Ahhh, crap. I feel so sick. I posted about my DH asking a girl from his class if she wanted a ride and to practice together. I also mentioned that I didn't REALLY think he was trying to cheat on me, more just being stupid.

UPDATE:

For a while now, my anxiety has been really high. I keep thinking it has to do with my recent miscarriage and hormones. But I've been feeling very paranoid and worried about my marriage. Could never figure out exactly why. Last week I used his computer and checked the cookies. There was a dating site listed. I thought that was weird (since none of the other sites would have had that as a "pop up"). But I deleted the cookie. This morning, I checked again, and the dating site is back. I looked at his password list, and he has a username and password to this site! I tried to log in, but it said invalid username (maybe he changed the password). I created a profile for the site, and I could view his very limited profile. It gave his correct age and location, but said he was single, looking for a date. It didn't have a photo or anything.

I feel so sick. Has my intuition been right?? I can't believe it. He has a few friends who have cheated and he's always said how stupid they were to destroy their families. I feel dizzy when I think of how many opportunities he could have had in the past...I never used to check his computer.

We have a little girl. We have a house. He makes double what I make. I LOVE him. Our relationship has definitely changed since the birth of our daughter. It is much more distant, but I thought we were working on it. We were making excellent progress. We've been together for almost 20 years (married 14). I'm the only girl he's ever slept with, but he's always swore I'm all he wants. I try to give him what he needs.

Right now I'm plain out scared. I can NOT trust him!! I never ever wanted to be in a marriage where I couldn't trust my man. Now I seem to have been tossed into it whether I want to be or not. My head is literally spinning. I can't forgive cheating (once a cheater always a cheater). I can't believe MY husband is that guy that I tried so hard to avoid. I don't have any proof, but why the ****** does he have a membership to a dating site then?!!! I found another account that he has, and I got into it (by requesting a password change). It had never been used. Of course, now if he tries to log in, he'll wonder why his password was changed. It's weird...he's been pretty quiet/withdrawn from me since I confronted him about the girl from his class. We had one good talk where he reassured me and seemed really wonderful, and then he seems to have clammed up. But he is doing things like bringing me coffee (which he never usually does).

After running a dozen plans through my head, I came up with this....critique it please: I want confront him at a time when we are relaxed (yeah right) and have a chance to talk (which is difficult since we both work and have a little kid here). I want to get through to the guy I KNOW must be in there (I've known him for 20 years). He was such a great guy! He was the last person I thought would be interested in cheating. We definitely have grown more distant over the last few years since our daughter was born. But lately we've really both been trying. I just don't get it. Is this a mid-life crisis?? I seriously doubt he's actually meeting anyone through this dating site. I've checked his Visa statements (online, so he doesn't think I'd be able to see them) and they are totally clean.

I need to get through to him that he needs to lay the cards on the table. If he's looking for something, he needs to come clean. If he wants our marriage to work, he needs to agree to be transparent (no hiding anything) and go to marriage counselling.

Advice??

sheela,

Please read up on plan A and begin one immediately. Under the circumstances, you need to consider that he may have already cheated on you with an "internet date," in the past.

My FWH spent years poking around internet sites and collecting phone numbers in bars when on business travel. Eventually, he had a full blown PA that lasted 8 months and nearly destroyed us.

I recommend that you go ahead and tell him that you know he has been looking around and that it is not acceptable behavior for a married man under any circumstance.

See if he is willing to began MC with a good pro-marriage counselor that uses the MB principles.

Also, before you confront him, I would install a key logger and obtain all of his passwords (without his knowledge). That way you will be able to keep tabs on him to see how far this has gone.

Who

Sorry about this new news. Personally, I would wait to confront him. This is two strikes that show he may be looking to have an affair.

Do you have a keylogger on the computer? I would do that. The problem is, he will claim that he was "just curious" about the dating site. We've heard that one hundreds of times before.

I suggest you go into a strong Plan A. Be sure to spend 15 hours a week doing fun things WITHOUT your daughter. Couple time is essential for a marriage to thrive.

sheela,

Maybe you need to install a keylogger? I don't think you have enough information to confront yet....he's got too much wiggle room. You need some irrefutable truth....and even then he'll deny....that's why it's important to have good information before he can go further underground. Install a keylogger and find out what's going on.

Sorry <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> Welcome to MB.

He is a super-whiz on the computer. Seriously...that's his full-time job. I know (next to) nothing. I'm so scared to buy and install a keylogger. What if he finds it? He is so much more computer savvy than me. He WRITES software programs and tears peoples computers apart and rebuilds them.

sheela,

I'm a computer cave person myself, so hopefully someone here who isn't will give you the step-by-step on how to install and then make it invisible to him.

Having thought more about it, I would also recommend waiting to see what you can get from the keylogger.

I think that at least once here, a BS set up their own dating personality on the same site that their WS was on and actually caught them by "dating" them.

No matter what you do, watch him like a hawk without letting on. They get really careless. I could have caught my FWH before he even started his affair if I had even half way been paying any attention to his activities both on and off the computer.

Good luck.

Who

I write software programmes too and I assure you that I would never find our keylogger unless I was looking for it. Install it in stealth mode (it gives you this as an option) and the programme resides inside the systems files with an innocuous name. Windoze is such a bunch of spaghetti code that nobody knows all the files in there.

When you go to check on user activity, it opens with a set of hotkeys that you can change although the default is pretty good. It shows you every page that was viewed plus all the passwords etc.

You can download it here http://www.spectorsoft.com/

After installing, run your antivirus once to make sure this does not pick it up. If it does, set it to ignore.

Then you are good to go. Best of luck to you.

"I think that at least once here, a BS set up their own dating personality on the same site that their WS was on and actually caught them by "dating" them"

Oh, yeah, good idea, who me.

Sheela - You can download free keyloggers that supposedly are hard to detect. Hopefully someone here will know more.

Sheela,

I agree with everyone else, it seems like something is going on and you need to keep your eyes open to anything out of the ordinary.

Heck it has been a year since my FWH was involved in his A and i still keep an eye out for any thing out of the ordinary. I probably ALWAYS will.

Sheela: Not like I am an expert seeing as I am just now recovering my marriage from a year long affair thanks to a woman he met at an internet site. If the site was: Adult Friend Finder,or Plenty Of Fish, it's not dating he's looking for but intimate encounters. I have only known about his affair for 6 weeks! I am still where you are right now. After 20 years, some men get weird. My H took the loving he learned from our 20 years, "on-the-road". He'd only been with me his whole life and I guess he thought himself Super Lover. He met 2 other women who didn't appreciate his talents but unfortunately the 3rd cried on his shoulder that he was the best lover she ever had and he fell for it. Their encounter lasted almost 1 year with emailing, Iming, and phone calls until I uncovered the affair. He did come back on his own, begging me, but now OW won't go away. It takes a lot of hard work but after 20 years together there is history. I don't trust my H but I am assured that over time the trust does come back. He is beginning to see me in a new light also and we are renewing our love not thru anger but thru better communication, and counseling. I hope your marriage will work out for you but remember...don't lose yourself in this difficult time. Take care of yourself, change what you can but stay constant to your beliefs and don't lose you.

I still check occasionally, I know I always will now. I still kinda go by fool me once shame on you, fool me twice ...

For me it was just as well that I never had to collect evidence and remain cool until I had enough. What I discovered on d-day was proof enough and FWH didn't deny it.

If I had needed to remain cool and snoop further I don't know if I could have. I'm sort of a fry-pan-over-the-head kinda gal.

Who

LOL Who! I was a throw the cell in the toliet kinda gal. It's been four years for me and I don't snoop anymore. I still have a few triggers though, like when I call his cell and he doesn't answer or it goes straight to voicemail. Logically I know he has a good reason but still... it brings back those days.

Sheela, I'm so sorry you find yourself in this situation. It's definitely no fun at all.

I confronted my WH yesterday with the information (some of it) that I gathered over the past 5 weeks or so. Part of what I found on him was 2 profiles on dating sites. His MO was just the same as your H's - not much info and no picture. I think setting up anther profile for yourself is a great idea. Make up something really racy that you know will appeal to him and find a photo off the internet of someone else and use it. He won't be able to wiggle out of it - especially if you install the keylogger.

If you have a way to get into his online cell phone account, that can be helpful. That was invaluable to me to figure out what was going on and how much.

Check his credit to see if he has a credit card you don't know about. See if he has any addresses on the credit report that are PO boxes.

Get a digital voice recorder and hide it in his car to see if you can record his conversations when he's driving - especially if he's driving with this woman in the car.

Some people can't wait to confront and it was very hard for me to wait as long as I did. I'm glad I used the time to get myself set up for no wiggle room and found a great lawyer in case I needed it. Do what's right for you, though. Best of luck to you.

Too funny, I actually threw my FWH's laptop out the upstairs bathroom window. Believe or not it still worked after, but not very well.

I've done a lot of work on my temper over the last 4 plus years, but I still couldn't absolutely guarantee I wouldn't just lose it if I caught him again.

Who

I would be very wary of setting up a dating site profile to 'catch' the cheater. It's pretty much impossible to prove that you registered for that reason, and seems to me it gives him room to say 'You did it too!'

It also looks dodgy in any divorce discussions (sorry to mention the D word, Sheena.)

A keylogger is a much better idea.

TA

Actually that does make sense - it wouldn't look good if you're doing the same thing. You could set one of your single friends up to do it, though.. Do they call that entrapment? It may only do you any good in a negotiation or confrontation, anyway.

Well, I don't know if I would actually take it to the point of showing up for a date or confronting him, but I still think it would provide you with the information you are seeking.

What I mean is if he bites and agrees to meet someone (you or a friend), then you know that it is possible that he has done it before. If he actually makes some excuse to leave the house at the appointed time, once he leaves, you can go to the appointed location and slyly verify that he is there.

He doesn't have to know that the stand-up was really you.

Just a thought, but I too would still go with the key logger.

Who

You can set up a fake email address thru a free site such as Yahoo or Hotmail and then create a fake identity just to catch him. With my H, I couldn't break his Yahoo password but I did get into his AOL acct and changed password to: Lying A**. Of course he was doing all his funny business thru the Yahoo one.
Thru his AOL acct though, I found under the history that he'd visited a sex site and by creating a fake identity to enter the site I was able to see exactly what he was up to.

I did a bit more investigating. It says he hasn't logged into that site since mid-January. I don't understand though because he appears to have visited the site last week and on the weekend (according to the cookies). I also used a fake email address to email the email address that was attached to the profile. I didn't say anything...just left it blank. It came back saying that user doesn't exist. So it looks like he deleted his email account. But if that's the case, why is that particular username and password stored in his "remember password" thing? Which is also weird because he NEVER uses that "remember password" option except for this one site (and a couple of others...banking stuff). He can't be THAT dumb! I'm so confused.

One other thing...I also tried to gently, friendly discuss the school issue (he offered a girl from his class a ride, I found the email, he said it meant nothing and he quit the class so I wouldn't worry). I said I didn't WANT him to have to quit the whole class. I said I just wanted him to understand that I didn't like him putting that "vibe" out there.

He said he'd made up his mind, he's not going back to school. He doesn't want me worrying. And let's not discuss it anymore. Let's just drop it.

Uhh, yeah. I don't want to "just drop it". Because as far as I'm concerned, we haven't really resolved a lot. I'd like to be able to TALK to him openly, but it appears to be impossible. If/when we go for marriage counseling, he's GOING to talk about it! When he "jokingly" propositioned his co-worker, he said he was stupid, he apologized, and "let's drop it now". Yeah, nothing was really resolved that time either. GEEZ!