I'll list a few facts and then will follow with some questions.
* Me: 50, wife: 50, married 25, and kids: 20 and 20 (all rounded to nearest 5).
* About a year ago: Wife was a totally devoted lifelong Catholic, even started writing a book to promote Catholicism (not an idle thing as she has actually published some books that have made us money). Her departure from Catholicism and theism in general didn't seem to cause her any grief. FWIW I'm a nondenominational Christian and attend church regularly.
* About 6 months ago: Turned down an opportunity to visit our children in another state to go to a 3 day dance workshop by herself.
* Has changed her email password 5 times in 2015. Has started deleting emails in the last couple of months. I went through the last year of the emails, and didn't see anything bad.
* Changed her Facebook password 3 times about 3 months ago and refuses to share it with me, but will let me on her account if she logs me in and logs it out right afterwards. She used to never log out of Facebook. I haven't seen anything bad on her Facebook (a couple times I managed to check more thoroughly late at night).
* Set up a gmail account. I didn't see anything suspicious.
* I noticed she had stopped wearing her diamond for at least a week. She was wearing a really thin gold band that was hard to see. Out of the blue she held up her hand and said she had not been wearing her diamond for 2 weeks, because we were doing some manual labor (about 5 days worth in 2 weeks). She had picked up the ring and put it away one morning, rather than put it on, even though she was going to her office job. Since we were going to a dance that night I asked her to wear it for the dance. She did that night, but didn't wear it the next day.
* All of our cell phone bills for 2015 are missing, and 9 of 12 for 2014 are missing. I spot checked other bills and they are all there. We use our phones for business and generally keep all business related receipts for taxes. She also has a suspiciously long gap in voice messages on her cell phone, maybe those are getting deleted, too. I went through her cell phone logs, voice messages, and text messages (including deleted ones). I didn't see anything suspicious. She also set up an online cell phone account recently. I logged into that, and didn't see anything suspicious. It shows we are supposed to be getting paper bills sent to our house.
* The morning after I checked and found missing the cell phone bills, she asked what I had been looking for in our office. It wasn't like I ransacked the place, I looked in one folder, and pulled out just one bag of the previous year's taxes. I told her I was looking for a cell phone bill. She asked if that was all, I said yes. This is subjective: That night at dance class she looked rather grim (usually she has a huge smile on her face during the class) and seemed troubled at dinner. I had to work some after the class and dinner and she texted me a picture of baking chocolate chip cookies (first time in our marriage that I recall). She also put on a much sexier night shirt that night. Interestingly, she has been faithfully wearing her diamond ever since this day.
* One night I was using Facebook with her “blessing.” She crept downstairs, crept up behind me, and said “Aha! You are looking at profiles of people in our dance class!” I showed her the last 5 pages or so of history that disagreed with what she said. The next morning she said it was creepy how I was looking at Facebook (using her account). What? I told her no, she was literally creeping down the stairs and creeping up behind me, that was “creepy”! My daugher witnessed this exchange, and later told me mom was rather emotional about it.
* We got a message and she said my girlfriend had called (first time she has ever said that, joking or otherwise). It was the pharmacy, and for the record I have been 100% faithful to my marriage.
* On the flip side, she is generally being nice to me, sex is good, and dance class has been great fun
* Both of our kids are out of the house
* In 25 years of marriage, this is the first time I have had a serious worry she might be cheating. I have never checked up on phone records or similar things before, so I don't think I'm a generally suspicious kind of person.
I'm sure I missed some stuff. I could explain away any single item, but all these things together are getting harder and harder to explain. I don't have absolute proof of anything. Here are my questions:
Does anyone else know of statistics about leaving one's faith for reasons of infidelity? I was able to figure out it is really rare for a 50 year old female to become atheist, and we have friends that became atheist when they started cheating on their spouse.
What is up with pointing out she was not wearing her diamond? Was she trying to make a statement? Get me to react? Try to see if I knew anything? Feeling guilty and trying to justify it?
It is very curious that it looks like she is trying to cover her tracks, but I haven't found anything. Opinions? Here are some of my theories:
* Has a 2nd cell phone and/or hidden email account, but is overcompensating in trying to hide it.
* Is really that good at deleting everything incriminating (I doubt it, unless she had some expert help)
* Just innocently started changing passwords and deleting things (hard to imagine, but I'm trying for a complete list)
Any thoughts on her reaction to my looking for a cell phone bill? She has to realize on some level it is likely I figured out a bunch of cell phone bills are missing.
Creeping up on me while I was using her Facebook account was weird. What bad thing could I possibly be doing on her account? Why would it be any problem if I were looking at the pages of our dance class friends? What's weird is I don't see anything on her account that is suspicious, and she lets me look at her account, albeit in a supervised mode. Should I be looking on other people's pages for incriminating things? Any suggestions on what to look for that way?
Strategy:
The way I feel at this moment is I want our marriage to work, and hope we could work past an infidelity event. That's easy to say now while I have some doubt, I realize it might be tough if I came across some hard evidence.
So far much of the evidence has just dropped in my lap, or been a reasonable thing for me to look at. I have told no one else of my suspicions except for one very good friend who I can trust. I have not confronted her on anything or let on in any direct way that I have my suspicions. I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads:
* Wait for something more definitive to drop into my lap
* Keep up this relatively passive level of surveillance
* Go more active and put a GPS tracker on her car.
* Wait for something more definitive, and then do things like GPS on the car.
The 3rd and 4th item would be hard to explain away if it was ever found.
D-day might not be under my control. She is very good at reading people and has an uncanny knack for detecting when I'm withholding information. She might actually initiate D-Day.
So any advice for me? Since I've found nothing to date, should I give up on surveillance and act like all is good (believe me, there is a part of me that wants to do exactly that!)? On the other hand, there is a big part of me that can't stand this uncertainty! Suppose I GPS and find nothing? At some point of finding nothing should I talk to her about my suspicions, if ever? Should I demand Facebook password access? I feel like I set a bad precedent by acting like it was nothing to not have the password, especially since we have shared passwords for all 25 years of our marriage,, but I realize I might trigger her hiding things even more aggressively if I push for more access.
I might be getting ahead of myself here, but her religious organization employer would likely fire her and the OM if there was and they found out about infidelity. Infidelity is also against the law in our state. Should I hold onto these cards, or should they be played on or right after D-Day?
Anyway, everyone please just go ahead and say what you think is most true. I'd rather know things, or hear what's most likely, than pretend they don't exist. I was almost weak with relief when I figured out how to read deleted text messages on her phone, but then I couldn't find anything and am still in limbo. Likewise I was able to get our phone records online, but couldn't spot anything suspicious.
* Me: 50, wife: 50, married 25, and kids: 20 and 20 (all rounded to nearest 5).
* About a year ago: Wife was a totally devoted lifelong Catholic, even started writing a book to promote Catholicism (not an idle thing as she has actually published some books that have made us money). Her departure from Catholicism and theism in general didn't seem to cause her any grief. FWIW I'm a nondenominational Christian and attend church regularly.
* About 6 months ago: Turned down an opportunity to visit our children in another state to go to a 3 day dance workshop by herself.
* Has changed her email password 5 times in 2015. Has started deleting emails in the last couple of months. I went through the last year of the emails, and didn't see anything bad.
* Changed her Facebook password 3 times about 3 months ago and refuses to share it with me, but will let me on her account if she logs me in and logs it out right afterwards. She used to never log out of Facebook. I haven't seen anything bad on her Facebook (a couple times I managed to check more thoroughly late at night).
* Set up a gmail account. I didn't see anything suspicious.
* I noticed she had stopped wearing her diamond for at least a week. She was wearing a really thin gold band that was hard to see. Out of the blue she held up her hand and said she had not been wearing her diamond for 2 weeks, because we were doing some manual labor (about 5 days worth in 2 weeks). She had picked up the ring and put it away one morning, rather than put it on, even though she was going to her office job. Since we were going to a dance that night I asked her to wear it for the dance. She did that night, but didn't wear it the next day.
* All of our cell phone bills for 2015 are missing, and 9 of 12 for 2014 are missing. I spot checked other bills and they are all there. We use our phones for business and generally keep all business related receipts for taxes. She also has a suspiciously long gap in voice messages on her cell phone, maybe those are getting deleted, too. I went through her cell phone logs, voice messages, and text messages (including deleted ones). I didn't see anything suspicious. She also set up an online cell phone account recently. I logged into that, and didn't see anything suspicious. It shows we are supposed to be getting paper bills sent to our house.
* The morning after I checked and found missing the cell phone bills, she asked what I had been looking for in our office. It wasn't like I ransacked the place, I looked in one folder, and pulled out just one bag of the previous year's taxes. I told her I was looking for a cell phone bill. She asked if that was all, I said yes. This is subjective: That night at dance class she looked rather grim (usually she has a huge smile on her face during the class) and seemed troubled at dinner. I had to work some after the class and dinner and she texted me a picture of baking chocolate chip cookies (first time in our marriage that I recall). She also put on a much sexier night shirt that night. Interestingly, she has been faithfully wearing her diamond ever since this day.
* One night I was using Facebook with her “blessing.” She crept downstairs, crept up behind me, and said “Aha! You are looking at profiles of people in our dance class!” I showed her the last 5 pages or so of history that disagreed with what she said. The next morning she said it was creepy how I was looking at Facebook (using her account). What? I told her no, she was literally creeping down the stairs and creeping up behind me, that was “creepy”! My daugher witnessed this exchange, and later told me mom was rather emotional about it.
* We got a message and she said my girlfriend had called (first time she has ever said that, joking or otherwise). It was the pharmacy, and for the record I have been 100% faithful to my marriage.
* On the flip side, she is generally being nice to me, sex is good, and dance class has been great fun
* Both of our kids are out of the house
* In 25 years of marriage, this is the first time I have had a serious worry she might be cheating. I have never checked up on phone records or similar things before, so I don't think I'm a generally suspicious kind of person.
I'm sure I missed some stuff. I could explain away any single item, but all these things together are getting harder and harder to explain. I don't have absolute proof of anything. Here are my questions:
Does anyone else know of statistics about leaving one's faith for reasons of infidelity? I was able to figure out it is really rare for a 50 year old female to become atheist, and we have friends that became atheist when they started cheating on their spouse.
What is up with pointing out she was not wearing her diamond? Was she trying to make a statement? Get me to react? Try to see if I knew anything? Feeling guilty and trying to justify it?
It is very curious that it looks like she is trying to cover her tracks, but I haven't found anything. Opinions? Here are some of my theories:
* Has a 2nd cell phone and/or hidden email account, but is overcompensating in trying to hide it.
* Is really that good at deleting everything incriminating (I doubt it, unless she had some expert help)
* Just innocently started changing passwords and deleting things (hard to imagine, but I'm trying for a complete list)
Any thoughts on her reaction to my looking for a cell phone bill? She has to realize on some level it is likely I figured out a bunch of cell phone bills are missing.
Creeping up on me while I was using her Facebook account was weird. What bad thing could I possibly be doing on her account? Why would it be any problem if I were looking at the pages of our dance class friends? What's weird is I don't see anything on her account that is suspicious, and she lets me look at her account, albeit in a supervised mode. Should I be looking on other people's pages for incriminating things? Any suggestions on what to look for that way?
Strategy:
The way I feel at this moment is I want our marriage to work, and hope we could work past an infidelity event. That's easy to say now while I have some doubt, I realize it might be tough if I came across some hard evidence.
So far much of the evidence has just dropped in my lap, or been a reasonable thing for me to look at. I have told no one else of my suspicions except for one very good friend who I can trust. I have not confronted her on anything or let on in any direct way that I have my suspicions. I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads:
* Wait for something more definitive to drop into my lap
* Keep up this relatively passive level of surveillance
* Go more active and put a GPS tracker on her car.
* Wait for something more definitive, and then do things like GPS on the car.
The 3rd and 4th item would be hard to explain away if it was ever found.
D-day might not be under my control. She is very good at reading people and has an uncanny knack for detecting when I'm withholding information. She might actually initiate D-Day.
So any advice for me? Since I've found nothing to date, should I give up on surveillance and act like all is good (believe me, there is a part of me that wants to do exactly that!)? On the other hand, there is a big part of me that can't stand this uncertainty! Suppose I GPS and find nothing? At some point of finding nothing should I talk to her about my suspicions, if ever? Should I demand Facebook password access? I feel like I set a bad precedent by acting like it was nothing to not have the password, especially since we have shared passwords for all 25 years of our marriage,, but I realize I might trigger her hiding things even more aggressively if I push for more access.
I might be getting ahead of myself here, but her religious organization employer would likely fire her and the OM if there was and they found out about infidelity. Infidelity is also against the law in our state. Should I hold onto these cards, or should they be played on or right after D-Day?
Anyway, everyone please just go ahead and say what you think is most true. I'd rather know things, or hear what's most likely, than pretend they don't exist. I was almost weak with relief when I figured out how to read deleted text messages on her phone, but then I couldn't find anything and am still in limbo. Likewise I was able to get our phone records online, but couldn't spot anything suspicious.