Do You Think He Cheated?

[kim_k]

My husband and I have been together for 14 years. I initially left my former husband to be with him. We've have a mostly good marriage. I never have fully trusted him (not any incidents but just a general feeling of a morally flawed character when it comes to whether someone will be an "honest" person or not - such as ripping stores off, lying to others, mistreating others, lack of empathy - not all the time but sometimes - not enough to cause any problems in the marriage).

 

Anyway, we have a pretty nonexistent sex life. We have 2 young girls and I am pretty tired most of the time dealing with them. I have no help and at my age (mid 40's) I do find it hard to keep my energy up. We might have sex once every 3 to 4 weeks if that. It's been this way for at least the last 6 years in our marriage and it has caused my husband to be an avid porn watcher. I know he always looks at it on the internet and then watches the shows on Showtime (the stupid ones at night where everyone goes to some tropical island and gets laid). Anyway, there's been some frustration on his part from time to time about our sex life but it's always blown over and things were back to normal.

 

He has a stressful job where he provides support to overseas locations. Sometimes he has had to work all hours of the night being on call. Sometimes from home, sometimes at work. We are also currently in a pro se lawsuit against a major insurance company after a tornado struck a 2nd home that we bought 2 years ago. It has consumed us for the last 2 years. Between the work and the lawsuit, life has not been very fun for us for some time. No vacations, no fun family time. All the time work and the lawsuit. We have a complaint deadline on December 26th so it has been even worse.

 

Which leads us to this past Friday night. My husband left for work early (which I thought was unusual) because it was severe weather and all the schools were delayed and his work even had a 2 hour delay which was broadcast on the local news. His reasoning was that he would go in early then go to the afternoon holiday party so he could be back early. Myself and the girls were looking forward to this as he has been working late these last 3 days this past week (one day I called him and he then came home past 9). He can be spacey at times (he's a computer guy) and doesn't always seem with it as to what's socially acceptable and that's always been the way he is. It's never phased me when I have to remind him of these things and when there is friction about it, it blows over.

 

Anyway, I had my usual routine at home. Evening came and he didn't show up. This has happened in the past when he has been working but this time I felt it was a little unusual being so close to the holidays and knowing it's a 4 day weekend for him (he gets Christmas Eve off work). Who wants to work late on a Friday night before a 4 day weekend? My older daughter cried because he wasn't there and I just told her I didn't know what happened but he would probably be home soon. For some reason I didn't call because I thought maybe he would be home again at 9 or so like before and maybe just got held up. I had no reason to think anything would be different. I watched some TV, surfed the internet for awhile and apparently fell asleep with the light on. I have no idea when this was. Next thing I know, I wake up and look at the clock and it's 3:15 in the morning. My husband comes with a look of happiness and says go back to sleep, no problems. He starts to get into bed. For some reason for this first time in my marriage, I immediately got suspicious. I had a terrible gut feeling that something was wrong. I asked my husband what happened. He said he had to work late to finish working on our complaint document for our lawsuit. I asked him where it was. He didn't have it because he said his computer hung up. I said wasn't it strange that he was the only one at work on a Friday night seeing as to how in the past everyone always clears out of the building early on Friday's before holidays? (I know this because he's worked there for 13 years - he's always been home early before holidays). He said he had work to do and had to finish it. He got very mean with me and said something like "Why are you asking, I'm not linked to you". When I persisted that it didn't make sense to me, he basically said "I'm tired, f*** off". It was incredibly cold. I continued to have a bad feeling and persisted in my questioning about how it all didn't make sense to me. Again, no answers, just "leave me alone, p*** off" or "what's it your business". Of course, after that I couldn't sleep anymore. I was really bothered by the vulgar language and coldness. We did just have sex a few days before and things seemed OK - it was routine in our marriage. He said fine, and got up to head for our spare bedroom to sleep. I followed him and wouldn't let it go. It just didn't make sense. Then he threatened to leave the house. I said fine. He backed down and proceeded to go to the spare bedroom again. I was really unhappy with the way he treated me and was thinking how upset my oldest daughter was and told him. He said something to the effect that if I didn't leave him alone things were going to get really ugly (something he has done in the past (just pushing) but not for a very long time since we have children and they are older and could have the chance of seeing it).

 

I asked him again if he had been cheating on me. He never answered me just proceeded to go to sleep - total silence. I left him alone and decided to investigate cheating on the internet to get some background. I smelled his clothes, smelled his breath, smelled him, looked through his wallet, all his clothes, checked his credit card, then went to his car. In his car I found a paper with an address on it printed on Thursday. I looked it up and it's a pub. I looked at his credit card and there was a charge for that pub on Friday. Then I thought the worst. I thought I would be able to catch him. I made a copy and put everything back to normal. I still had the terrible feeling and never went back to sleep.

 

The next morning, he stays in bed while I have to get up with the kids. Of course, they want to know where their dad is. They go back to the spare bedroom but he doesn't get up with them. I go downstairs and get them breakfast. Soon there is a fight and the computer gets broken. They need him to fix it. I go up and tell him he has to get up because they can't use the computer. He says OK. I still have the terrible suspicion that something has happened. My daughter had a holiday party at school that day so I ask her to ask her dad how his party was. He says it was "awesome". In the past, parties used to be at their workplace, but I found out this year they decided not have it at work but at that pub. The morning goes on and I still feel bad. My husband just came home at 3 am on a night when he's not on call, cussed me out, and won't even have anything to do with me, but he is all jolly with the kids.

 

I find his phone and check it. We have antiquated phones so we can't do many features like are common today. I just check incoming and outgoing calls, see nothing unusual. Then I start asking about the food at the party and how much it cost and times. He then tells me he had it at that pub and who he sat with. Said there were 40 people there. I guess spouses were invited (some brought theirs) but I was not told about it. The e-mail said it would start at 11 but he said they didn't make it that early. Then, apparently, he packs up from the party, heads back to work and proceeds to spend all night at work until 2:30 or so until he comes home ready to cuss me out. This is the story.

 

I can't find anything on him. He let some little things slip. I know later, he finally said after the lunch he was at the bar and had a beer and how much he liked it. I can't find a receipt for this. He says he paid cash, but he never carries cash. He also wasn't hungry. After eating at 12 pm on Friday, by 10am Saturday morning he didn't want anything to eat. He went an amazing 22 hours with supposedly no food. I tried to get a look at his work laptop by offering to proof the complaint document and he was hovering around me. He did show me the file time stamp on the document which showed 1:43 in the morning. The whole thing was pretty half-a**ed and didn't look like much was done. He claimed it got corrupted and he had to spend all the time rewriting it. When I finally got him away, I checked e-mail and found nothing. I looked all around and found nothing although something may be there. He's not on Facebook or any of those network sites. He doesn't get strange calls. His workplace is full of people whom he has told me stories of how they cheat, one goes to strip clubs all the time and says he will never get married , but my husband always says everyone knows he's married. He has never been interested in that much before. Although he does mention there are good looking women there.

 

At this point, I have nothing but a terrible nagging feeling. It doesn't add up to me. But I have no proof if something happened after that party. He will never be truthful with me. I only saw 2 looks in his eyes. One when he first entered our bedroom when he got home. The second on the following morning when the girls were screaming and he had to get up. I saw him standing by our bed looking like someone who had just been drawn back to the reality of life.

 

On the other hand, the document appears to have been saved at the appropriate time even if it's not well done. There's never been any weirdness going on before then.

 

I don't like to think of my husband being the only person at work with the security guards the night before the holidays. Ditching his family. It seems surreal to me.

 

What do you think?

[salparadise]

Honesty, I think you need to take a chill pill. You don't have anything concrete to base any of this on, which means it may exist only in your imagination. The suspicion, accusations and conflict will destroy your marriage and family. If there is no prior history of cheating, deception or disingenuous behavior then he deserves to be taken at his word. Trust is the foundation of a marriage. If he's innocent and you're mistrusting, then it's you who is committing an offense that will destroy it.

 

Now, from the other perspective, if your instincts are so activated and you believe there is a high probability that something is going on, the last thing you want to do is alert him to the fact that you're onto him. He will become wary and it may be impossible to confirm. What you really want, assuming something is going on, is for him to believe you're clueless so he'll get careless and make a mistake that will actually prove it. It won't do you any good to collect a basket full of circumstantial question marks.

 

So either way, the wise strategy would be to back off the antagonistic confrontations. Trust but confirm as they say. If he's done nothing wrong to deserve this treatment then I'd say you own him an huge apology. Don't let neuroticism be the thing that destroys your family (think about the girls). Give him enough rope to hang himself and he either will or he won't.