My WH had his AP listed in his contacts as her husband's name.
Mine had AP listed under his brother's name (his brother as I found out later, didn't have a separate line from his girlfriend so he actually didn't have a phone).
Part of me feels like he’s much better at covering things up because of last time (which was 14 years ago)
and you are likely right - if something is happening the cover up gets better. It did for my WH after d-day 1 during false R.
The AP in my world used burner numbers all the time - there are multitudes of apps that will let you "buy" numbers in various area codes - it was super cheap and they even had package pricing (unlimited numbers per month for some fairly low amount like $30 sigh). While it made it impossible to track, it also made it really easy to figure out as there were millions of texts and calls each few days to a certain number, then that number would never be contacted again and the same would start up with a different number - lather, rinse, repeat. My WH never seemed to change his phone and while he would use WhatsApp from time to time he preferred the delete method.
After the fact I asked him why he didn't get a burner phone or use WhatApp or something like that. His response re the burner phone was he wasn't going to have two phones, Period, like some kind of drug dealer
(apparently that made him feel too sleazy or something
). He later realized while I couldn't see who he was contacting/what he was saying, you can check the battery settings of an iPhone (or you used to be able to with the iPhone 10) and see how much battery each app used each day/hour - my WH's app usage (phone 4%, text 12%, safari, 17%, etc) would add up to like 30% of his total usage so while it did not show the deleted apps (he would delete what app every day before he came home and the reinstall it every morning after I went to work) it would show that 70% (or whatever he used WhatsApp for that day) as unaccounted for. I called him out on this and he lied and lied and lied and one day when he went with me to the Mac store for my laptop I asked the genius girl why that would be happening. She basically confirmed what I had read - that something was being deleted, or there was something wrong with some process in his phone (but it was clear she didn't even buy that). WH went with the whole "oh there must be something wrong" but when she offered to replace the phone he declined saying it otherwise worked fine (he is the type that would take the new phone always). The girl looked at me for a second longer than she should, then she went about dealing with my computer. Needless to say the battery thing magically fixed itself after that, and the switch to the burner numbers for AP began.
When I asked him about that later - eg like 2 years ago, he admitted that is exactly what he was doing - deleting it every day and reinstalling every day and that when I called him out about it at the Mac store he was pissed (at me of course) and told the AP and she came up with the burner phone number thing all on her own - what a gal.
Finally, when I asked him about the new number every 2-3 days he said he didn't worry about that because I could get as pissed off and suspicious as I wanted but I could never prove it was her. So, in other words, he didn't care if I drove myself crazy trying to figure it out because I couldn't prove it anyway.
You are the only person you are guaranteed to spend the rest of your life with. Act accordingly.
Constantly editing posts: usually due to sticky keys on my laptop or additional thoughts