If he has nothing to hide, then he shouldn't be hiding anything. So try not to worry about snooping on your H. The key is trying to acquire information to know what your H is really doing.

Try to investigate covertly, so that your H won't know. Don't say anything to him that suggests you suspect anything. If you said things like that in the past, don't say them so that he will let his guard down.

When you find out what is truly going on, come back here and the vets will help you. Do not confront him about any of it until you talk to the vets here first, okay?

I would suspect that since he is pretending he is "separated" in the other bedroom that he is dallying with a married woman. If this was a single woman he would already be gone. If you can quietly get the evidence, we can help you blow his affair up. You want to do that regardless of whether you want to save the marriage or not.

In the meantime you can gather evidence on the potential suspects. For example, do background checks on them and start collecting the necessary information required to expose them. Copy and paste their facebook contact lists into a safe place, get their home addresses, etc.

Your guilt about snooping is very misplaced. You have a right to know EVERYTHING he does since it affects you. He is wrongly withholding evidence from you. Snooping is a virtue, not something that warrants guilt.

Blairbluefin and Melodylane,

Thank you for the encouragement. I will do my best not to let any more suspicions come out. He is making it pretty tough to plan A and seems to shoot down my efforts to do things for him any chance he gets. Today, he left without kissing me goodbye and was prepared to walk out the door without saying anything when I called after him "I love you" and he replied yeah, you too.

as for married women, I only see one in his facebook, she is far away and we have known them for a long time. I am not sure she would make my list of suspicious characters. The other two I am questioning are single. I will make a copy of each of their friends lists today. I suppose I could purchase one of those background searches on them and see what that turns up. I know right now there is no opportunity for physical contact between either of them and my husband for any time in the near future. I have access to all finances and know where all money goes except for cash which is consistent with purchasing lunch out every day at a fast food place. This has been a normal thing throughout our marriage. Do you think the cold shoulder I am getting is a response to my own cold shouldering the day after the confrontation or do you think it is part of his gaslighting? I wonder if he is trying to make me make the first move toward leaving. As for being gone already with a single girl, I think he is more of the type to have his cake and eat it too. I have been treating him with plan-A type of care for years so I think he knows most other women would probably not put up with his BS. Yes, I am a doormat - trying to recover though.

Here is the thing, though, Lilly. Plan A for women must be very short, around 3 to 4 weeks, because it is very ineffective when used by a WIFE on a husband. The reason is because a wife who competes for a husband is very unattractive to him. It not only doesn't work, but it wears the woman down fast. It sounds like you have been playing this dance for a very long time. What Dr Harley would tell you to do is wait for him to CHASE YOU. Don't chase him, but let him chase you. Chasing him makes you very unattractive, so I would stay away from anything that resembles chasing.

For now, I would focus all of your attention on getting the truth. Get some spyware on his phone and his ipad as soon as possible. Get a GPS on his car, hire a PI. Do what you have to do ASAP to find the truth.

Once you get the evidence come back here and we will help you with next steps.

And yes, you should be in plan A. But for you that means being as pleasant as possible without chasing him.

Have you called this former co-worker to verify this story? I suspect he spent the night with the girl in the picture.

How do you know for sure that OW is not visiting your town. You are not even sure of the identity of OW.

Can you GPS his car and put voice activated recorders in places where he may have phone conversations ...such as car and any room in the house where he may try to sneak a conversation? I remember my own husband would sneak into the office late at night to call OW.

Ipad was not locked, I checked sync phone messages and facebook and there was nothing incriminating that I could find. Maybe I should call that woman he supposedly stayed with and try to verify. I think it would be hard to restrain myself from chastising her for allowing a married man to stay overnight at her house and she is one of my suspects. So far all time here has been accounted for so I am certain there have not been any rendezvous while we have been here.

But you can't see chat logs and that is probably how they are communicating. Can you see his call logs from his phone? He may be talking on the phone to her in his car.

I would do a search on apple apps and find a spyware program that will log chats and send them to you. Somehow you have to find out what he is doing.

If your husband was desperately worried about the marriage and trying to save it, would you care if he snooped on you? Given that he should be able to see everything anyway?

How else do you think people's spouses rescue them from affairs/addictions/depressive illnesses etc... ?

There isn't any privacy when it comes to the extraordinary care of the marital relationship.. Except for closing the bathroom door

He's exhibiting typical wayward behaviour due to the fact he still loves you (half way) and needs you clueless and obedient. The cold shoulder act is right off the script they all seem to get handed. Part of it is gaslighting you to keep you in place subordinate to the affair, part of it is demonising you (to justify himself) and part if it is that he knows you have an effect on him and if you have a good time together, he will feel guilty and more confused.

So go ahead and guilt him out and work that effect on him that he knows only you can do. Be super nice and don't notice the cold shoulder.

Keep snooping and working your effect on him.

Get some spyware on that tablet ASAP. (Just because it is not locked now doesn't mean your H will keep it that way. Do it now while you have a chance.) After you get the spyware on it, you will know fairly quickly what is going on.

Hang in there. You can do this.

Can you access his facebook messages?

Also, I would search the room for a secret cell phone. If he has one, he would take it with him to work so you will need to look around his room on the weekend.

Pay close attention to the rooms or places he reaches for - he might have the affair phone hidden there. I've heard here that some Wayward Spouses have hidden the affair phone next to the spare tire or in other compartments in their vehicles. Look through toolboxes, his car, dresser/nightstand, gym bag, suit pockets, luggage, etc.

Oof-da, I found the motherlode on his ipad. I was not tech savvy enough to expand the conversation to include all the historical messages. I took pictures with my nikon and am in the process of e-mailing them to my sister. Is there a way for any of you to be able to read some of these? It looks like he made multiple trips to visit her. Nothing sexual in the text messages that i could see but in this string are more text messages to her the entire time he was there than he sent to me the entire time he was there. Plus the tone of the messages is much more open and friendly....yuck. Is it time for plan B? I still want to do a little more sleuthing to see what I can find out about her...it is the DC lady he "stayed" at her house. Once again, I am fooled into thinking it was only one trip. I have no record of messages sent before because he had a different phone.

Good job!! But keep searching, because I am positive that there is more to this. What you are seeing is only the surface. What about messages or photos that he has sent to other people? Anything on his cloud?

Oh, and get the spyware on there. It will show you more of what is going on.

Not time yet for Plan B. Stay calm and cool and snoop until you have uncovered evidence that would convince a jury. Make sure you save all the evidence. And don't confront him with the evidence. He already knows what he's doing.

Thank you! I will definitely jailbreak the ipad and get the spyware on there. I think the phone will be another story, though, he never lets that one out of his sight. I need to research the spyware installation onto an Ipad mini. I wonder if he wants to be caught...he just left it out there...weird. Right now as I am unpacking our household goods into this new house we just moved into, I am going to concurrently pack our suitcases. I have photos of an entire string of imessages dating back to the 8th of October right after he got the new iphone. The last time he visited her was around the weekend of the 8th of December. That was right after our Thanksgiving visit to his parents when he tried to start a fight the night before returning to our respective places. On the message string, there is just stuff like "what are you doing this weekend" "nothing, come on over. The key is in the leaves on the porch" (encolosed pic of porch with leaves) Then some conversation about how my husband had let himself into her house while she was still at work and he was asking about walking the dog. They baked cookies together, gave each other compliments on their baking skills. Ugh! My parents said they would help with hiring a PI and my sister is researching one in my area. Honestly, I am thinking of trying to get my ducks in a row this week to take a vacation from this. I might not necessarily disclose evidence collection or what I know but I might take a vacation to visit family, let the PI do his work, have the baby near my family and just use the original lie of omission as the excuse for leaving. I'll still be polite and civil towards him.

What is the purpose of leaving for a vacation, though? Is it to get him to go see the OW so the PI can get more solid evidence? Isn't the fact that he has been staying with her enough evidence of an affair?

When you say you might not disclose collection what does that mean? You might Wait to expose the evidence?

"my family and just use the original lie of omission as the excuse for leaving. I'll still be polite and civil towards him."

I am confused about what this means. What lie of omission and why do you need an excuse for leaving?

Sorry for not being clear, I am thinking of taking a trip to see my parents for a little while. Staying in this house has been keeping me awake all night long with panic attacks. I am having strong contractions but baby isn't due yet. I think if I get out of here for a little while, I might be able to clear my head. When I said disclose evidence collection, I meant that I am not planning on spilling what I know to him. The snowball that got this whole thing started was that he lied to me about his whereabouts by leading me to think he was staying with a married couple in DC for 1 weekend, when in fact, he was making multiple trips to this other woman's house in DC to stay with her on weekends. To me that is evidence of an affair. Would this help me out or should I hire that PI to gather more? I am not sure what additional evidence I should be looking for. This would be a multi-state investigation.

At this point, I am not sure I even know him and have not decided if the marriage is salvageable. If I can get away to clear my head and think a little more clearly about the situation, perhaps I can arrive at a rational conclusion. There were good aspects to our relationship at one time but he may be too far gone.