Been married almost 20 years. I operate a home business with good income. My husband recently went back to the corporate world. I feel he had been acting depressed/bipolar for the past 6 months or so. He seemed unmotivated to do anything around our house to help me out and spent half his days watching tv instead of working in our home business. About 3 years ago, we hit a bump in our marriage after I found out he was doing porn online every day and possibly in chat rooms (he denies this). Also during this time, he received a supposed "wrong number" text from a weird number very early in the morning. I googled the number and it belonged to a prostitute. He denied knowing her and said it was "wrong number". This is highly possible, but given the amount of porn he was doing, I still had my doubts/suspicions. It took a while for me to get over all of this. I have finally been at the point where I was trusting him fully again.

So, like I mentioned above, he has just went back to work in the city starting about a month ago. He landed a great job with a wonderful company at a salary he wanted. The team he works on is a new team and will eventually consist of about 10 people. Right now, there are 2 managers and my husband and his female colleague. She is married as well. I have been happy he got a job that makes him happy. For the past month, I have been taking on pretty much all of the housework, running my own business, and also purchasing his entire work wardrobe for him because he hates to shop. I have also spent extra hours making sure he has clean clothes every day and stay up late often to wash, dry, hang up his clothing, etc. I feel I have tried to be a good supportive wife and help him out.

The first week, he came home and told us about his two managers in great detail. Also- he mentioned his female colleague briefly one day but it wasn't a very detailed conversation (so I don't really know much about her except HE says she's a married lesbian). Last week after my husband went to bed, I was still up catching up on some chores. Our oldest child (age 18) who still lives at home was with me. He told me that his Dad told him that he went out to lunch with his colleague Tiffany today. I said "really". Then I thought- that's a bit weird that he didn't mention this to me. My son told me that it was a lunch with just my husband and Tiffany only- nobody else at work went. Also- he told me that he walked with Tiffany around the city for about an hour showing her some of the sights as she wasn't from this area and wasn't familiar with it.

The entire night, I was pretty frustrated that he failed to mention this to me (that he took another woman to lunch by himself). That morning as he left for work, I texted him to "have fun at lunch today". He immediately started calling me, but I didn't answer the phone as I was tired and wanted to catch a bit more sleep. He tried to call me about 7 times. That evening when he got home, I asked him about this private lunch with Tiffany. He said it was no big deal and that I needed to get some trust. He made fun of me and my "trust issues". He made me feel soooo bad! (Remember- those trust issues I had were caused by things that he did several years ago).

I told him that I didn't feel it was a good idea to start this practice of taking another woman to lunch because he's new at the company and it looks bad in the eyes of your boss and other coworkers. Also- I don't know the woman and I'll admit it does make me jealous to think of him and another female going alone given all that he and I have been through several years ago (we almost split up back then). I expressed these concerns to my husband and he hit the roof. He called me all kinds of names <Staff Edit>/ I kept trying to explain the situation and even sent him examples of articles online about how it's not a good idea. I asked him to please consider my feelings and not do it again in the future. He was so mad. He opened the door to go out to run an errand. On his way out, he told me he wasn't putting up with my stress and maybe we should just get separated. He stayed out for about an hour at the mall. He came back and we continued arguing about it. He still felt it was perfectly fine to take Tiffany out by himself at lunch. We didn't really speak for days. I mostly ignored him and told him I was moving on with work, etc. Then one day around lunchtime, he texted me from his office to tell me "just to let you know, I picked my lunch up and am eating at my desk. I will be doing this "until further notice". This text infuriated me. <Staff Edit> So we fought again.

We didn't speak thru the next weekend. Several days later, he finally told me he wouldn't do lunch alone with her again and that he's sorry I got so upset (not sorry that he said all those mean things to me). He actually got mad at me and said I started the whole thing by texting him to "have fun at lunch" that day. I just have a bad feeling about the whole thing. Why did he get so defensive if she's just a lesbian colleague. I looked at our phone bill and saw where he called a divorce attorney one morning before work and also during his lunch. So apparently, this issue means so much to him that he's willing to start calling attorneys about getting separated. <Staff Edit>Who does this?

Also- something you need to know is: several years ago, he and I had discussed not lunching/dining with the opposite sex alone. I went to a training class and a male colleague offered to take me to lunch. I wasn't comfortable with it and said no. I told my husband about it. He said "I hope you didn't do it". I told him I did not. So, we had the discussion about whether we should go lunch/dinner with the opposite sex alone. My husband said this practice is NOT a good idea. This was HIS idea to not do it. But flash forward, and now he has break his own rules. I am now left 1) hurt that he put me thru pure hell for a week insisting that it's ok to continue eating alone with Tiffany for lunch at work 2) not trusting him now because he kept this from me to start with (my son is one who told me) 3) blindsided and in shock that he would go to great length to call divorce attorneys.

I have looked up a photo of Tiffany online and she is not that attractive- she's not ugly but she's certainly not someone that would cause me to dump my wife for. So, I think this whole thing is just weird. I'm tired of him playing these games with me and playing with my heart. Right now, my heart is padlocked and he won't be getting in any time soon! What do you think?

A couple of things stand out. The first is that your husband does not care about your feelings. A caring spouse stops doing things that harm/upsets her spouse. A complaint is an irritation in a bad marriage and an opportunity for improvement in a good marriage.

Secondly, your husband has very inappropriate boundaries with women. 99% of affairs start with opposite sex friendships and he is a walking affair waiting to happen. He behaves in reckless manner and then demands "trust me, trust me." That is like a drunk driver demanding to be "trusted." Trust is inspired by trustworthy behavior, it is not an entitlement program for the wayward minded.

I suspect your husband has had infidelities in the past and you just don't know about it because he is so manipulative when you address it. [the prostitute whose # you found] He seems to be out looking for action.

If I were you, I would become a super sleuth and start spying on him. Put spyware/GPS on his phone to find out what is going on. webwatcher is a good one. Also, put a keylogger on your computer to make sure he is not still doing online porn.

In the meantime, I would approach him with a plan to affair proof your marriage and that would start with him eliminating all opposite sex friendships and behaving professionally at work.

Your husband acts very much like a man who is addicted to porn, he is cold, mean and selfish so I suspect that is still going on.

I never see him on computer anymore. His new laptop provided to him by his new employer doesn't allow him to access the internet- and their IT dept monitors online usage. The only thing he has is his phone. He takes it to bed with him because he uses it as alarm clock (he has another actual alarm clock too & he sets both because he's a heavy sleeper). He goes to bed earlier than me. Right when he gets in bed, he puts his phone on nightstand on the other side of the bedroom. He reads his Bible and goes to sleep. So I'm not sure about the porm. He sends so many conflicting signals. He's really trying to portray a better image on the surface- doesn't like me to curse (but he has no probs cursing at me during arguments). He reads the Bible and leaves notes with verses around the house. But he can absolutely be a cold heartless person. He argued with me for 5-6 days about this issue of me asking him to not dine with his female coworker one-on-one. He threatened divorce if I mentioned it again. He even called divorce attorney to ask some questions. I asked him why he did that. He said because we've been arguing so much for past year that I'm so stressed. He said I had issues etc. Yesterday, he asked me to have sex. I turned him down because I told him I don't feel close to him right now. I told him all of our arguing has got me feeling bad. He said "what arguing? We've been. Getting alone fine". I was like "ok? Isn't this your reason for calling attorneys? I have told him all along that he called the attorney because he didn't like me to tell him not to go lunch with his coworker. He even cried at one point because I was "stressing him so much".

At my company, it was known by several colleagues that one of the employees watched porn on his phone during the coffee break. Any moment your husband has a smartphone, he can watch porn if he wants.

There are so many red flags in your post..

Snoop. Is his phone password protected?

I would bring up the subject of opposite sex friendships again and make it clear to him that yes, you will end up divorced if it doesn't stop. You will end up divorced anyway if your spouse bullies you into silence with threats. There are some very serious issues here that have much more to do with this one issue.

Do you want the moderators to move this to the SAA forum so you can get feedback?

Sure- whatever u recommend. Thank u&#128578;

If your monitoring is not picking anything up, you may want to try a VAR in his car.

He may have a second phone - this is a common tactic of wayward spouses if they think they are being monitored.

I'm a smart person who realizes these things are way too many coincidences. He would have to have some serious bad luck to be an innocent victim in all of these little situations. I think he is possibly a closeted sex addict who depends on sex to cope with life's woes. I decided I couldn't keep up with him anymore- it was exhausting. He of course denies everything except that he at one time went to counseling for about a week and admitted to me that he had a mild sex addiction. But very mild according to him. People say to me then u should just leave. It's really hard because the rug has been pulled out from under me. It will totally change my life, routine, my kids lives, etc. The ideal fix would have been for him to get long term help.

Here is an interesting article about people who intend to be unfaithful.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com//graphic/mbi8122_cheat.html

Generally long term help for someone with a sex addiction, particularly one who exercises sexual experiences outside of the marriage, is to reorganize your lives so you are together 24x7.

I think the incident with him softening Tiffany up with this date and walk around the city is very telling. I think it shows intent when he minimized the information to you upfront.

What spyware are you going to put into place?

Please respond to his rebuttals;

1) I was just trying to be a nice coworker and show her around the area. We both stood up from our desks at the same time and decided to walk together to go get some lunch.

2) She's a married lesbian. I don't see the issue.

3) I don't know what your problem is but you've gone crazy. You haven't been acting right lately (lol- and he thinks he is)

I told his parents because I'm honestly not sure what I'm going to do. His Mon is giving him lectures.

I wondered you had read my posts? I spent alot of personal time writing them. Did you read them?

Are you going to put spyware?

I agree with everything you say. I just don't know when he'd have time to do the porn during the week. He can't do it on his work computer or he will be fired (they have a strict monitoring policy for all employees). He doesn't have time during his lunch because he goes out to eat at tons of restaurants full of people. After work, he comes home. Who knows though- maybe he is creative.

He is a very cold and mean person though who just cannot see things from my perspective. I actually told him that I don't think he did anything during the lunch with his coworker. I simply said that going forward I think it puts him in a bad position and looks weird. I also said I'm uncomfortable about it. Instead of saying "I'm sorry- I will not do it again because I love you and I don't want to hurt you".....he blew up! He got furious and told me that he knew I was going to not trust him at work. He said I had serious issues and holding the mistakes of the past against him. I honestly had not even been thinking about all of that. Since he started work a month ago, I never asked about any females or anything else about his colleagues, etc. I took time and money to go out and buy him clothing for his job (at his request- I'm not his mother). I would stay up late working and washing his clothes. He has basically not done any housework in a month besides taking out the trash to the curb once a week. I have taken over our home business and excelled- even making more money than he is making at his job now. I have not boasted about it- I was doing it for our family. Then, I got treated like this!

Yesterday, he asked me if I went to see an attorney (I told him I was going to see one after he threatened divorce). I told him no (because I didn't) and that I only left the house to go to the gym. He said "You didn't tell ME you went to the gym". I said "I didn't think I had to?" He then quizzed me about what I did there, what machines I exercised on, how many people were there, etc. I thought it was really weird.

Today, he told me that he wants to put a tracking app on my cellphone. I was like, "ok?" I have no problem with this because I don't have anything to hide. But 3 yrs ago when I thought he was cheating on me, I requested him to put it on his phone so I could rebuild my trust. I was ridiculed for weeks about it. He put the app on there, but he would laugh at me and take my phone and look at how many times I tracked him that day. So I guess now the shoe is on the other foot? Or he's just being a ###hole to me to aggravate me.

This is exactly why you need to put spyware on his phone and VAR in his vehicle. Why are you so determined not to do it?

Your WH has so many red flags that we can see them from a mile away. If he has nothing to hide he wouldn�t try and ridicule you and be 100% transparent.

So when are you going to install spyware? Without this you�re going to keep spinning in circles like you have been.

What is a VAR and how do I get one? I can't really put spyware on his iPhone unless I jailbreak it- which he will surely see that it has been jailbroken. Any ideas?

VAR = voice activated recorder.

Do you in any way have access to his phone to check his messages and location history?

I used teensafe on my kids' iphones which does not require a jailbreak. It just requires that you know their itunes password and backs the phone up to itunes, which you then can access by logging into teensafe.com. It shows deleted texts and chats from quite a few apps. Contacts, etc. For my application (teens who didn't suspect anything), it was pretty thorough.

I've been very happy with it, and it has helped me keep them out of danger a few times.

You can install it without having the phone in hand, but it sends a text to the phone so best to do it at night while he's sleeping if you can sneak it away from the bedside. If you have an iphone you can practice on yours first.

It has a file that it places in the app folder, but it is named in a way that it just seems to be a system app.

I agree with this 100%.

Are you going to follow this plan? You don't seem to be answering these questions directly and this is where you need to be focusing your attention.

Yes I'm going to look into this Teensafe for the phone. Today, he wants to put all of this behind us. He really wants to have intimate relations with me. He's asked twice since yesterday. He also asked me to put find my iPhone on my phone or else he would remove it from his (we put it on his years ago after my suspicions were high). He's really nosey and watching what ai do all of a sudden (I have nothing to hide). He doesn't realize how close he came this time to finding himself alone. Big threats by calling attorney got my attention and not in a way he probably hoped.