I have been married for 8 years and this past march of 2008 found out my wife had an affiar. She admitted to having an emotional affair a year early, well she did not admit that one I found out as well. It took her until July 2008 to finally break contact with this guy. We've been seperated and I hit a severe depression and have been hurting since. I believe I am stronger with Gods Grace and many support and prayer.

But I can honestly say I still hurt and get angry all the time. I often think of the affair and cannot believe it still happened. I have been lied to consistently and have believed those lies and tried to trust and find it broken again. Now my wife wants to make things work and is trying to make things work and dig deep with God.

I can honestly say with text messages, cell phones, email, and myspace it is hard to trust my wife. This is where it started and how she met both men. My question is do I have the right to ask her to get off myspace and show me her emails to see if contact has been completely shut off with these men to regain my trust. She says I have no right and that is her private life.

Like last night she was the internet and I glanced to see what she was doing and right way she clicked off her yahoo email. She had another site up and it went to that one right away. I asked her why she clicked that off and asked who she was emailing. She replied one of her close girlfriends and she was writing some personal feelings and struggles she was going through and did not want me to see them. So I said,"let me see" and she said no. Then I said let me just see your friends email address and cover what you were writing so I can be assured she was telling me the truth about writing her girlfriend. She said no to that as well because she did not believe me and thought I woudl read her message and I immediately got scared and tried to see the laptop and grab it away. She would not let go for dear life. It was my laptop and she would give it up and finally logged in again and it popped up she clicked it off. She still swears it was her friend and even sweared on the bible.

My question is do I have the right to question everything and even ask to see her emails. She does not like that because she states I am trying to control her. Before the affair I never thought of looking at her emails because of the trust. I am confused and need help on how to trust again. HELP!!!!

If your wife truly "wants to make things work" she would be willing to give you access to her personal messaging systems (cell phone, e-mail, MySpace, etc.) She obviously has something to hide or she wouldn't be trying to hide it from you. She is trying to guilt-trip you and so far it's working (my STBXWW made the same arguments). How do you have any assurance that your WW has broken contact with this guy? If her affair began because of MySpace, then she shouldn't be on it anymore. I mean, if you lost an arm by sticking it out of a moving car, then you shouldn't stick the other arm out without expecting the same thing to happen again.

Install a keylogger on your laptop so that you can get her passwords. Then you can get the truth so you can make an informed decision about your life.

Your WW has proven untrustworthy, that's why you have no trust in her. She is the one has to rebuild that trust, not you. The only way she can do that is to be open and honest.

Of course it's OK to not trust her.

She's still cheating on you, obviously.

My d-day was nearly 2 1/2 years ago, and I don't trust my wife. I will never trust her or anyone else 100% again, and that's perfectly OK.

100% trust in anyone is foolish. Ridiculous, actually.

Although I have no reason to suspect my wife of any wrongdoing, my trust for her is very, very low. She knows and understands this.

Install the keylogger on your laptop. Gather the proof you need that she's still cheating, and don't reveal how you found it.

Your trust in your wife shouldn't even be on your list of concerns right now. You've got bigger fish to fry.

Your trust level is supposed to be at 0% when you're being cheated on.

Dig into her cell phone account as much as you can without getting caught, too.

I'm in something of a similar position myself.

I believe she's well connected into the "singles" community online. I know of one she's had conversations with and even looked into visiting him. He's in Philadelphia and since we can't afford it and don't have enough credit, she can't go, praise the Lord.

My situation is a little different. I know her passwords to her email, Facebook, and MySpace accounts and I've checked them. I haven't seen any incriminating emails, even when she hasn't checked them for a while. She may have another account though. I did find one message on her Facebook that was a little incriminating but didn't mention anything sexual. I haven't checked her MySpace yet.

loverespect, you are right not to trust your wife; she is untrustworthy. Until she makes a dramatic change in her lifestyle and stops hiding things from you, I would not consider ending your separation. She is very dangerous to you and has changed absolutely nothing that led to her previous affairs. She has probably had many more that you don't know about.

As far as "privacy," there should be nothing private in marriage. No one has the right to the privacy to destroy you behind your back. You have a right to know every word she utters and every person she speaks to.

I just hope and pray you don't make the mistake of having kids with this woman. That would be a tragic injustice to a child.

I agree about transparency in marriage, particularly the offender. My husband had an EA several years ago and still has only gone so far to give me full access to his email, etc., saying he has a right to privacy. On one hand, I agree with this; after all, I'm typing things to friends about him that I'm not sure I'd want him reading, though I'm not the one who had an affair. But on the other hand, if he had nothing to hide, he wouldn't be so indignant about invasion of privacy and grant me full access.

Interesting that he's on the computer almost constantly but when I get on my computer, he's always finding reasons to walk by, ask me why I'm on the computer yet again (I work from home), and so on.