SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

as I said above, the exhibition is what set me off

It’s very odd and I don’t remember reading this behavior before. There is the rare story showing up, in JFO, about master/slave relationship (or whatever they call it, somebody can correct me), where the "slave" has to do anything the "master" says.

Your gut feeling is your subconscious picking up odd patterns. Like when in IT, you’re doing a wireshark analysis and looking for "something " odd.

I think the VARs is a good idea. Test it first to make sure there’s no noise or light. The GPS should be in the car, not in her purse. VARs plus you going away for a weekend with your son is even better.

You could install a keylogger on her phone?

CalicoJack ,

I WANT HONEST RESPONSES, EVEN BRUTALLY HONEST!

Ok, ok. You don't need to shout at me. Just kidding. There is often talk here that by being too harsh with first-time posters, we scare or chase them off. And you're post indicated that you left another forum due to the comments given. I was trying to be as careful as possible. I didn't mean to offend.

Again, I don't think your wife will admit anything without solid proof. If she is cheating, that is. She lied to you about the curtains, and she clearly dismisses any concerns that you have. Also, if you go on forums where cheaters talk to each other, one of their first rules is to admit nothing that can't be absolutely proven. It's amazing that some of us here get confessions fairly early in the process.

I worry mostly that you will continue looking for a definitive proof that you never obtain. It happens to others here. That is why I have suggested that you consider exactly, precisely what proof that you need.

My WH's AP told him that she was an exhibitionist and then attempted to demonstrate. When he told me, I thought she was maybe trying to communicate that she was sexual uninhibited or show him that upping the risk factor would be fun. In hindsight, I find it strange. If a man had told me that he was an exhibitionist and tried to demonstrate, I would think he was a sexual deviant and creepy and get away from him as fast as possible. Maybe there's a gender difference or something? My WH said he interpreted that conversation with her, and there was more of it, as her strongly offering no-strings attached sex of any kind.

Humantrampoline (is that a Graceland reference?)

Yes, but there was a poster here who thought it was a Mexican wrestler reference, and now I sometimes like to envision myself that way.

Be clear on some things:
If you are determined to find infidelity then everything will sound, smell and look like infidelity. Like if you hear her venting about you on the var in the car you will think it’s because she’s cheating. If she’s talking to a male colleague on the phone you will be trying to read if her voice is happy or sexy or whatever. If she is 20 minutes late home you will think she’s meeting OM…

Instead focus on your REAL goal: Focus on discovering the TRUTH.

This is a basic that is repeated repeatedly during investigative training: Investigate for the truth rather than a foregone conclusion.

Be aware that we are hammers and you are showing us stuff we WANT to see as nails.
The smelly panties? Yes – maybe semen from OM, but maybe a yeast infection, maybe really bad personal hygiene, maybe an "accident" due to miscalculating a bathroom break. If anything, then logic would point away from infidelity because a very common behavior is a "wall" between home-life and affair. That "wall" is often seen in changing clothes/underwear before coming home, an added layer of personal cleanliness to avoid bringing home strange smells (be it of sex or OM cologne) and so on.

Cleaning underwear by hand? My wife does that occasionally. Sometimes because it’s delicate, sometimes because she needs to use it soon. In other words: it’s not proof of anything other or more than she’s cleaning underwear. In fact, IMHO it would be more suspect if she came home, changed pants (or pulled dirty ones out of her purse) and started a wash-cycle with only that item.

If she’s having an affair with the building crew/foreman, then why want to cover the window? Why hide the view from OM if he’s already in her bed?
If she’s offering a daily 7:30 strip-show, then how about beating her to it? Why not be there at 7:25 and pull back the curtains? If the crew is lined up with popcorn waiting for a show… tells you a lot.

To successfully investigate you need a very delicate balance of monitoring while making her feel safe that you are NOT monitoring. You need to resist the temptation of questioning her about where she is, why and so on. She needs to feel safe in doing what she is doing.
It’s HIGHLY unlikely that you will catch her directly using a VAR or GPS. What these tools can do is help you establish a pattern. Like if you monitor her vehicle and you see that she stops for an hour outside a certain place on the days you notice she’s taking a gym-bag or the skimpy lingerie or the days she comes home and directly takes a shower… That in turn allows you to be located outside that place when you think she might be going there.

Finally: Three important points:

If your marriage is rocky and you are contemplating divorce anyway then why go through this?
You only need proof to the level YOU are convinced.
Look for the TRUTH and not for INFIDELITY. Maybe the truth is infidelity, but maybe not.

Stop playing detective and actually hire one. The time and effort you have put into finding a smoking gun is unsustainable; in fact, high levels of anxiety coupled with exhaustion could lead you to having a nervous breakdown. PIs are expensive, but they are trained, experienced professionals who could find out more information in a week than you could dig up in a year. How much is your sanity and peace of mind worth to you?

I don't see the value of a polygraph at this point in time. As any law enforcement agent will tell you, polygraphs aren't "lie detectors"; they are an interrogation tool used to heighten suspects' nervousness and fear so they are more likely to confess. In order for a polygraph to be optimally used, the questions need to be carefully worded and very specific; you simply don't have enough information to base your questions upon. Regardless, I don't think that you would feel better even if she did pass the polygraph. Most likely, you would question the accuracy of the results or second-guess yourself about whether the right questions were asked. That would just bring you back to square 1.

[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 4:15 AM, Wednesday, May 11th]

Oh you have to be exhausted. She's been gaslighting you. Even if she's not cheating she's acting really weird. The window shows.....and you're in the room...who does that. Too many flags for me. Don't bother to get her to tell you what's really going on because she never will. She thinks she can do anything say anything. Save your sanity and quit asking for the truth. If she wasn't handwashing her stuff before.....all the new behaviors....I brushed away so many red alerts, believed the craziest lies before I found real evidence. Even then he only admits to where the proof was. Lies and lies about all the rest. Is this the way you want to go on? She's messing with you. It's not right.

Be aware that we are hammers and you are showing us stuff we WANT to see as nails.

While there's some truth to this, I think it's actually a real benefit for a potential BS.

From everything I've experienced and read, BSs almost always arrive here still desperately wanting to believe that what they suspect isn't true. They come here having ignored and dismissed red flags for months, maybe years. They come here and they point out the nail and ask, "Is that a nail or do you think it could be a screw?" And we say, "Well, there's screwing going on but that is definitely a nail."

Stories that turn out to be just overly jealous or suspicious spouses are much less common here than stories where a tiny clue leads to discovery of serial cheating or sex addiction. That's the truth of it.

Do we WANT to see nails or have we just been cursed with the knowledge that nails are everywhere and you only have to open your eyes to see them?

CalicoJack, you asked for the harsh truth. I'm sorry but your WW is a serial cheater. She cheated with you on and off and probably with others until it finally ended her first marriage. She's a cheater who never saw anything wrong with what she did and never had any reason to do any work to understand exactly what is broken in her head to make her do those things. She's smart and she has years of practice hiding her As. All that stuff she told you about her unhappy marriage and NPD husband? That's you now.

So you're married to a cheater who demands secrecy in her communications, has poor boundaries, and appears to be taking active counter-measures to make sure you can't figure out what she is up to. Regardless of anything else, I would tell her that is unacceptable and demand complete transparency from here on out. Full phone access, full GPS tracking. If she refuses then I don't see how your relationship can be tenable.

What she may be doing is driving to the store, shutting off her phone and then walking over to the hotel. She may have one partner there, or possibly multiple given her free shows. Maybe if you're lucky your VAR will catch it if she calls the OP before she shuts her phone off and walks over.

Put up some privacy film on the windows as she said. She really doesn't want you to but she probably saw that you caught her in a peep show and then decided to lean into it like it was innocent. Put up a motion triggered camera to capture her other potential peep show locations. Try to make the positioning look like security. Honestly, you probably need some security under the circumstances. Your wife is playing with fire even if she's not doing anything but peep shows to a bunch of construction workers.

If you can't get anything on VAR then you'll probably have to wait her to go to the store near the hotel, park out of sight and wait to see where she comes from when she returns to the car. While you're at it you could dream up an excuse to call and/or text while she's there to see if she answers.

Given the fact that your wife seems to be using counter-measures, I would suggest a PI if you can afford one but that's problematic given that your wife controls the finances.

Hoping you can finally get the truth soon. Best of luck.

The one thing I learned from my H’s affairs is this; anything can be fixed or repaired if BOTH parties come to the table with honesty, truth, respect and a commitment to repair the damage.

I worked on a few things during my H’s last affair. Things that helped me with my kids and my H. Nothing serious or terrible but hopefully things that made me a better person.

My biggest mistake in my marriage was allowing my H to lie about his first affair, end it without admitting anything and then sweeping it under the rug.

After dday2 of affair 2 I would not let that happen. When I needed to talk about, he listened and answered questions etc. I learned from my prior mistake that things need to be addressed.

And I addressed everything during R. It was either addressed or I had no choice but to D.

His chronic lateness and MIA
His refusal to discuss things with me (issues)
His ego in thinking he was always right
Me being a doormat (my mistake)
Me refusing to stand my ground (my mistake)

We have happily reconciled. Almost 9 years. But I can tell you our marriage has changed. It will never be the same as it was prior to the affair. And I’m some ways that is a good thing.

Hey Jack,

It’s been awhile since you’ve posted. Did the vars or gps turn up anything? Are you any closer to a resolution?

Bump

Hello everyone,

Coming to you with an update. Its been a few months and there have been a few devellopments.

I took your advice and obtained a couple VARs. Over the past months I placed them in a variety of locations I thought might pick up anything of interest. Throughout May and June I got absolutely nothing. July we went on vacation together and actually had a really good time. Things were going quite well. I was even starting to think maybe I've been paranoid and there was nothing.
Then in August that changed. She started acting, for lack of a better term, crazy.

VAR picked up some kind of sexual activity, but I can't decide if it is actual sex or masturbation. There is a lot of whispering and skin slapping going on in the recording over about an hour. The recording is inside our house and her oldest son is in the house downstairs at this time so I don't think anyone is in the house with her. I'd almost discounted it thinking I recorded the dog licking himself, but then a couple weeks later I recorded a second incident, this one in her home office. This one is definitely some kind of phone sex or facetime. At start you hear her say hello then almost no talking but occasional panting and about 40 minutes in heavy petting with wet slapping sounds.

Parallel to this, there had been a few conversations where she jokingly made variations of the remark that I am not a real man and tried to get me to agree to this notion on one occasion.

Finally 3 weeks ago, she was supposed to go to the gym but when she got home, her gym clothes were dry and folded nice and clean. New socks unworn.

I confronted her on all these points last week and she just denies everything. Its all in my head. She can't stand being accused when she has never done anything of the sort and so on. I had a slight nervous breakdown and thought I was going to lose consciousness for about an hour. I confronted her again 2 days later telling her this was not going to just disappear just because she is pretending nothing happened and she just gets angry at me. I get the impression that talking to her isn't going to get us anywhere. I really don't know what to do at this point.

I'm pretty sure she has stopped doing anything for now. Phone use has drastically reduced. She hasn't flipped screens in at least 2 weeks and all her activities are accounted for. Its like she knows she's been caught but if she just keeps denying everything and deflecting that it will all disappear.

Sorry for the disjointed post, but I don't have a lot of time to compose properly. I would like any feedback you have, comments or suggestions.

I can't think of anything but divorce at this point and the idea makes me sick to my stomach.

I'll reply any of you when I get a chance.

Be clear on some things:
If you are determined to find infidelity then everything will sound, smell and look like infidelity. Like if you hear her venting about you on the var in the car you will think it’s because she’s cheating. If she’s talking to a male colleague on the phone you will be trying to read if her voice is happy or sexy or whatever. If she is 20 minutes late home you will think she’s meeting OM…

Instead focus on your REAL goal: Focus on discovering the TRUTH.

This is a basic that is repeated repeatedly during investigative training: Investigate for the truth rather than a foregone conclusion.

I’m sorry she’s been so dishonest with you. At this point she is thinking she’s "all in" on the dishonesty with you. You know something is going on. She knows something is going on.

She’s lying. To you. To herself.

If you can accept her for her lying ways, you don’t have to D her. But I think it’s a mistake. Based on my experience my H knew his 4 year EA was more than a "friendship". But I mistakenly allowed him to lie about it and get away with it.

And that just made it easier to have his next affair.

Yes it is frustrating beyond hell to have someone sit in front of you and lie. But it’s your call on how to move forward from here. Because you no longer have the same marriage. You can pretend to have the sane marriage. But there will always be that element of doubt and distrust. Please know that.

I would really like to see where she’s lying in that last post from the OP.

I really don’t get this site-fetish of wanting so much to swell our ranks. If CJ wife is cheating and he realizes she’s cheating I will be at the forefront in offering him advice. Until he has that evidence… I have no wish to make him experience the pain of infidelity.
CJ – you are going to get a lot of posters telling you that your last post is just as good as walking in on her with her lover. Then you will get my voice. I venture that I’m the only voice that has experience of both – of walking in on his spouse with another man AND the experience of formal and professional investigative methods. I’m telling you that you are reading the conclusion you WANT out of your evidence, rather than reading the evidence for what it is.

From May to late September CalicoJack has some obscure and unclear recording and unused gym-clothes.
Based on that evidence he thinks he needs to divorce…

The recording? I’m guessing he’s listened to it a gazillion times but he doesn’t share that he heard two voices and isn’t clear on what was going on. For all we know the W might have been doing exercise or moving furniture or whatever. If she were cheating and felt confident enough to have OM in the family-home they wouldn’t feel a need to whisper.
The dry clothes? Maybe she changed her schedule, maybe she used some other clothes, maybe she just took a walk in the park, maybe she has another set.

OK – I am not denying that MAYBE she had a whispering, but-slapping orgy or that MAYBE her gym-workout was sans-clothes at a sex-club. But the "evidence" doesn’t necessarily support either theory.

In many cases, a good place for a VAR is her car. You can pick up her unguarded phone calls with others.

She might be having quickies in parking lots. Her behavior at the bedroom window is possible evidence of someone who has possible kinks that involve public displays of nakedness.

Occasionally people go off the deep end as they move through middle age.

Her remark to you about circumcision is so out there that putting together what you have reported you are being gaslighted by an expert.

Contact her first husband and ask him what broke up the marriage.

Polygraph.

Personally, I've never said "hello" before masterbating.

Since she just can't stand being accused, schedule the polygraph.

Parallel to this, there had been a few conversations where she jokingly made variations of the remark that I am not a real man and tried to get me to agree to this notion on one occasion.

Apart from all else, this would be a major problem for me.

I second what HF says. You don't generally greet yourself if you're "going it alone."f

Do you have the controlling account on your cell phone? If so, I know Verizon provides call and message logs from their web service. Once the billing period is up, they delete their message logs, but you can see the call logs in the bill.

Going through them for specific times when you know she's been in the car a while and paying the WhitePages service online may be a good option for figuring out who the "mystery" numbers are. Ask me how I know...

Verizon allows you to download the usage history from current billing period for both messaging and calls. If you're any good at excel, you can sort for dates, times, numbers, etc and figure out the pattern. All this is VERY helpful in establishing which numbers are suspect and which ones to target in the WhitePages.

If you need help wading through this, PM me and I can help you sort it out.

It sucks being in this place... but, with all us WS's (I'm a MH for H's EA's), we're good at lying and manipulating, so it's best if you get a good stack of data before confronting. If we're confronted without the hard evidence, we'll do our best to minimize and gaslight our way out.

Also, once evidence is gathered, ask to see her phone. It will be VERY revealing to see if she's ok or protective of it.

Another thing, if she has an iPhone and an iPad, or one of those Apple watches or Samsung watches, you can view what she's been up to via the 2ndary device. I've done that before too...

I'm sorry you're here. I agree with Bigger to look deeper into this stuff before jumping on the cheating bandwagon. HOWEVER, as HF said, we don't greet ourselves before pleasuring ourselves... I mean, we already know what we're up to

Chances are, if you look at her phone usage before and after the times she was upstairs... greeting herself... you'll see a flurry of texts to some weird number.

FINALLY- look online at OnlyFans, maybe create a ghost account or have a good friend make one. If she's exhibiting herself and taking selfies, chances are she could be selling them too. I'm not familiar with webcam sites, never used them or known anyone who has, but there are a few here that have in the past in WS that you may be able to PM. The ones I'm thinking of are remorseful and reforming themselves and may be open to helping you dig up any info.

I'm sorry you're here.

Hi all, got a few minutes so I'm going to reply as much as I can.

Bigger, I know you're right man. Always the voice of reason on here. Keep at it.
Truth is all I've ever wanted from this. Its what I need. If I didn't leave years ago its because I didn't have it. Thing is, I have no intention of living out the rest of my life as a cuckold and she is putting heavy pressure to get into a mortgage for the next 20 years when I am in a place where I don't trust her. This sets some urgency on the matter.

Regarding the recordings, you're right, they are unclear. One of the 2 is recording from another room so the sound quality is not that good. In the other recording the window is open and construction has moved very close to the house so the noises overpower a good portion of that recording. Neither is 100% proof by my reckoning.

Regarding the gym clothes. Let me elaborate. A couple months ago my wife signed up for a specialized fitness class for people with various health problems. She had back surgery a couple years ago and has been putting on weight and losing muscle mass since. As far as I was concerned this was a very positive devellopment since she really needed to get back into shape. Now, she goes to gym on Thursday afternoon. I work from home on Thursdays. Her class is from 3 to 4 PM and then she goes to pick up our son at 4:30 and is generally home around 5 or so. At 2:30 she leaves telling me she has her gym class. I notice she is not wearing her gym clothes which is unusual as every other time she would prep before leaving and change after class. Gets home around 5 as usual and asks me to bring up her things I can't remember for what specific reason. This is when I notice that her gym clothes are still folded, dry (she generally sweats a lot during her session) and smell like laundry. Best I can tell, they weren't worn. I've seen her clothes when she gets back from the gym on other days. Balled up and wet from sweat. I ask her about her gym class and she tells me it went well, but at no point does she mention being sore from the workout as she had each other time she went. Now on that point and in all fairness, last two weeks she didn't complain about sore muscles either and her gym clothes were obviously used. However, when she was getting ready to go to the next class she asked me to check in the car if there were clean socks with her gym shoes. 1 pair, not only clean but new, still folded as per packaging.

When I call her out on the gym clothes she denies they were unused as well as the socks which she was present when I pulled them out of the bag to show her. ITS ALL IN MY FUCKING HEAD

So you're right, I haven't walked in on her caught in the act per se. I doubt I would be able to catch her in such a manner. She's really smart. Getting what I have has taken a lot of effort.

1stWife, this is what I'm most worried about. That either she decided or was advised by some magazine article or friend or whatever to just straight up deny and rely on cognitive dissonance to do all the work for her. I'm almost out the door at this point.

Butforthegrace, I tried the VAR in her car the first month or so. Never got a lick of anything interesting. Even tried her cargo bike. Her purse (I think she found it at one point). The only place I ever got any recording of interest was in her home office or in the bedroom and still nothing actionnable.

Cooley2Here, yeah the circumcision comment was one of the things that set me hardest. Especially given the stress tone. I've been considering contacting the ex. I can't decide if I should.

Hellfire, yeah the hello is what blew my mind. I was going to request she take a poly until some members dissuaded me. I'm not sure its the right move at this point.

HardKnocks, yeah, those comments have led to multiple arguments since where she tries to play it off as just banter. However, the last argument we had on the subject got heated and for a brief moment the mask slipped so to speak. She started to lay in on me for absurd things that had nothing to do with me personally. I can't remember the specifics because I was transfixed by her face. It was like I was talking to a stranger. I can't remember ever seeing her like that.

I Realize that I rushed my post, there are things that I maybe could have expressed better, but I had no way of knowing if I would have more time later and I wanted to get the main points on while I had a chance. There are also a few things I have left out but I may explain later, they could also be relevant or not at all.

Hi MIgander, you must have replied while I was typing. Something I don't think I mentionned at any point in my previous posts, I live in France. We don't get detailed cell phone bills. Calls are unlimited. She also has her own account completely seperate from mine. I have been able to pin down who most people that call her are by reverse phone lookup. I thought I had found something at one point, but it turned out it was a client from her medical practice. That was a stressful week before I figured that out...

I appreciate the offer for help on how to sort the info, I'm pretty good with spreadsheets and parsing data (I work in IT and do that a lot already). She will openly allow me access to her phone, thing is, there are times when I know there was a conversation going on via whatsapp or by SMS and by the time I got a hold of her device the convo had mysteriously vanished. She is meticulous about cleaning up any tracks. That hasn't stopped me from finding some clues in backup folders but I never get the meat, just crumbs.

Just before summer started she got and Iphone and MacBook for work and got a strap for the Iphone, she wears it constantly when she is not sleeping. As far as the MacBook goes, I've tried finding stuff on there but I'm a PC person and have almost no Apple experience. Any advice on that angle would be appreciated. I can tell you she does not have an Icloud.

One more thing, I noticed a lot of messages on SnapChat. A couple weeks ago I came to bed early and I think she thought I would stay up. At one point around midnight a Snap message came in. I waited to be sure she was sleeping to check it. It was from a guy but disappeared as soon as I logged into her phone and I couldn't find any user in her list with the same icon. Is there a way to hide friends on SnapChat?

Thanks for your continued input and support. It is much appreciated.

Take care