You just can't compete with their phones

Any of you who are fans of the US version of The Office will probably appreciate my handle, since I used the nickname of someone on the show who had been cheated on (Andy Bernard). So enough about that, I'll get on with it...

Right now I'm 46. I grew up only having a dad, since when I was 1, mom decided that she didn't want me. While a child, I would see her maybe 4 times a year for a weekend when she and her husband would be at my grandmother's and I would be there. It was a very casual relationship. Up until I was 10, my dad was never with any women, but met someone and married. She tried to be a mother-figure but she just wasn't keen on me not being her biological son. When I was 13, my mom started wanting to be a part of my life, and we made the decision for me to move to Illinois and live with her and my step dad. A year and a half later, my step dad comes downstairs and says I can't live there anymore. My mom was having an affair. I moved back to Indiana. Two years later, my mom and I reconciled and I went to Illinois for the summer and things were great. I told my dad I wanted to move back to Illinois. This was my sophomore year of high school. For two years things were great. And then, you guessed it... This time she completely packed her things and left my step dad and I. Another affair, of course. I finished that year of high school then moved back to Indiana again for my Senior year. I have to give my dad credit, he was always very understanding and took me back, no questions asked. But as you can see, a pattern has started to form. Remember, this will have been the third time my mom has abandoned me.

Fast forward to my adult life. At 22 I married someone who was emotionally and physically abusive and wouldn't allow me to have my own friends. That marriage lasted 3 years, with her actually being the one to leave me. At 29 I met someone else. We married a year later. Four years into our marriage I found out from her brother-in-law that she was having an affair with the next door neighbor. She ended it, we moved out of the neighborhood and we worked on our marriage. Two years later, a friend of hers came forward and said that my wife was seeing someone else - it was another neighbor. I confronted her and she brushed it off like she would never cheat again and that her friend just likes to cause trouble. Unfortunately, I believed her friend and at that point, became emotionally unattached and started going out with friends all time. Well, I met someone. At no point was it anything other than friends, though it was interesting that one night I came home very late, and my wife packed a bag and left. I didn't stop her from going and actually thought this was for the best. So in December, 2015, we separated (divorced 4 months later) and I started dating the woman that I met, who is now my wife. This time I waited 3 years before I would marry her. Look, I'm learning! Sort of.

Fast forward 8 years to present day. I'm 46. Last week my wife went to get a massage. Earlier this year she insisted that we (her, myself, and her son, who just got a phone) start using Find My iPhone. Okay, yeah, her son just got a phone, that seems like a good idea. Well I decided to use it to see where she was. The location put her in a parking lot. Okay, sure, the parking lot where she was getting a massage. But this is where it gets weird. Her location was the spot closest to the road, which is on the opposite end of the building where her massage was. Her massage lasted two and a half hours, so now I'll list all my suspicions and maybe someone can tell me that I'm crazy!

1) The massage took two and a half hours. Okay, yes, she likes to talk, and her masseuse is a woman, but she had just received a massage 5 days prior.
2) Let's assume she talks the first 30 minutes, gets a massage for 90 minutes, talks another 30 minutes. But why didn't you take your phone in with you to check messages / calls between when you talk and your massage? I get that everyone likes to unplug sometimes, but at home she's always on it and she runs a business and uses her phone for that.
3) She took a shower before her massage and took her phone into the bathroom with her. That's new. She never used to do that.
4) The parking lot is never full. It's a BIG parking lot. What parking where she did tells me is that she wanted to make it easy for someone to find her, so they could pick her up and they could go somewhere.
5) When she got home and I asked her how her massage was, she acted very fidgety and wouldn't look me in the eye while talking about it. There weren't a lot of details either, just that the massage went well (ha, I'm sure it did!).
6) She came home with cookies and pastries that I love. She never does that on her own, I only buy them when we go to the store together.
7) When I came upstairs after working (I work from home), she put something on TV that she knew I would like. She never does that.
8) Over the next couple days, there were a couple times where I had been downstairs, come up while she was not with her phone and caught a glimpse of her opening her phone, tapping a couple things, then closing the app really quickly. It made me think she was turning off notifications for something.
9) All showers since then have also been with her phone in the bathroom with her.
10) Yesterday before taking her son to school, she grabbed her phone, went into the bathroom, closed the door (she never closes the bathroom door unless it's #2), and I heard water running for two minutes before she came out and they left. She didn't pee because I went in there directly after she was and the toilet bowl wasn't filling up. What the hell, right?
11) There have been periods of lost time before, meaning, periods where she made sure she was unreachable for an extended amount of time. The last one has been around 6 months ago. It was during the summer when she used to go tanning all the time. She still does, but it's never been longer than 20 minutes since then.

I mean, come on, this is pretty damn obvious. I've talked to a couple friends about this who are very much the, "have you considered this" type and won't just say she's definitely cheating. But when presented with all the evidence, they are very concerned that my suspicions are accurate. They can't think of any other reason that someone would park so far away from where they were supposed to be, then have two and a half hours unaccounted for, unless someone was picking them up and they were going to his house or a motel. There is a motel literally a block up the road that is very well shaded.

I have not confronted her yet. She has a lot to lose and would deny everything to keep the lifestyle she has. Her son would rather spend time with me than his actual dad. We're in a nice house, in a nice neighborhood. We have 5 animals that she loves. She doesn't have to work because I make enough that she can work on her business and keep trying to get it going. I'm very supportive. I don't have any qualms about saying that I am a very good husband to her, and an amazing step dad to her son. Yet for some reason, it's looking like she's been cheating.

Well, I'm ready for it, everyone. Be brutally honest because I can take it. Having dealt with this my entire life, if anything, I can say it's getting easier, haha!

26 comments posted: Sunday, December 24th, 2023