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Mon 23 Feb, 2009 11:31 am
My husband has his own startup business and has many investors. However, there is one in particular who is female and who calls and emails almost every day. She is a divorced (twice) mother of a drug addict son, who is emotionally unstable. She also does videography (has her own business also). My husband and I were best friends for 14 years before we got married. I never even knew this woman existed until we began to make plans to be a "couple". He claims they have been friends for 10 years or so. She also invested in the company (as did I before we got married) and has done work on the side through her company for him. However, I have caught him at her home, listened in on conversations discussing my personal life and our married life, had HIS friends tell me sorted details (which my husband claims are untrue) of their "relationship as friends", etc. He now leaves his cell phone in the car, only talks to her when I am gone or he is on the road (he is also a pianist), deletes his emails, switches screens when I walk in the room, and swears they are just business partners and friends. She has also gone to see him play (alone), and I have had the opportunity of walking into a place where he is playing to find her there. He also has another young female friend who is not very bright who keeps asking him to meet him for breakfast, lunch, or dinner to discuss his business and what the latest updates are (she is also an investor). When confronted about all this, he says they are just friends, they are helping with his business, and I am the jealous one. I don't think so. My gut, heart, and head are totally in the same place about this. Please help me decide where to go from here.
@heartbroken127,
Generally, unless we are prone to irrational suspicion about many or most people--I don't know you so have no way of knowing whether that is the case with you--I think our gut is pretty reliable to inform us that something is wrong in a relationship.
My advice would be to do your homework to identify a really good marriage counselor--it could be a professional therapist or minister of a church or anybody just so he or she knows his/her stuff--and talk it through with him/her. If you are being irrational, the counselor will help you see and understand that. If you are not, the counselor at some point will ask you to bring your husband with you or try to get him to see him/her alone. You will be trained in how to approach your husband to persuade him to do that and, if he understands your anxiety and how you are feeling and cares about that, he will do that. If he doesn't care, he won't, but at least then you'll know.
@heartbroken127,
Where do you want to go from here? Are you looking to change his behaviors, accept his word as truthful, or make plans to move on with your life without him in the picture.
You can't change him, only he can do that. All you can do is let him know that the current reality of you marriage isn't acceptable to you. He can decide which is more important to him, but you can't make that decision for him. I almost never advise giving ultimatums, but you've got enough circumstantial evidence for a direct confrontation. Just be prepared to live with whatever he chooses to do.
Wow - your husband sees how this tears you up (You HAVE told his to cut this relationship, haven't you?) and he KEEPS on with it?
It's totally inappropriate BECAUSE it is affecting your marriage. He is discounting you.
His actions speak for him.
@heartbroken127,
He is now acting like he is cheating however that could also be due to his wish not to upset you with his contacts with this lady now that he know that it bother you and as they have a business relationship he seem in a bad position just to cut all contacts with her to make you happy.
The words key logger come to mind a peice of software you can pick up online or at most computer stores design to see what he is doing on his computer without him being aware of the fact.
Beside the cost of the sofware a hundred dollars or so it might cost you the married even if he is not cheating assuming he would find out you did spy on him however. Take into account how computer aware he is, for example trying to place a keylogger on my systems would not be a good idea.
I know if I found my wife trying to place a keylogger on my systems I would find it hard to forgive her.
Good luck one way or another.
@heartbroken127,
As a footnote I did a very fast google search and there are many programs design just to recover deleted email from outlook express price at less then twenty dollars. A keylogger is more then likely overkill just to find out if he is cheating
Any computer you have access to in any case is an open book unless the owner/user is very very security aware.
So if he is using the old home computer as a tool to cheat you can find out in short order and very cheaply.
I will leave the moral question concerning looking at emails he does not wish you to see in your hands.
I will however once more tell you that I would be outrage if my wife did so and the strange thing is I am very security aware so only she have the ability to even look at any part of my hard drives as I gave her the keys to bypass my security. Trust is very important in any relationship but then you had already seem to had lost that in your relationship.
As I tell most people :
- set a value on yourself (that you actually do believe you are worth), and don't accept less than your due (if people continue to treat you with disrespect, even after you point out what they are doing, what does that say about what they think of you?)
If you accept less, your mind (which seeks congruence) will come to believe you are worth less (than what you originally though). In other words, accepting less means you are consenting to the lowering of your self esteem (and you can't be happy without self esteem). Accepting less means you are not being true to yourself. Accepting less means you are betraying yourself (such self betrayals can be small or big, but they all have an affect on us).
After you understand and believe in your value - from there you are able to make much clearer decisions about how to handle a negative situation, how long is acceptable for a negative situation to exist/continue, and when (and if) you walk away.
Self esteem (which comes from inside) shouldn't be compromised
(and truly, your husband, or boyfriend, should actually respect it, care for it, and contribute to the nurturing of it...if he's not, it doesn't matter how much else he does - you can't be happy without self esteem)
Go with your gut. You know what's going on. He sounds like an old player, wanting the wife at home and the girlfriend (or two) on the side.
@eoe,
If I was in her place I think I would like some proof before I would take any serious actions not my gut feeling alone.
Gut feelings are fine to begin looking into a sititution but it seem a very poor grounds to end a marriage but then I am a simple logical driven male.
First in her place I think I would inform my partner that my questions had reach a level were it is threating the marriage and ask her how she would wish us to deal with it.
@BillRM,
I'll reiterate what JPB said.
I don't discount heartbrokens observations at all.
She sees a guy not behaving like a partner in life and if marriage means to her having a partner, she has grounds to consider if she wants to hang with that or not.
Definitions of partner can vary, especially within partners. I think most of us would have our antennae up too.
@eoe,
Oh as a side note my wife and I a few decades ago was living together as an unmarried couple and I was as happy as happy could be but she have some problems with the relationship that I truely were completely in the dark about.
One fine day without warning she let me and we did not talk for many many years.
Now I tell her if she have a problem would she please tell me about it not hold it in until she is readly to run to the hills.
We males are simple beings and unless you hit us over the head with a problem a lot of us are completely blind until we are serve with the devorce paperwork.
@BillRM,
Quote:We males are simple beings and unless you hit us over the head with a problem a lot of us are completely blind until we are serve with the devorce paperwork.
I had a laugh at that. I've seen it often enough, and I've been there often enough.
That said, quite often we are wilfully blind too (both sexes being guilty of this)
@heartbroken127,
heartbroken127 wrote:
However, I have caught him at her home, listened in on conversations discussing my personal life and our married life...He now leaves his cell phone in the car, only talks to her when I am gone or he is on the road (he is also a pianist), deletes his emails, switches screens when I walk in the room, and swears they are just business partners and friends. She has also gone to see him play (alone), and I have had the opportunity of walking into a place where he is playing to find her there.
Within these sentences is everything she needs to go on. If she's been around the block more than twice. she knows what time it is.
@eoe,
Eoe I am not defending such behaviors however you seem to had one hell of a low standard for ending a marriage!
@BillRM,
Which is why I suggested some competent counseling before determining that suspicions are validated and/or the marriage can no longer be salvaged. It is all too easy for communications to break down or become destructive. A good counselor can help restore communications in a way that allows real problems to be addressed and resolved.
If one wants to end a marriage, one reason is as good as another. But if one wants to save a marriage that is in trouble, there are proactive ways to go about that. I'm not naive enough to believe all marriages will be saved, but based on the little we know about this one, I don't think it's time to throw in the towel yet.
@Foxfyre,
Hmm I see that counseling would be a good idea as cheating or not this marriage seem to be in bad trouble however why should she get counseling before taking steps to find out if he is or is not cheating?
For one thing in this day and age a partner cheating is placing your heath at serous risk and something I would like to know about for that reason alone.
@BillRM,
I don't care if she takes reasonable measures to find out if hubby is cheating. Employing short term services of a private investigator generally produces such information fairly quickly. But if he is, and the parties want to save the marriage anyway, the discovery and dealing with it with a qualified third party directing and helping the communications can help get to the best possible outcome.
If either party does not want to save the marriage, however, it has already ended and you don't really need a reason to make that official.
@Foxfyre,
Foxfyre that is one of the things wrong in this country you should need a reason to walk away from a marriage!!!!!
Legally and morally you should need some grounds to break a married contract and from some of the comments on this thread it seem that the ladies here hold this contract very lightly indeed.
Lord I feel sorry for the young men who become family men now when it is now socially and legally acceptable for their partners to leave the relationship for any or no reason taking the children and a large fraction of their income for two decades or so with them.
This attitude is not in the interest of any of the members of families or society as a whole for that matter.
Please take into account ladies that half of your children on average will be males and a system that grant divorces at whim such as he might be cheating
is going to hurt them and your grandchildren by them.
Perhaps I missed something Bill? When did I say that she should end her marriage?
I've been focused on the fact that it looks like the man is fooling around, denying it and trying to make a fool of his wife. Now, if all this is true then yes indeed I'd say end it. I couldn't imagine staying with a man who had such little regard for me. But of course she should find out for certain before walking away. I'd think that goes without saying, don't you?
@BillRM,
Bill, you don't know me very well or you couldn't have missed the many times some A2K members have excoriated, accused, blasted, and smeared me for my passionate defense of traditional marriage, my belief that children need and benefit from having a mom and dad at home and my great resentment of government policies that have ripped the American family apart. I won't go into all the detail of my vocational and avocational work in that area.
That is why I strongly encouraged our friend here to get counseling to deal with this difficult situation as it could very well provide her with the tools to save her marriage.
Evenso, if either party of the marriage no longer wants the marriage to continue, the marriage has ended. There is already a reason. One doesn't want to be married any more. Somebody has quit. All that remains is to work out the legal settlement part of it.
I am hoping in this case that neither party has quit and whatever problems have developed in this marriage can be resolved.
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