances with their health, emotional or physical.

 

And, I too have had my own experiences with TBXW's attempts to displace her own guilt onto me. In the last 3 years of the marriage, I was in university full time, and every so often she'd say she was nervous about me being in school, surrounded by a bunch of young, single women. Fair enough... I was surrounded by young, single women. I looked, but I never touched, and I always reassured her that, if there was one thing she never had to worry about from me, it was that.

 

One time during school, I came home one evening and stumbled upon an email account I didn't know she had, and a link to philanderers.com. When she got home, I confronted her with this. She told me that she'd set up the email account to "bait" me, to see if I was cheating, and had been going to philanderers to look for signs that I was. This ounded fishy, so I told her to look me in the eye and tell me if she'd ever cheated on me. She looked me in the eye and lied. There were at least three affairs in her past by that point. But, like a naive idiot, I bought it. And, like you, I was a model of the faithful husband and never did anything that would have objectively caused her concern about my fidelity. And I had no concerns about hers until the night I found that email account... that's how well she'd hidden her tracks.

 

So, I think where you and I differ is simply the issue about disclosure. As much as it hurt me, I needed to know the truth, because having her humiliate me with her betrayal and keep me thinking she was faithful when she wasn't was almost as bad as the betrayal itself. I had a right to know the truth, and IMHO, so did you. So does any betrayed spouse.

[StartingAgain]

So, we have shown by example that men of good conscience may initially disagree, but find common ground through communication, and that conflict is not necessarily bad. I wonder why couples find this concept so hard to grasp? In any event, I don't want to hijack this thread with our debate, but leave it with I would very much enjoy discussing this with you over a beer. No doubt, we would find that our differences are even less than we may now believe and that the limitation of the medium is more the culprit than disparate philosophies.

 

BTW, I am not a religious man, certainly not a Christain-- an agnostic, really. But I have found that there is great wisdom in Christianity and much to be learned from it's more learned scholars.

[SoleMate]

Why would he stay with me if he wasn't happy and wanted someone else?

Lots of men do it. He wants her for certain things, and you for others. He's not a "one woman man".

 

He might even be "happy" and still want someone else. Some men think about these things differently from what you might expect.

[reservoirdog1]

In any event, I don't want to hijack this thread with our debate, but leave it with I would very much enjoy discussing this with you over a beer. No doubt, we would find that our differences are even less than we may now believe and that the limitation of the medium is more the culprit than disparate philosophies.

 

Sounds good mate... let me know if you're ever in the southwestern corner of Canada!

 

RD

[sally1530]

Of course, in my view, the second reason for coming clean is that the betrayed spouse has a right to know who they're with, and to make their own decisions as to whether or not they can trust the cheater again or take further chances with their health, emotional or physical.

 

 

I agree with that with the above statement. My ex-finac was acting pretty weired... not communicating with me and I discovered he had a private email address when he said his private email address and password to his sister on the phone while I was in the same room, his sisters email was down and she asked to use his... I dont think he remembered he didnt clean up his tracks... anyway, that was the only way I knew he even had a private email address and his password...it was almost like he wanted me to check so he could get caught and get out of the marriage. When I confronted him he was guilty and ashamed but said he didnt cheat.. well having your picture and profile and a sex site looking for action our entire relationship and emailing gals asking for naked pictures and more is not being honest and true to me. I felt horrible about looking.. but my gut was telling me something was seriously wrong... I knew it , but was afraid of what was going on..I knew he would never tell me and well if my life and health were at risk then it is my right to protect myself...especially if he doesnt care enough to be faithful or honest or respect me... hes supposed to love me if were going to walk down the isle... gezzz

 

Anyway after the wedding was cancelled, I moved out the next day , gave him the ring back and well we never saw each other again. He did send me a email or two in the past 3 months saying he is not sorry for what he did , has no guilt, said it was all my fault and that I didnt deserve him...well I didnt deserve a cheater and lier... thats for sure. His ego is so big that there is no room for someone to love him...because he loves himself too much to let anyone come even close to him. He will probably marry someday and have kids...but I will know that he will cheat on his wife too... because he couldnt address the fact that he did anything wrong, says that he will do it again and again. Period.

[Al]

Okay, it seems pretty clear that most people think that snooping around is wrong but let me just give some background to my relationship as to why I'm being so paranoid lately.

 

A short time after my boyfriend and I got together, I found out that his ex was pregnant but they didn't know if the baby was gonna be my boyfriend's or someone else's. I guess she went off birth control and my boyfriend didn't know, he actually found out later on from some of her friends. Then a few months later, I starting getting emails from a girl that claimed that she was pregnant with his second child and that they were together after him and I started dating. I never received any proof of this and the girl or whoever would never tell me her name so I gave my boyfriend the benefit of the doubt. Oh, and these emails went on for more than a year!

 

About six months ago, I found another ex girlfriend's number in his phone when I was looking up someone else's number (he knew that I was looking in his phone this time) and got a little upset. I do talk to an ex of mine but my boyfriend knows when and what we talk about. Finding the phone number made me feel like his contact with this ex was somewhat hidden and immediately I assumed the worst. I talked with one of his guy friends about it (a big no no, I know) and he said they were just friends. Well she finds out that I was asking questions and starts calling me and text messaging me that they went to parties together giving me dates and times that he supposedly called her. Well needless to say, she didn't know that I get the phone bills for our cell phones so I can see the calls that were made and her stories didn't add up with the calls from his phone so once again I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

 

Now I find messages from another ex stating she wants him in her bed. I dated a guy for 5 years before my current boyfriend and don't think I've ever dealt with so much drama before EVER! But I've also never felt so insecure about things in a relationship either. I don't know if everything that we've been through makes me worry so much or what. I do love my boyfriend and of course want to give him the benefit of the doubt with everything. My friends think I'm crazy but I just feel like I don't have solid proof to believe that he is cheating. Is it crazy for me to think this way? My boyfriend says that I get myself so worked up about things and always think the worst that when I do find something that really means nothing, I blow it out of proportion. I'm afraid that if I leave w/o the solid proof that I feel I need, I could be losing a good guy b/c my mind played tricks on me. But yet another part of me feels like I'm going to look like an idiot if I wait around and find out down the road that he really was cheating. What do I do?

[StartingAgain]

I dated a guy for 5 years before my current boyfriend and don't think I've ever dealt with so much drama before EVER! But I've also never felt so insecure about things in a relationship either.

 

I see you're being contacted by various women with whom your man has been involved, and quite frankly, I don't understand why these women would be contacting you at all for any reason other to yank you chain. This is certainly juvenile behavior. What I don't see is that you've sat down with your bf to talk to him about this.

 

What I see as the bigger problem is what you state: the drama and your insecurity in this relationship. I can certainly understand your insecurity. Rather than locking in on finding out whether or not he is cheating, you should be deciding if you really want to be in such a soap opera relationship. I know I would have ended the relationship in its earliest stage based on the things you have said. You don't say whether or not he ever determined if that baby was his or not. If a woman told me that she was pregnant and that there is a possibility that the baby was mine, there would be a paternity test done as soon as possible. This is because I would never walk away from my responsibility if the child were mine.

 

BTW, don't expect to get the truth from his male friends. They are bound to cover for him if he's up to no good. And, you know what, it really doesn't make any difference whether or not he's actually having sex with any of these women, he's concealing his communication with them and that in itself speaks volumes. This behavior in itself is intolerable.

 

What really may be going on here is that your heart knows that you are in a relationship that isn't right for you, but your mind thinks it needs a solid reason for ending it.

[LikkleMissConfused]

Starting again your first comment, I've experienced the same.

 

I wish I trusted my instincts and feelings earlier with my ex who cheated on me after I helped him buy a house thought we would get married soon and helped him by loaning him 10 thousand pounds and never saw a penny of it again. Now he is selling the house only to make a forty thousand pound profit and i've lost out.

 

He was cheating on me through the five years of our relationship. He mad eme feel insecure and ugly. My opinion is if you feel it your right and don't let it go just know the truth in your heart and leave.

[Al]

The thing I can't get out of my head is that we had a good relationship before the craziness with the emails started and the exgirlfriends. When we first started going out and he was out with friends, I never second guessed where he was or who he was with and he doesn't understand why that's all changed. I guess I should really trust him before I go trusting people that I don't know or aren't my friends but I think having all those situations in one relationship is hard. I used to look at all of these so called "events" in our relationship as things that would only make our relationship stronger. But how much can a couple go through before it's just too much to handle? Some of my friends think he's cheating while others agree that there is no solid proof and that with me looking so hard to find something wrong, I'm turning little things into nothing. They tell me that if we weren't meant to be, we both would have given up by now. But we've been through so much that it's hard to walk away.

[Al]

Oh, and one more thing why I'm having a hard time deciding whether my instincts are valid or not. I not only feel that I don't have the solid proof but lately the more people tell me to walk away, the more it makes me want to stay and prove them wrong. That this relationship is good and that he's not cheating. Is this crazy?

[LikkleMissConfused]

Al as you get older well as i have got older I have realised that nobody is worh it. Not putting yourself through so much pain.

 

Your instincts are telling you somethings and too some extent the way he is behaving is also telling you. No you don't have proof Ididn't have proof either when I left my ex but two years later I have all the proof I needed. I just wish I didn't hurt myself so much because he didn't care about me to tell me the truth.

 

Just let it go! Let it BURN as Usher says.

 

It was good at the beginning prob because he was ok and was into you. To me it sounds that maybe his true colours started coming out and listen no girl would email you if there wasn't any truth in it and you have had this happen too many times. There are letting you know warning you. I wish I listened to the warnings that I was given. But I didn't.

 

 

Your worth more alot more than this drama. You have to decide that you want this or not because I'll tell you one thing this feelign will not go away your instincts will stay with you.

[Al]

So basically is what I'm hearing from these posts is that people's instincts have never been wrong?

[shortbus74]

Al... think the answer is nope!!

 

Call it a strange relationship that I have with my future hubby.... but I know all the passcodes to all of his e-mail accounts and he knows mine.... We feel that we have nothing to hide from each other.... (we were both married before and both our ex's cheated on us) I know he talks to other girls online when I am not home... call me crazy........but it is only the net... If a girl came here to meet him she would be retarted!!

 

 

I think that when you have two people have been betrayed by people in their past and they go into a new relationship with that particular "baggage" ......and if the love is true in their heart they will spare their new partner the pain of being betrayed.......Call me a nuts for feeling this way...

[StartingAgain]

So basically is what I'm hearing from these posts is that people's instincts have never been wrong?

 

You aren't hearing it from me. My wife was dead wrong and it cost us everything. I'll say it again. A cheater will always eventually trip him/herself up and get caught. The only way someone can have one of these very long affairs without it being discovered is because their souse is so detached and paying so little attention -- doesn't really care.