Don't know how to go from here

Some background....A few years back, I noticed my wife spending more time on her cellphone. She added a lockscreen and it seemed when i'd walk in the room she'd close the window or tilt the screen away. It ate away at me so I started snooping. Looked up the phone records and saw A LOT of texts back and forth w/ a number I didn't recognize. I was able to figure out the other persons name, but had no idea what was going on....One day she got up and left her phone and somehow the lockscreen didn't work and I was able to open the messenger and saw her talking to another friend about how she's not going to communicate with this other guy. Reason being she felt it was getting out of hand and also I was starting to ask her a lot of questions to try to trip her up knowing what I did with the phone records...Anyway she walked in and I showed her what I knew and everything came out. She reconnected with an ex-boyfriend who was having his own marital troubles and the back and forth began and so on. She tells me they never met up, but at this point whatever, it is over. This ruined so much of my trust in her. She stopped locking her phone and a year ago I was getting a drink at 2am when her phone buzzed next to the sink and popped up a message from just a phone number not a contact saying something really obscure like "oh I really messed up this time." I don't know why that really set me off but I picked up her phone and looked for any thread from that conversation and there was none, as if they never texted before, or if she deleted previous message...I woke her up and angrily asked her what that was about and she got all upset that I still had no trust after 2 years of the incident. This led to her getting her own phone, and back to locking the screen cause she says she doesn't trust me.... Now currently things are good. She works a part time job catering and that job goes late because they have to clean after the event...So now I'm sitting at home many weekends along cause the kids are in bed and she's working until the job is done.... Or so I thought....I ended up playing baseball with a coworker of her, and one day when we were warming up, I asked him if he had a chance to meet her yet (he was new)....He said yeah, but she didn't work last night.....She told me that she did... We have a device in our car to give us a discount on our auto insurance. You can see how you perform and you can also see trips on there....This seed of doubt caused me to snoop again and I started seeing an unsettling pattern....Towards the end of the night there would be an 11 minute drive about 11 miles away....Then about an hour or so later a 9.5 mile drive home (we live 1 mile from the restaurant). This doesn't happen every time she works but lately it has happened a lot....11 miles out, an hour later 9.5 miles back... Now in my mind this can be two things 1. cheating 2. driving another girl that works there home, hanging out for an hour. She doesn't tell me about this because she knows i'm already irritated about being left home along.... Both cases, this is unfair to me, but one is substantially worse than the other.... I don't know how to approach her about this. The only reason I know this info is some sneaky snooping and if it is nothing more than her ditching me for a friend for an extra hour, then I really show my true colors of how little I trust her... I love her, my kids, my house and my life, and if I keeping needling her she can want to call it quits....Yet she is being very dishonest and this is truly unfair to me... I went as far as reactivating an old phone to put in her car w/ gps tracker....I went to her parking lot today to slip it in there but couldn't find her car (big lot) and I didn't want to look weird driving around and around so I just left....But if I got the device in there...I could see where this 11 mi drive goes and take it from there....But this just amps up my showing of distrust..... WOW I said a lot I'm sorry I have nobody to talk to....

You need to ask yourself if your marriage has trust, communication, honesty, love and respect coming from both of you. Your post tells us that you don't and therefore, regardless of the reasons for the lack of them, you have a choice as to sit her down and discuss your marriage and look towards a counselor who may assist you if you both have the NEED for it. She owes it to you, and most importantly to herself, to tell you how she feels about your marriage together. You may love her, your kids and your life but you can't be 100% happy if her actions are causing a reaction from you which leads you to post on this forum. You need to be totally happy so your kids can be the same, but your wife needs to understand that her dishonesty is just that, dishonesty. Her actions have basically betrayed her marriage vows. You need to ask her why. While she continues to lie to you and has the need to hide things from you, she is contributing to the unpredictability that your relationship is suffering from at present. You will never have trust again while your marriage is in this environment and while you, most importantly, need to learn to trust again, she also has to have the need to assist you to trust her again by respecting you and her marriage. You need to understand that while two people make a marriage work, two people also destroy it but it always takes two people with a MUTUAL will to repair it.

My wife cheated on me and it's like a horror movie, reading your thread. One of the things is, you know something is wrong, and yet there you are partway through paying for a house, and with a child. There is no way to win that. You'll have the best messed-up child in the county, is all you can hope for. I went through it for 29 years. I don't know if you're that tough or not. I had a lot of heart pain, physical and emotional. Heart...pain.... I don't mean to be pessimistic, I mean to say, I know what you're going through. Like the things you're doing, I rem. afterwards thinking, I could have checked her speedometer for mileage on her car everyday when she got home from work, since she was in a carpool, and some weeks was driving only a few miles to meet the carpool, not the much further distance to work. Because some days each week, she was taking her own car to work, not riding with the carpool. I then thought, if I was checking her mileage, I would have gone up the wall from that. It's better than I didn't do that. But either way is rough. Was she sexually abused? Doesn't sound like she was, because you would have probably known about it by now. But she does sound mighty int. in having outside sex, and here she is with 2 kids and a house you 2 are buying? Her sex life is more important than the kids. Was she this active when you 2 were single? My wife was sex. abused, and that's all she thought about. And with my wife, it wasn't 1 guy it was 20 guys, over 16 years, with I figure, over 2,000 episodes. She died of a long illness 6 years ago. Among her last words were, "I.....HATE.....YOUUUUUUU!!!!!!" Showing the depth of her sickness, the depth of her affairs, and her hatred for me for inadvertently stopping her from 25 years of extra sex, instead of just 16. I often wondered what it would be like to be married to a woman who was an alcoholic, if you kept them from their bottle. I found out. Sick. My wife's drug of choice was the adrenolin from sex. Not only was she not able to care about me, she was not able to care about our child, for she was mistreating our child as much as she was mistreating me. She would have been bringing men into the house to have sex, walking past our child, if I had left. My divorced sister did that with her daughter, and her daughter had to move out, for the mother was bringing so many men home and screwing so much, the daughter felt uncomfortable. o, I don't know what the point of that is, except these people don't care anything but about sex. That's not entirely true, for how many guys could resist if women were coming on to them everyday? Probably very few. And a guy who lived by himself for years, and their partner saying, "I'm not going to pay for the motel room," could resist bringing home an hour long "date," to have sex with, and walking past their child to the bedroom? I'm not saying every male would do that, I'm saying there are some, especially over 5 or 10 years time. So, these women are just doing what a lot of men would do. Or, as one woman put it to me on a help website, "Some women just want to have as much sex as they can." That's there goal. Just like it's the goal of some men. You may have to settle for knowing your wife is having sex and living there for the benefit of the kids, or, moving out and figuring out who gets the kids. Trying to correct her could be difficult. Trying to stay in that could be difficult. Trying to leave the kids and the mother of the kids, knowing the kids won't have either a mother or a father in the home, could be difficult. Whichever it is, you probably need to stay positive. I wasn't, during that time of my life, and it made it tougher. I read a col. on being positive before you try to solve a problem that helped me. I didn't know it, but unconsciously I was negative, and it messing me up from solving the problem. My uncon. said, "You can't solve that problem," and my con. wanted to solve it. I was going round and round in my mind, and I couldn't figure out what was happening. Until I got both going in the same direction, I couldn't solve the problem. After reading that col., getting my uncon. positive was key to having a chance to solve the problem. So I would read the col. before trying to solve my next problem, to clear my uncon. of neg. After that, before a problem, I would say, "Stay positive, stay positive, stay positive," trying to clear my uncon. of neg. I'll try to include that col. on the post below this one. You can get through this the best you can. I know it is hellacious. I did it for my child. I had no choice. He or I wasn't going to pay for her mistakes. If she wanted to be outrageous, that was her choice. If I wanted to be a good parent, that was my choice. I won. Today: The house is paid for. It is mine. My child will inherit it one day. My wife's actions did not affect that. My wife died of a long illness. My grown child and I are good friends. We both survived that. He might not have done as well if I had left. He gave me 20 years of heck when he dis. at 13 what our problem was. But a year ago, we got back together. Wouldn't trade it for the world. Made the right dec. My wife said once, "I like sex while it's happening, but afterwards I'm just as sad." It other words, it wasn't worth it. Sex outside the marriage over 2,000 times, but she was still just as depressed. Sexually abused. Never had a chance. On her hospital bed in the living room in the last week, I would lay down on the sofa beside her. As close to her, emotionally and physically, as I had been to her in the 29 years since I found out about her transgressions. I was glad I hadn't left. The paid for house, I'm living in now, no rent, no mortgage. The child, 39 years old, wife and 2 kids of his own. Couldn't have turned out better. Takes his kids to ride bikes on a nice street near his house, just like I did with him. The kid, from 13 to 39 despised me. Last Christmas, gave him an album of things I wrote down about what he was doing as he was growing up. He suddenly dec. I wasn't so bad. Was it the fact that I stayed? I don't know. Did the album remind him of some of the things I did for him? I don't know. But I know the last year of him being friendly has really been nice. Was it worth the 29 year wait? Yeah. Does he hold any grudges against his mom? No. Do I? Not when I'm around him. Do I when I'm not around him? Not really. I don't want her or that to affect my life. Oh, I gotta go. Why? My son called me a little while ago, and I feel I have an important call to make.

Teddy: here is the column on being positive that I talked about above which has helped me so much. _______________________________________________________________________________________ by Niki Scott June 21, 1994 “We all know people who race around in small, futile circles whenever they’re present with a problem to solve, and others who seem to be natural-born problem solvers—able to tackle obstacles, calmly, logically and effectively. “Fortunately, being a good problem-solver is not a genetic trait. It’s a learned skill, one that can be learned at any age. If you want to improve your problem-solving skills, here are 10 steps that will help: "The three most important things of a good problem solver are attitude, attitude, and attitude. If you think of obstacles as anxiety-producers and unfair burdens, you almost certainly aren't an effective problem solver." “If you view obstacles as opportunities to gather new information, stretch your imagination, learn new coping mechanisms and achieve more control over your life on the other hand, you’re probably a problem-solving whiz.” “Be an optimist. If your general outlook is pessimistic, you’re probably not a good problem solver. Facing every puzzle with the assumption that it’s probably unsolvable practically insures that it will be.” “Happily, changing from a pessimist to an optimistic frame of mind isn’t as difficult was it might sound. Pessimism isn’t a genetic trait, either. It’s a habit of thought we learned as children—and can unlearn as adults.” “Keep an open mind. Most problems have not just one solution, but many—and sometimes the best ones sound far-fetched or even bizarre at first.” “Be flexible. Force yourself to give up old, outmoded ways of thinking or acting even though they’re comfortable. Experiment with new ways of thinking and acting, and you’ll be surprised by how quickly THEY become comfortable.” “Believe in yourself—no matter what. If you believe you’ll be able to solve a problem, your chances of solving it double. Review your past successes—frequently!” “Take one step at a time. We all want guarantees that our imagination, diligence and hard work will pay off, but good problem-solvers are able to concentrate on the job at hand and move toward their personal and professional goals without blueprints or guarantees of success.” “Ask for the help you need. There’s no shame in needing help—only in being too self-conscious, too self-protective, too proud or stubborn to ask for it. “Don’t ask for help you don’t need. Those of us who were taught as children to run to an adult whenever a problem arose, or encouraged in other ways to be helpless and dependent, may find ourselves automatically seeking help now when a problem arises—whether or not we really need it. “Resist the temptation. Asking for assistance before we’ve honestly tried to solve a problem robs us of our dignity, self-respect and self-confidence—too high a price to pay. “ “Respect the process—not just it’s outcome. Never discount a learning experience just because you didn’t get an A+ on the test.” “Regardless of whether you’ve been completely successful at solving any problem, working on it almost certainly has gained you valuable experience and insight—good tools to bring with you the next time you have problem to solve!” “Finally, never hold the past over you own head. Learn what you can from your mistakes, give yourself credit for trying, then wipe the slate clean, quickly, and give yourself the same sympathy, understanding and encouragement that you’d gladly give to any friend.”

Spend your energy on fixing the problems you and your relationship have. The problem is likely to get worse for you. Perhaps you should ask her why she is so selfish and horrible. Funny how she is turning into the victim.

I know this sounds like I'm just being naïve, but there is that 2nd possibility that she's just hanging out with somebody too.....It's the same place over and over again, I was thinking a bar but that's unlikely that they'd never change it up....However, the majority of the people she works with are younger, so it's not impossible that she goes over to a girlfriends house to kickback a few after a long days work... She may feel entitled to not tell me about it believing she has a right to a certain amount of privacy.... I recently mentioned to her that hearing from her coworker that she didn't work a specific night really brought me back into a dark place and she gets really upset saying that i'll never learn to trust her again no matter how much she assures me and gets so upset about it that if she were actually lying she'd have to be almost insane to pull off that attitude....I've been married to her for nearly 10 years and I really don't think that she is like that... So thank you for sharing your experiences and thoughts but I'm trying to keep an open mind, but also find out with absolute certainty of what's going on... I could easily throw the mileage tracker in her face but then I may always doubt her coming clean story if it's not a worst case scenario story... I could track with the gps, but lets not forget that I'm home alone w/ the kids....what am I going to just leave them there while I drive 11 miles away...it's the middle of the night, frankly I could.... Ladies help me out here....Give me a devils advocate and tell me how I can present this info to her....because it does involve me showing true distrust to worry about her so much to pull up her auto records....yet at the same time...look what I found....

Stop feeling like you have no right to distrust her. Trust is earned- she was the one who broke the trust. Making herself the victim- She can't trust you" When you allowed her to get away with that BS-only showed her just how much BS you'll accept. Who do you really believe her or he co-worker? Remind her that it was her who caused the distrust in the marriage. Give her your computer/cell phone passwords, can she reassure you by doing the same? Will her reassuring words match her actions? If not then.... Give her an ultimatum that you're ready to stand by-