Need some input/ is she cheating?

[Guest]

Hi I've been married for 3 years and up everything has been great. My wife likes to go out on occasion with her co-workers, both male and female for happy hour. Usually she will go out to happy hour around 6:00pm, right from work and then come home around 8:00pm and continue drinking at home. Over the past month there have been 3 different occasions where she called me on Friday afternoon and said she was going to happy hour, of course she says I am welcome to go along, but she knows I have no interest in hanging with her and her co-works while they talk shop and have a few drinks. Anyway on these 3 different occasions, instead of returning home at the usual 8:00 to 9:00pm, she has not come home until 1:30, 1:50, and last night at 2:47 am. All I've ever asked of her when she goes out with her friends is if she is going to be late, give me a call and let me know so I know she's alright.

 

The first two times she was out late I called her cell phone several times, at least 20 ,and she never answered, and then when she finally got home she was very drunk. Last night she went to a benefit auction that some one in her company was putting on, it was alcohol free, she said she would be home early. She made a call to me shortly after leaving the house asking me a question about and item she was interested in bidding on, this was around 8:00pm. Well midnight rolled around and I had heard nothing else from her ,so I called her cell. Finally after 10 calls in a row she answered and I asked where she was. She was drunk ,and slurring her words ,and said she ran into one of her cousins at the auction and was at their place and had to go out side to answer the phone. I asked when she would be home and she said soon. I then went to bed, it was 12:15 am. She came through the front door at 2:47am. she was again very drunk.

 

I think she's screwing around. She has a bit of a drinking problem,(could ya tell?) she has told me she has cheated on a few different guys in the past, and when she drinks she gets way to drunk to be in control of herself. Personally I think she would do just about anything when she's drunk.

 

This morning I went on line and checked the cell phone bill. There were a few calls to an unfamiliar numbers, all long calls, and one 54 minutes long. She's to smart to use her regular e-mail, she's been caught at that in the past.

 

After the first night she was out late I came right out and asked her who she was screwing and she said no one. I don't buy it. What would a married woman be doing out drinking until 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00 in the morning?

 

If she's screwing around so be it, I just want to find out so I can send her packing and move on.

 

Any thoughts on this would be helpful. Thanks

[whichwayisup]

First off, try to get her to stop drinking so much, this is a huge problem in your marriage and will continue to be a problem if she doesn't slow down!

 

If she has cheated on you, I take it, it's over? No chances to let her make it right and change? Go to marriage counselling?

 

If I were in your shoes I would tell her to stop going to happy hour with her work buddies for starters. If she can't just go for afew hours then come home to you, something is wrong. Or maybe it's time to actually GO with her to see what is really going on. Either way, she can't keep doing this.

 

How is the rest of your marriage? Do you two have any children in this mix?

[Bryanp]

I do not think you need to have a piano fall on you head to know that she is screwing around on you. She has a history of getting so drunk she cheats in her relationships. I think you would have to be in total denial to think she was not screwing around. Are you going to wait until she gives you an STD? She is making a total fool out of you and your marriage. You judge a person by their actions and not by their words and her actions speak volumes. Do you honestly think she is going to tell you the truth? She comes home at 3 am and is totally drunk again. I guess she was just playing checkers. Have a friend follow her but down deep you know what is going on. If the roles were reversed do you think she would put up with such crap from you? She now has no respect for you or your marriage.

I feel sorry for you.

[Romeo Must Die]

I think you should follow her and see where she ends up in these wee hours of the night and make that decision for youself. Right now you are still "safe" because you dont have anything but your suspicions. Naturally, we cant advise you what to do because we wouldn't know if she was cheating anymore than you do.

 

The alcolhol is another issue altogether. You have been enabling her to drink and thats not good. People are not in control of themselves when they are drinking. It could lead to accident or injury (or affairs) and could even lead to legal and financial consequenses on the entire family. Alcolholics are a huge liability.

 

We were just talking to another poster about his "problem" and basicly he wants to believe that his wife is controlling him because he cant party everynight. He wants his alcolhol. He has control issues with his wife and thats the typical, one sided thinking of an alcolholic. It's another reason to drink. Of course he is not in control, otherwise he could stop drinking. He says its not a problem, but its definately a problem when people who care about you are telling you it's excessive and that you need to stop.

 

[outofdarkness]

As a recovering alcoholic who is 6 years sober AND the W of a 10+year cheater, I can honestly tell you that based on your post, yes, she does have a drinking problem and yes, she is cheating...I say give her an ultimatum and follow thru if she does not comply. Her life and your's are at stake...Blessings

[Yamaha]

Next time tell her you want to go with her to happy hour and see what kind of a response you get. If she balks or gives you excuses then she is definitely screwing someone.

 

And no. A married women should not be out till 2:47 without her husband.

[Mr. Lucky]

The alcolhol is another issue altogether. You have been enabling her to drink and thats not good. People are not in control of themselves when they are drinking. It could lead to accident or injury (or affairs) and could even lead to legal and financial consequenses on the entire family. Alcolholics are a huge liability.

You don't "enable" another person to drink any more than you can get another person to stop drinking if they don't want to. What are you going to do - lock her in the basement? If she wants to drink (and cheat), there are plenty of opportunities other than "happy hour".

 

Don't know about your history (kids? house?), but I would move out at least until she can prove a desire to sucessfully address the drinking problem. Nothing else will get fixed until that happens.

 

Mr. Lucky

[mental_traveller]

I'd say it's quite likely she is cheating, yes.

 

I think you should hire a private detective, get him to follow her for 2 separate nights and photograph her if she's seen kissing another guy, or worse. Also have him investigate the phone numbers and find whose they are. This will let you know with no doubt (and if she's innocent, it will show what she has actually been doing). Once you have the evidence, take it to the best divorce lawyer you can find, follow his advice, then get divorce papers ready. If legal, change the locks when she is next out working, deliver the papers to her office, and never speak to her again except in the presence of your lawyer. Inform all your mutual friends and relatives as to what happened, showing them proof if necessary, so they come down on your side. Make a clean break and move on in life.

 

Also, I think one should never ask if a spouse or gf/bf is cheating. They will almost always lie, so you won't find anything out, and it will raise their suspicions, making it harder to do anything. Instead, just gather conclusive proof of the affair, then dump them immediately and move on, with no further contact.

[mental_traveller]

I would move out at least until she can prove a desire to sucessfully address the drinking problem. Nothing else will get fixed until that happens.

 

Mr. Lucky

 

 

Insanity. Move HER out, since she is the one cheating.

[Romeo Must Die]

He most definately was enabling her. (1) she goes out pretty often with these co-workers. Three happy hours in one month - how many weeks in a month are there? (2) he never joins them to monitor her alcolhol consumption and behavior and (3) she comes home and continues drinking. It has been allowed for some time to get this far. That is enabling.

 

" All I've ever asked of her when she goes out with her friends is if she is

going to be late, give me a call and let me know so I know she's alright. "

- Guest -

 

It isn't easy to keep the peace in a household with an alcolholic. Its been a long time since I lived with an alcolholic mother. My sisters and I would dump out her booze, but she would just leave us and go out to the bars and drink until she felt like coming home again. We would wake up in the morning and there would be beer in the refrigerator, but no milk. Our father traveled during the week and he pretty much allowed her to do whatever she wanted. He never tried to stop it, and we thought he was weak because he refused to do anything about it. He just gave her money and left again for work.

 

[Guest]

go to reverse phone number on the internet and see whose number it is...

[Michael86]

No doubt in my mind that she's cheating. She's not even being very discreet about it. She's also flirting with disaster. I assume she drives when she goes out? She's putting herself and innocent lives at risk when she's driving in that condition. You need to put an end to this. I would gather proof of her affair and when she can't lie her way out of it, confront her. At that point it's up to you whether you want to stay with her or not. If you do, the alcoholism has to be dealt with plus the fact that she destroyed your marriage.

[Mr. Lucky]

He most definately was enabling her. (1) she goes out pretty often with these co-workers. Three happy hours in one month - how many weeks in a month are there? (2) he never joins them to monitor her alcolhol consumption and behavior and (3) she comes home and continues drinking. It has been allowed for some time to get this far. That is enabling.

The flaw in your scenario is that if he takes away his happy hour permission - enabling, in your eyes - then she will curb or control her drinking. Like you, I have much up-close experience with alcoholics and the hard lesson - as you found out with your mom - is that no one else can stop the drinking but them. He can lecture, babysit, monitor and "dis-enable" until he is blue in the face and it won't help unless she decides to help herself. That's the nature of the beast.

 

As the OP noted, the drinking and cheating are tied together. Although I might characterize it as more than "a bit of a drinking problem".

 

Mr. Lucky

[Romeo Must Die]

Only when Mrs. Guest is forced to face the consequences of her own actions will it ever begin to sink in how deep her drinking problem has become. Mr. Guest has enabled his wife to avoid her responsibilities for too long.

 

Enabling is doing things for her that Guest should be doing himself to protect himself. (Result = Infidelity) His enabling also creates a atmosphere in which his wife can continue drinking. She goes out all night drinking and comes home and makes another drink.

 

As long as the wife has her enabling devices in place, it is much easier for her to drink and cheat and put others at risk (including Guest), since most of her problems are relatively ignored by Guest.

 

Peace

 

[Rooster_DAR]

Need some input/ is she cheating?

 

In my experience if you have to ask this question, you are usually feeling something is wrong on the inside.

 

My bet, she is up to no good.

 

Regards,

[Michael86]

If you do confront, do not let her use the drinking as an excuse for her cheating.

[IpAncA]

Someone has a we bit of a drinking problem here. Not a good habit to get into and you should like others have said, try and get her to cut back. Don't let her play the drinking card because it isn't an excuse for her actions.

 

Since you don't know for sure you can't just come right out and accuse her of cheating. Your just guessing and IMO from what I have learned and experienced, if you think it can happen then it probably is. Follow her around and see what happends, call those numbers and see who answers. You could always take her up on her offer and go with her.

[milvushina]

She sounds exactly like the way I acted right before I got divorced. I'd work an 8 hour day and then go out drinking for 8 hours! In my case I didn't like it at home and I was sad and liked going out with my friends. I would make it home between 2-3 when the bars closed. I was not screwing around, but I was enjoying acting and feeling single because I was very unhappy.

 

I don't really drink anymore, but I never get wasted without my husband being around. That's a rule I made up, not him. I'd also never drive drunk again, and I think if I was with friends later than about 9:00 I'd be calling.

 

You need to have rules agreed upon for these things if your idea of what's ok and hers are way out of harmony. She is acting single. And she has mysterious phone numbers in her phone and has been caught doing something inappropriate through email. It is hard to start putting your foot down once you let someone get away with doing whatever they want for a long time, but that is what you'll have to try to do.

[Guest]

Someone has a we bit of a drinking problem here. Not a good habit to get into and you should like others have said, try and get her to cut back. Don't let her play the drinking card because it isn't an excuse for her actions.

 

Since you don't know for sure you can't just come right out and accuse her of cheating. Your just guessing and IMO from what I have learned and experienced, if you think it can happen then it probably is. Follow her around and see what happends, call those numbers and see who answers. You could always take her up on her offer and go with her.

 

An update on the situation: After I read your responses I had a talk with my wife. She assured me that she has not been cheating (of course) and she did tell me who she was with and where on the nights she was out late and it all checked out. I also looked into the phone numbers on her cell bill and they are the numbers of some of her new co-workers. She has to call them during her work day for work related issues, and her work cell had gone dead so she used her personal cell, by the way they were all female, I called them to check it out.

 

So I was starting to feel pretty good about the situation, except for the drinking, but that’s not the issue I came here to discuss.

 

One thing I didn't mention in my 1st post was, back in December of 2004 one night around midnight my wife's cell phone rang. We had both been at a friend’s house earlier partying so we both had a good buzz going. She answered her cell and I heard her say, "who the hell is this” and then she quickly hung up and turned her phone off. Because I had a good buzz going I didn't think much of it until the next morning. So I took her cell and checked her messages. There was one from a woman asking my wife what her cell number was doing on her husbands cell bill. The woman went on to say that there were daily calls from my wife’s number the span two months. There were also several calls from his number on my wife’s cell bill.

 

I asked my wife about it at the time and she said she met him at a local bar and they were shooting the **** and became friends, nothing more, and nothing ever happened between them. She blamed me for not paying enough attention to her for her turning to this guy for conversation.

 

I called the woman myself, I told her that I had heard the message she left on my wife's cell and asked if there was something going on between her husband and my wife. She said "Oh no that was a misunderstanding and she was just helping him with a computer problem." I knew this was bull**** because my wife doesn't know enough about computers to be giving out help advice. Then over the next two days she kept calling my wife’s cell. So I called her back and asked point blank, is there something going on with your husband and my wife that I should know about? Again she said no. At first I believed her but I called back a few days later to talk with her again and her daughter answered and told me her mother was in the hospital and had a nervous breakdown and told me to never call again. Well that's how that ended, until yesterday.

 

Yesterday I received a letter in the mail, it read:

 

My Name,

 

"How does one begin a letter such as this to someone they have never met?

The longer I wait, it doesn't become any easier. Perhaps starting with an apology is best. I wish I had been honest with you when you once asked me if there were something more you needed to know about my husbands and your wife’s relationship. The answer should have been, yes, they were involved for approximately two months until I discovered the affair. They had been "seeing" each other from about mid October until December 13, 2004.

 

There are really a lot of other details that I might include here but I would prefer to discuss them another time and allow you the grieving time I have had. My husband and I were approaching our 30th wedding anniversary when I discovered the affair. The discovery resulted in my having and emotional breakdown. It has been a very long two years and there is not one day that goes by that I do not think of my husband’s infidelity OR about you and how you deserved to have been told when you had asked me.

 

You may feel free to contact me at:

 

(email address)

 

Again I feel the need to apologize to you and I fully realize that I am not the one who should be feeling so much guilt , but I am above all else, an honest person.

 

Take care"

 

Her Name (typed and signed)

 

I typed this letter out word for word exactly as it was typed to me. Seeing as I got it two days before Thanksgiving, and we are having Thanksgiving dinner at our house, I'm going to wait until I hand it to my wife. I am also awaiting a reply to the e-mail I send to this woman asking to hear the "really a lot of other details"

 

I really don't know how I feel about this yet. If it is in fact true then my marriage is over, and I actually feel kinda good about that. I can't live with a cheater.

 

I've had some major health issues beginning in February 2006, I've battled cancer and won, so far, and my wife has stood by me ,and if not for her income and health insurance , I'd not be here today. But she did ,and does continue to drink and get totally wasted, even when I was at my worst at the peak of radiation therapy, she'd go out and get loaded, not seeming all to concerned about the condition I was in from my treatment. So if my marriage is over, I won't be missing it, not a bit.

 

I'll check back in and give you all the details when I ask her about this "affair". It should be good.

[Bryanp]

I am so sorry for you. You have been married only 3 years and she has been drinking, going to bars, and cheating on your for a couple of months putting your health at risk for STD's. I do not know how you could stomach having Thanksgiving dinner with her after finding out what you have just found out. She had no problem lying to your face and making you out to be such a fool for trursting her. I do hope you get a good lawyer. I am sure she will continue to lie to you about the letter also. You both need to get tested for STD's.

[Rooster_DAR]

This is one of the most **ucked up things I have read hear.

 

I'm sorry you have to go through this, but like I always say you should trust your gut instinct. You knew in your heart something wasn't right, and lo and behold it finally came out. I'm going through the exact same thing your are, after five years of giving my fiance evertying I had, she started having an affair with a co-worker.

 

Good luck, you deserve better.

[Michael86]

I admire the way you're handling this. You didn't deserve this from her. Nobody does. Good luck with whatever happens.

 

Rooster....sorry you're going through this too.

[Sup]

Guest, I hope you already contacted a lawyer, and don't back out, ever. Are you waiting for Thanksgiving day to do this because family will be there?

[Guest]

Guest, I hope you already contacted a lawyer, and don't back out, ever. Are you waiting for Thanksgiving day to do this because family will be there?

 

Yes, I waited until after thanksgiving because we had family over and I didn't want things to be weird. I'm also waiting to hear more from this other woman about the "affair". Because of my recent bout with cancer my wife's income is still covering 80% of all the bills. My work won't get real busy again until spring when I can work back outside. So I may just take my time and use her a bit for her income and health insurance until spring, when my business is back in full swing, then I'll boot her ass out the door. The house is mine, so there's no worries there.

[Sup]

Yes, I waited until after thanksgiving because we had family over and I didn't want things to be weird. I'm also waiting to hear more from this other woman about the "affair". Because of my recent bout with cancer my wife's income is still covering 80% of all the bills. My work won't get real busy again until spring when I can work back outside. So I may just take my time and use her a bit for her income and health insurance until spring, when my business is back in full swing, then I'll boot her ass out the door. The house is mine, so there's no worries there.

 

 

How is the house yours, is it in your name, by the way If I were you I would protect it anyway, after all you know how twisted the laws are against men these days, just lookin out for ya. Also, if theres a Will I suggest that you take her OFF PRONTO, don't want her getting the house again, or your money........ TAKE CARE MAN!