I was suspicious of my X for months. One time, sitting on the couch together I had my arms around him and discovered a condom in his jacket pocket. Well, he made up some stuff and I sort of believed him and it was an outdated condom, I consoled myself with that. Denial. I did snoop in his jacket pockets after that and found nothing, but he was always careful to have his cell phone tucked away and keep his overnight case zipped up and the door to his office CLOSED.

One time I drove from bar to bar to see if I could see his car (ashamed to say this) He was smarter than that, I know now, and he wasn't at a bar, silly girl that I am, he was at her house. But, perhaps I could have somehow looked into his email or listened to his voice messages and found the evidence I found...earlier, so I could have gotten out earlier. What is your take on this? If you snoop does it mean you are not ever going to trust?

Hi, Judy.

I know what you mean about snooping and I think it depends on the circumstances. If I had not snooped at all, the game would have continued without my knowledge. I did snoop and that changed the game of the A to an extent - everything started to come out in pieces.

I can relate to everything you said...my situation had all of those clues too. I was just in denial that it could really be happening. Things came out like "it's just e-mails but I have been thinking of sleeping with her, oh we just met a few times, and finally the big love for the OW. For me, because of how everything played out and the suspicions were validated, I simply knew I was doing the right thing to leave. Honestly, I was almost pushed out because of the "say one thing and do another" nature my STBX adopted.

I guess it's just me, but if the anxiety and intuitions become that overwhelming, I think sometimes you do have to snoop.

Fist of all, I will admit to a lot of searching for evidence, which I found.

In hindsight, I realize that once you discover you're living with a liar you have two choices about your own behavior---snoop and police, or not.

If you're married you are legally entangled with them. They CAN get you into trouble. They can compromise your finances. Surprise child support for 18 years is one example. My X and OW took that chance and admitted it.

If you're sexually active with them they can risk your health and life with STDs and AIDS.

Therefore, it is my opinion that we have the right to snoop in pockets, files, phones, drawers, overnight bags, cars, bars etc.

It's not fun to police somebody you live with. It's no fun to distrust a spouse.

Not snooping is another option but you can't be blind and dumb either if you feel that you are at any type of risk. So it seems necessary to take different steps with a liar if you choose not to snoop.

Maybe I could have filed for divorce, cut off the sex, and waited until his behavior choices were made....but everything about him became vague.

>>>What is your take on this? If you snoop does it mean you are not ever going to trust?<<<

Judy,
If you snoop it doesn’t mean you aren’t ever going to trust, it means you don’t trust right now. The first time I ever went through my husband’s things, I was looking for our checkbook, which he said was lost. I knew it had to be in his briefcase so I went through it one morning when he was in the shower. I found the checkbook along with a couple of things I wasn’t looking for. I confronted him and gave him a chance to explain. His explanation sounded reasonable and I wanted to believe him so I let it go. But that little seed had been planted in my brain and my trust in him began to erode. I started going through his jacket pockets and briefcase pretty regularly. At first there was nothing and I started to feel pretty guilty but eventually I found irrefutable evidence of his affairs. I realized that my snooping wasn’t because I was a bad or mistrustful person; it was because my gut was telling me something was wrong. If I had ignored the bells that were going off in me I probably never would have found out what was going on. I deserved to know the truth, even if I had to find it on my own. Even when he knew I knew everything, he tried to deny it and if I hadn’t seen the evidence with my own eyes, I probably would have allowed him to convince me it wasn’t true. Whether I will ever fully trust him again remains to be seen. I do know that I will snoop again if my instincts tell me he’s hiding things from me.
DG

hi,

i went through the snooping stuff, it was hideous and i hated it, i hated what i had become. but i felt obsessed in trying to prove he was the bad person and then later proving he was a good person.

my advice is dont do it, it only makes you feel like crap. having said that i understand that as it becomes compulsive, you feel like you cannot let it go.

as i said, initially it was about proving he was still up to stuff, then it was to get evidence he wasnt. even when i had the evidence to show he wasnt (you name it phone bills, emails, websites,random phone calls etc)i still was a bit obsessive.

now i have got to a point where, every now and then i have a look about, most boring now really, everything is so open, there is no thrill in the chase haha. i still sometimes think "ah he must have secret number, showing me all the bills is a trick etc". but then i think, hey he isnt that clever and if he was, then that is his problem not mine. if he has to live like that to maintain the contact, he is now doign the hard work not me haha

hope this helps
kath

I did snoop and sometimes innocently I stumbled across things but one thing I have decided is that I will not let this turn me into something I don't want to be. I never felt dirtier nor more disgusted with myself than when I snooped.

I feel better now that I don't. I can only control me and what I want to be and I refuse to be something I am not.

Now I must get to changing out my keyboard because this one is getting sucky.

The way I look at it, IF your spouse is remorseful and wants to rebuild the marriage, then snooping, at least for them, shouldn't be an issue.

It CAN have good effects. I was invited to snoop all I wanted, and I did, as my trust was completely shattered, like all of us.

When I didn't find anything, it proved to me that my W was being serious about recovery, unlike the previous 8 months after D-Day, when she lied, evaded, etc., and I would catch her in every one of them. Once she committed to rebuilding, she committed 150%.

After about six months of constant checking up on her with nothing raising an alarm, I stopped.

Bottom line: There's good AND bad to snooping, and it's up to you to decide if what you're doing is going to beneficial to your own healing...

Cory

"Opponents cannot exhaust you." - The Art Of War

RW, you say, "everything about him became vague". THAT is so true. Like trying to find something at the bottom of an inky pool. Gads, I hated that vagueness. I kept thinking, "There must be something he is hiding." Vague, that'd be a good word. Maybe that song should be, "You're so vague."

Judy

I don't currently snoop, but if I had any suspicion that anything was going on I would snoop in a heartbeat...I never snooped before the A, and when I got suspicious I started thinking about how to find out...It took me a while to think of checking the cell phone, credit card bills, following him, etc...

Now I would be much better at it than I was in my innocence...

I would not feel the least bit guilty about it either..

When he was in the A, and got angry about me snooping, I would simply answer "I am fighting for my marriage and family"....If there was another A, I would be fighting for my sanity as well....

Judy
Hi, I read your post with deepening interest. With each word I read I could feel the thumping in my chest, my heart was pounding, as I was once more transported to those times and places when I snooped. My Lord did it hurt, my chest was fit to burst with the anxiety of it all. I am not sure if I was so upset at the thoughts of finding what I expected or NOT finding anything. If I did not find anything then I had to be going crazy I reasoned. Of course I found plenty.

It was also not without it's twisted fun in some ways. I found stuff he had taken from OW to fix (always an electronic fixer my STBXH) and of course I would throw it out the house. He could never ask me where was such and such and more than once it gave me a twisted sick pleasure to see him go look for stuff and he could never ask me..............

Cory your words struck home,now, at the time I was snooping, maybe I would not have accepted it so readily, hindsight really is 20/20.

"Bottom line: There's good AND bad to snooping, and it's up to you to decide if what you're doing is going to beneficial to your own healing..."

Yep, so very true. The Good for me was finding so much stuff that gave me closure, in that I got answers to my suspcions, stuff that confirmed, whenever he said I was mad, I had concrete evidence (reciepts mainly) that did not add up with his stories. Times, dates and locations where he said he was and here I had pieces of paper that proved he was not.

IF and WHEN I confronted him with what I had found I would watch, with a kind of twisted pleasure, that nerve in his neck twitch, and his face try to compose itself into a mask of innocence. I got so good at reading him, better than I even had before D day, that I pretty much got to realise that all I could trust him to do was lie every time he opened his mouth.

The bad, I feel is in the now. I find myself thinking and re thinking over much of the past. STBXH lied so much that it has left its residue. To be expected I suppose, but I really don't like it. I find myself asking is this right to think like this? and will it always be this way?

Now in my new relationship - which is very, very, light and very, very, new, I find 'he' will say something and I catch myself, but in the past when I would have parked the thought and gone snooping. I now ask, speak, voice whatever has been triggered and is making me uncomfortable. It is so hard to do this, it seems wrong somehow, but I am coming to accept that Peggy V's idea's are completely correct and if I am to 'protect' myself and my relationship(s), blind trust of the type I always beleived existed, and was a 'given' really is a myth.
Jean UK

Jean: Your sentiments are so accurate and from the heart and so well written. I think this fourm is so healing for me because it brings all the stuff out in the open and I do not feel so alone and ashamed about this situation. "You're crazy" was a familiar response to my questions. I was crazy to keep believing him, I know that now.

I am so very pleased to hear of your new interest and how light it is for you....how hopeful for all of us who struggle. I love being partnered with a guy...I miss many things about X. Today is my one week anniversary from D-Day, so it is a bit of a wobbly day but I am very strong and feel very fortunate to be out and free from all that craziness. Amen.

I felt the same about this sick pleasure at seeing him squirm at my questions and just dig himself in deeper. He was not very smooth about multi-thinking, or remembering what he had just said, so it really tangled him up. I am so glad I just confronted him and drove away and that was that. I feel smarter now, and like you I will ask straight away: What is that? Who is that? Where were you? At the FIRST flag I am gone. No denial. Thanks for your wonderful message, I am happy your life is moving in such a pleasant direction.

Judy

A common thread among the betrayed seems to be a very DIRECT approach. Who? What? When? Where?

There is also a need for direct answers. Indirectness, evasiveness, vagueness, lawyerly responses...ick.

Chris.

I am very jealous of my privacy, and the privacy of others. However, and to my dismay, I felt the need to snoop. And the day I got the gumption to look into a briefcase I found the jackpot. He had disclosed months before, but the affair was still going on and there was a child so, in a sad way, I knew the affair was still going on...

I found a letter of recrimination hand written by OW. She laid out the time frame of the affair from the beginning to the day she wrote this letter. There it was and needless to say not only was I crushed even more but I got a lot of answers to my questions. Like a thief, I put the letter back in its place. I was too shaken to even think about making a copy. Thru the months I verified the info and he gave me the 'right' answers. I looked for this letter again. I never found it. My H at one time spend hours shredding 'stuff' and I supposed the letter was shredded. But it was not the end of their relationship and my H stayed in Lalaland for quite a few more months.

I don't mean to rewrite history, however, and thank god for small favors, my memory is no longer sharp re. all these months of pain, anger, rage, manipulation, compromise and everything else including the kitchen sink and a hammer.....

We have been "back" together for over 4 years. But I still do not open his mail, look into his brief case etc....I don't need to and have no reason to. I don't know if I was 'meant' to find the letter - I don't know if it had been left for me to found. But I know I got all the answers to my unasked questions answered right there in one big swoop...





And as you walk you make your path Kat