SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Here's one for you. My husband drops me off at a doctor appointment that he knows always takes at least one to two hours. He leaves, I call him after an hour and a half to tell him I'll be a while yet. When he does pick me up again, about 2 and a quarter hours after dropping me off, I reach into the glove compartment to get a napkin as we always keep a bunch in there, usually that he grabs from restaurants. The one I take is on top, and as I am eating a banana I go to wipe my mouth and see a red streak on the edge of the napkin. I look closer and realize it's probably lipstick. I ask him if he ate anything while I was at my appointment and he says oh he grabbed a coffee at a doughnut shop. I showed him the napkin and asked what's this. He looks surprised and says he has no idea, he got the napkins off a stack at the doughnut shop. So tell me, who do you know that uses a napkin to wipe their mouth and then places it carefully back on the stack again? Cause it was part of the neatly stacked napkins, not out of place at all. But, the edge of that napkin and a few below it had been bent back slightly. I took it in the house, unbeknownst to him, and looked closely with a magnifying glass. Definitely lipstick. So, opinions? What are the odds this was deliberately placed there by someone? Hmm....

As an avid lipstick wearer I have never once dropped my face to a stack of napkins in one of those pop up napkin dispensers at any cafe/shop/restaurant and wiped my lips on it only to walk away leaving my blottings behind for someone else to see/grab.

I don’t wear lipstick but it doesn’t sound like a plausible story.

I doubt it was planted, but let's reason this out. It sounds to me like a woman with lipstick on wiped her mouth while holding several stacked napkins, threw away the top napkin thinking it was the only one that got messy, and returned the others to the glove compartment. Now, if the napkins were there for a while, I would ask if there was anyone else who might be wearing lipstick and was in his car legitimately (you mentioned you have an adult daughter, for example). But he's saying he just now put them in there, having been gone for a few hours of unaccounted time. Could an unknown person have done that at the donut shop and then returned them to the pile? Yes, but why? There's a trash can right there where she threw out the dirty napkin, and an endless supply of clean ones. Saving the extra napkins is something you do if you're in the car.

Look, starmoon... You have a WH who is on his fourth chance, who has since implied that he has more to tell you, who has actually confessed to new bad behavior and then retracted those confessions in multiple tearful heart-to-hearts, who is a serial liar, adulterer and gaslighter. Which is more likely: that he just got really unlucky, or that where there's smoke, there's fire?

Look, starmoon... You have a WH who is on his fourth chance, who has since implied that he has more to tell you, who has actually confessed to new bad behavior and then retracted those confessions in multiple tearful heart-to-hearts, who is a serial liar, adulterer and gaslighter. Which is more likely: that he just got really unlucky, or that where there's smoke, there's fire?

Right? I believe it's possible that he did pick up a dirty napkin from a stack but it's not at all likely and it's even less likely that this tragedy of chance just so fell into the lap of a serial cheater and liar. So realistically no, I don't buy his story at all.

Sounds like he had a woman in the car who wore lipstick and wiped her mouth with a napkin after eating a donut with him. And now he's lying to you about it. That much is believable.

Starmoonchild, since he has a specific OW that he keeps going back to, could you somehow check up on her and see if it could be her lipstick? Like if she's been wearing the same color lately in social media pictures?

My first thought after reading the OP was, well, maybe a woman at the coffee used some napkins, but only threw away the top oil ne and left the reast stacked. The server came along and put the napkins back in the stack not noticing they were dirty. It could happen. Or, maybe it was a stack of napkins left on the counter or table and your WH picked them up not realizing they were dirty. I regularly leave napkins on restaurant tables. I have messy kids, so I grab a lot of napkins. If we don't use them, I leave them for the next person.

But, then I read that your WH is a serial cheater and this is your 4th time around. Yeah, I wouldn't give him the benefit of the doubt.

VAR his car.

Well, they were most likely all together on that stack, hard to believe anyone would neatly place one back after wiping their mouth. He said he grabbed a bunch from a pile sitting on the counter. There were no food residues at all, just the lipstick. I don't know about the first OW, but the one I've suspected for a while, yeah it matches her lipstick on her facebook profile pic exactly! I am actually meeting her tomorrow, after a few tries. Will update on that after it actually happens.

Check all his debit/credit cards for a payment to the doughnut shop. He could have used cash, of course, but these days people seldom do.

Of course there still could have been a woman in the car sharing his doughnuts but at least you would know a part of the truth.

When you see her, you could also put the napkin in front of her, lean back in your chair, and say "I know." Then don't say another word. Silence often opens up torrents of information.

I think Occam’s Razor applies in this situation - the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras.

[This message edited by truthsetmefree at 7:09 PM, June 25th (Tuesday)]