Hello all. This is my first MB post. The main reason for this post is the the absence of Honesty and Openness in our marriage. We have had this lack for as long as we have been together, even back to when we were dating. Within our first few weeks of dating, she told me she had no curfew one night, and I took her home almost at midnight and had to watch her get in trouble with her parents for not being home on time. Mabye she did not want to go home, because of parent/teenager relationship problems, but to lie to my face while barely knowing me, and hopefully wanting me to stay around does not make much sense.

Then, our lives started to diverge when we had our first children in 1998 and 1999. I wanted them to have limits in certain areas, like not letting them see violence and sex in television shows and movies. She would agree to those limits after I confronted her with it, but she was actually allowing those things she said she would not do to happen. She would spend money and not tell me, causing overdrafts, late bils, etc. Every time I found it happening, I would admittedly have an Angry Outburst, and we would fight and not talk for a few hours/days, and then sort of make up, on a relationship roller coaster.

The other thing that happened in those days was the Independent Behaviour routine. I would get a 5 minute to 1 hour notice that "Mom/and/or Grandma are coming over and me and the kids are going shopping/whatever with them." She was using the grandkids' novelty to get admiration/whatever from her mom, I think...

Since moving in 2001, she has lived a second life since shortly after we got here. She got a cell phone fraudulently in my name so she could call mommy and co., maybe because I complained about the phone bill(before we got unlimited long distance). The only way I know about it is finding the receit from the collection agency in a kitchen drawer one day. That started my drawer watching routine, and has resulted in many interesting finds...

She got a prepaid phone a few years later, which I never knew about until I found it in a drawer. I HAD to look through the phonebook, but I didn't find anything romantically incriminating. To be honest, I didn't think there was reason to beleive that there should be. There were unannounced withdrawls from the bank, she started a volunteer job to tutor or mentor or something youths that were in juvenile court. She is less that 5 feet tall and about 110lbs, so that does not seem to be a safe environment to put one's self in.

There were the unannounced sports teams, same day notice of family-oriented outings at church or school, boy and girl scouts(I found out about our son in cub scouts on first day they went), becoming a boy scout teacher, telling me her dad died(he died 6 days later), to make sure that I would let her go back home, enrolling in online school and signing on for close to $10,000 in debt after telling me that it would all be paid for with GRANTS. So add that debt to all the others she has incurred for us...

I have changed the way I approach her and our marriage by being nice and loving, not Angrily Outbursting, or Disrespectfully Judging her, and a couple of times, I have gently told her, I know somethings that she has done, and giving her the oppurtunity to tell me about them. She told me angrily and tearfully to tell her what I wanted to know, but I told here I was done confronting her and here is an oppurtunity to give me my second greatest EN and to show some repentance and change on her part. She said she did not understand the significance of confessing rather than me telling her, so if she really believes that, is she just totally morally bankrupt, clueless, or what!?

Anyway, her mother now lives with us, on a supposedly temporary basis. She had become involved with an inmate from the home state who is in for murder in first degree, life without parole. She has 1040 tax forms and change of address forms and a bunch of social security #s and names written in a notebook in her papers, and utility bills in my wife's (maiden)name and a receit for a mailbox, the key for which I believe resides on my wife's keyring. Her mother's notebook has money order amounts and dates sent out, and I found the shredded remains of a money order receit in the bottom of the trash bin last week. Wife denies knowledge of and involvement in anything mother and inmate bf are doing, but I know she was texting him back and forth, asking for the address to send "it" to and so forth...

All I get are lies and half truths, and that is all I have ever gotten. I have resolved that as much as my wife's life is about not revealing/hiding things, MY life will be about finding them out. Trust, but verify. I want opinions about that part especially. I have not attempted to surveil our marriage before, but now am sorry I have not set up to do it sooner. I have started to feel like a weight has lifted from me, at least partially, because I believe I will soon start to know things as these things are put into place. I guess I am looking for some opinions and insights from somebody else who has been down that road, or are going through it right now...

Thanks,
H and W both about 33yrs old
married 13 years, together 15 high school sweethearts
daughter,son,daughter,son aged 1.5 to 10 years

Im not a doctor but it sounds to me like your wife may be bipolar. You can look up symptoms of this terrible disease online to see what you think. The spending and running up big bills, starting projects and not seeing them thru, irresponsible behavior....all are symptoms. If this is so....hang on for a very bumpy road. BUT...hear the good news....if she does have bipolar, it is managable with medication and you may find yourself with a whole new wife. Many times bipolar manifests itself (or in other words) first shows up in early teenager years masked in "regular crazy teen behavior" such as you described. But what happens is that once you become an adult and those behaviors are no longer acceptable, you realize it was probably bipolar all along. I would suggest spending some time researching this online and then possibly confronting her in a kind and loving way with some literature. Be prepared for her to deny it and even refuse to go to a doctor. If this happens I would possibly give some ultimatums about if she doesn't go. Bipolar can ruin not only the lives of the people who have it, but also ruins the lives of the people that love and care about them the most.

Thank you for your reply. I looked at some of the warning signs for bipolar, but they did not really match up with my wife. I think her secrecy/ decit comes from being from different backgrounds, and having different ways of dealing with the children. I am more strict/conservative, and she is more loose/liberal, which means that I try to get her to be more strict with the children. She then agrees so as to avoid conflict, when she really does not think what I want is important enough to go along with. When I find out, I get angry with her.

Also, the things that she has done outside the home that she did not even ask or tell me about reveal a lack of judgement, which I would/could/did get angry about. The earliest example is her volunteering for crosswalk guard at the older kids' school. She took our youngest daughter with her, to sit in the stroller as she did her crosswalk duties, standing in the middle of a 4 lane road, distracted by her duties, exposed to the rain and cold. She caught several colds/mini flus from that, and it's a wonder she did not get picked up while Mom wasn't looking...

The other thing was volunteering to be like a big sister or whatever for junevnile court. What if one of those POS little ruffians had decided to get violent on her? And where was our youngest daughter while all this was going on?

It's like she does stupid stuff and tries to hide it to avoid conflict. If I could have back all the money that she has spent without me knowing, we could be in a much better neighborhood now, and be well on the way to Dave Ramsey's version of Financial Peace. If I could take back all the murders and sex that the two older children has seen on their mother's tv and movies, they would have a large measure more innocence.

Well, anyway, my username says it all, but with luck and determination, I will be able to find stuff out. Maybe eventually, she will just tell me outright.

I know some people who simply never learned to tell the truth. They learned that it is their 'job' to get what they want by lying and covering up. That is just who they are. They may know on some level that it's wrong, or hurtful, but their need for immediate gratification trumps everything else. Basically, the mind of a 6 year old.

She will never change. IMO, it would be impossible for her to have the desire or self-control to change herself that much. Maybe - maybe - if you were to leave her and she became penniless and homeless and shamed, she might get the desire to open up her subconscious to see why she does it, but my guess is she would never be willing to look at herself that honestly.

Sorry, but that has been my experience.

Well damn. You might be right. I believe that life should be a constant process of improvement and maturation. She, on the other hand, has been content to just coast and skate along in mediocrity. In all our conflicts and fights, I have been trying to convert her over to doing the right thing. During those arguments, she says she will do things if I want her to. She does not understand that I want her to do the right thing, because it is the right thing. Furthermore, it shows me that she does not wholeheartedly buy into agreeing to whatever it is that the conflict is over.

As for leaving her to her own devices, we just had a wonderful little son(number 4 child) come into our lives last year, so it will be about 17 years before that will be a real option. Just think, not having any savings or other assets for the whole period of time, carrying on as at present, just so I can then branch off and do my own thing later, the right way. I would be 50 years old then.

I still resolve to be emotionally even handed with her, no Angry Outbursts, or Disresptful Judgements, and just collecting information, and I guess I better start praying more often and better