If you found out your spouse was cheating by snooping…

[Anonymous]

I'm the one who asked whether this is a real question. I apologize to OP, who posted after that with the back story.

I guess I was just astonished that anyone could think there is a credible case to be made that, while fukking someone else while you're married is bad and violates trust, .... snooping in order to confirm evidence that your spouse is a liar, is fukking someone despite being married, is exposing their spouse to disease, why, that's just as bad!

I mean, someone really thinks this?


(note: I'm not talking about baseless daily paranoid fishing expeditions without any shred of evidence that spouse is cheating. That's not OK. just talking about confirming evidence-based suspicions. Like, weird hotel stays. Work travel when you know damn well spouse doesn't travel for work. Suddenly leaving the house at 1 a.m and returning at 7 am smelling like sex. )

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

Ah.

Don’t worry. In 6 months the sex will peter out with OW as LBD kicks in.

(Kidding. Mostly.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm the one who asked whether this is a real question. I apologize to OP, who posted after that with the back story.

I guess I was just astonished that anyone could think there is a credible case to be made that, while fukking someone else while you're married is bad and violates trust, .... snooping in order to confirm evidence that your spouse is a liar, is fukking someone despite being married, is exposing their spouse to disease, why, that's just as bad!

I mean, someone really thinks this?


(note: I'm not talking about baseless daily paranoid fishing expeditions without any shred of evidence that spouse is cheating. That's not OK. just talking about confirming evidence-based suspicions. Like, weird hotel stays. Work travel when you know damn well spouse doesn't travel for work. Suddenly leaving the house at 1 a.m and returning at 7 am smelling like sex. )

It’s cheater psychology 101. They are blameless. Someone always drove them to it. There is a shitload of mental gymnastics and the ones that are t sorry and can’t be rehabbed will never take full responsibility of offer full transparency and disclosure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

Ah.

Don’t worry. In 6 months the sex will peter out with OW as LBD kicks in.

(Kidding. Mostly.)

OW is out of the picture I believe due to circumstances that would pretty much destroy her life. No need to get into details other than to say I’m pretty sure that’s over and done with but not after so much deceit from both parties as OW is someone we know who was employed by us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

Ah.

Don’t worry. In 6 months the sex will peter out with OW as LBD kicks in.

(Kidding. Mostly.)

Unless she goes full lesbo like Glennon and marries Abby Wambach.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

Ah.

Don’t worry. In 6 months the sex will peter out with OW as LBD kicks in.

(Kidding. Mostly.)

OW is out of the picture I believe due to circumstances that would pretty much destroy her life. No need to get into details other than to say I’m pretty sure that’s over and done with but not after so much deceit from both parties as OW is someone we know who was employed by us.

Oof. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. What’s the point of evidence gathering — in the event of divorce/custody battles? I’m in a no-fault state so doesn’t that mean adultery/infidelity doesn’t factor in? Honestly even discussing divorce turns my stomach. This sucks.

I'm the "real question?" PP. Divorced myself after cheating, in a no-fault state. With a kid. Former spouse is a pit bull tenacious and skilled lawyer.

The reason you PRIVATELY build an air tight case with irrefutable evidence is that you want to be swift, with shock and awe, when you finally confront them. You want to leave no room for alternative reasonable explanations that they can exploit.

Once you're 97% sure they're cheating, you want to be able to crush them with evidence and allow for no plausible claims of denial. Why: that gets that topic out of the way, so you can move on to the very, very, very important topic of, "What are we going to do now?" If you keep returning to bull$!t conversations of 'it was just emotional' or 'we stayed at different hotels and you can't prove we didn't!' .... you'll never move forward.

And take if from me, that kind of gaslighting will make you feel worse than you already do right now.

So to recap: crush. them. with. incontrovertible evidence. Has nothing to do with alimony or custody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. What’s the point of evidence gathering — in the event of divorce/custody battles? I’m in a no-fault state so doesn’t that mean adultery/infidelity doesn’t factor in? Honestly even discussing divorce turns my stomach. This sucks.

VA and MD both offer at fault and non-fault.

Fault grounds include adultery, desertion, imprisonment for a crime, insanity, cruelty of treatment, and excessively vicious conduct. If you can't prove a fault-based ground for divorce, you may still be eligible to file for divorce based on the “no fault” ground of 12-month separation or mutual consent.

You don’t need pics. If you have email/text and info hotel was used- that’s enough.

[Anonymous]

I was the kidder above.
More seriously:

This is all about trust. Trust and how to earn it back.
She cheated. Can you trust her again? How can she earn back your trust? Lying a second time is a bad bad thing that makes it worse.

She will need to trust you again too. This is a much smaller deal but it does exist if you will ever get back to a functional relationship again. You snooped on her life. Frankly, she had it coming. She lied. If she wants to be able to hide things from you again, you both need to agree on what those things might be and if you both can trust each other about them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. What’s the point of evidence gathering — in the event of divorce/custody battles? I’m in a no-fault state so doesn’t that mean adultery/infidelity doesn’t factor in? Honestly even discussing divorce turns my stomach. This sucks.

VA and MD both offer at fault and non-fault.

Fault grounds include adultery, desertion, imprisonment for a crime, insanity, cruelty of treatment, and excessively vicious conduct. If you can't prove a fault-based ground for divorce, you may still be eligible to file for divorce based on the “no fault” ground of 12-month separation or mutual consent.

You don’t need pics. If you have email/text and info hotel was used- that’s enough.

Yes. Desertion, cruelty, adultery, and felonies with confinement of at least one year are all fault-based grounds for divorce. The only non-fault ground in Virginia is living separate and apart for one year (or six months if you have no minor children and have signed a Property Settlement Agreement).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP again. What’s the point of evidence gathering — in the event of divorce/custody battles? I’m in a no-fault state so doesn’t that mean adultery/infidelity doesn’t factor in? Honestly even discussing divorce turns my stomach. This sucks.

Whether or not you use it in a divorce, you want to make sure your spouse has no ability to gaslight you which they absolutely will try to do. You will start to doubt yourself and wonder if you are crazy, and the evidence will help your sanity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

Apologies for assuming you and the OW were men. Doesn’t change the answer though, she doesn’t get privacy right now.

Do you want to stay married? I’d guess therapy is the only way. This was a lot of deception for a spouse to get over without some kind of help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I was the kidder above.
More seriously:

This is all about trust. Trust and how to earn it back.
She cheated. Can you trust her again? How can she earn back your trust? Lying a second time is a bad bad thing that makes it worse.

She will need to trust you again too. This is a much smaller deal but it does exist if you will ever get back to a functional relationship again. You snooped on her life. Frankly, she had it coming. She lied. If she wants to be able to hide things from you again, you both need to agree on what those things might be and if you both can trust each other about them.

If she doesn’t tell you everything and then a year from now you find out more incriminating acts she kept secret, man, it sets the timetable for recovery and trust back to zero. Death by a thousand paper cuts, this piecemeal reveal.

She needs to provide a timeline and facts, overnights, when and how they meet, etc. You need to know the means she used to conceal it—-was it internet messaging, was it in your home, when/what days times would they meet, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. It’s complicated. I love her and we have 3 kids who would be destroyed by a completely broken home.

All parties are women btw. Me, spouse, OW.

Apologies for assuming you and the OW were men. Doesn’t change the answer though, she doesn’t get privacy right now.

Do you want to stay married? I’d guess therapy is the only way. This was a lot of deception for a spouse to get over without some kind of help.

Hot pants needs her own individual therapy to figure out why she thought lying and gaslighting were acceptable in a marriage. She needs to get to the roots of her mental health or morality issue.