Does this constitute cheating? Or is it a prelude to cheating? If a married person does this, should the spouse assume something is in the works?

I found out last week that my H was looking at online personals. He claimed it happened only once and initially claimed he did it "to see what's out there in case I was single." Later realizing how stupid that sounds, he changed his story to say he was bored and just starting looking around online. Then he said that looking at the personals made him get a better appreciation of me.

He has apologized many times. I have not told him I forgive him, but I have said I do believe he is sorry (there is a difference, I think). Anyway, I cannot get it out of my head. One does not accidentally stumble unto a personals site, enter search criteria and look up women (who were coincidentally located in his home city, where he has been trying to persuade me to relocate).

I feel like a vital trust has been broken. I cannot look at him the same way. Trust him the same way. And intimacy is the last thing on my mind.

He thinks I am over-reacting and says he's not going to apologize anymore. I am not expecting any more apologies, but he has to realize he's the one who put this wheel into motion.

You are right that looking at singles in an area you hope to re-locate is not innocent.

Was it a site he had to pay money for? On many of those sites by the time you get to a specific location, you've had to supply your credit card number, even if it isn't charged, as in a "free" site.

If he doesn't do it again, it probably was something he momentarily found exciting and used bad judgement in searching. If he continues, he's looking.

Check your computer's cookies, the cache files, the internet history, the temporary files. Among those things, unless they are empty (not a real good sign), by the names of the websites visited you'll have some idea if this was the first/only time.

Every circumstance is different and you will have to judge whether your husband looking at on line personals is significant. Personally, I enjoy looking at personals and have done so for years for entertainment value. In the past I have looked to find people for my single friends.

Also, when things have been bad with my wife I have looked at personals to see what the options are if we divorced. I have looked at on line personals too, the first time was looking for the profile of a friend I knew who had put up an add. Never was I considering answering one or anything like that, but I have looked at them before and it was not a prelude to cheating or anything like that.

In contrast, my wife looked at on-line personals and put her profile on a website for people who want to cheat on their spouses. She emailed a number of people and was planning on meeting one person when I caught her. This was different as: 1) it was a website for cheaters; and 2) she put up a profile with the intention of having sex with a stranger while we remained married.

I think there may be a middle ground in which someone could be looking for fun and slowly cross the line. My wife says that she was not looking to put up her profile but was searching dirty sites late at night and ran across this cheater website and then put up her profile and one thing led to another. Thus, your husband may have been actually innocently just having fun or checking out things, but it could have led to something dangerous. If that is the case I think the appropriate response to discuss things to make sure it does not happened again, but not over react to something which was not intended to be cheating and did not lead to cheating. In addition, in may be a warning call that things are not right and you both need to have your emotional needs better met.