SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

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!

Just ask to see her phone. Her reaction is all the answer you need. 2023 is both easier in some ways and worse for catching cheaters. If she says no to seeing all of the phone (app and data use, downloads, everything) then make clear you'll assume the A and take action.

You're 46. At our age time is a precious resource. Don't let this crap drag out for years.

She voluntarily handed it to me the other day to show me a house she likes so I could scroll through the pictures. She's too smart. She's using something where you can either hide the conversations / notifications, or she's deleting the texts right away. Good idea though, but she will gladly let me look through it and because I don't know what the app is she's using, I'm not going to find anything.

You're right about letting it drag out, and the hardest part of this was accepting that I have to be alone. There is something about me that makes cheating women drawn to me. But I'm also picking up on something about whom I'm drawn to because of what my mom did. I think I have to learn how to be single for the rest of my life. Ironically enough, it's how my dad is. Crazy how no matter how hard you try, you just can't break the parental cycle.

You are going to have to investigate the phone. Open all comm apps, check for hidden conversations, review data and dowload activity, look at what was downloaded from the app store, review text contacts etc. It will not be subtle or comfortable. If she is warned she can clean it up. If not, there will be traces.

She should cooperate on the basis of your history and compassion for you. If not, there is your answer.

I'm not sure she's cheating. (Heck, I'm not even sure number two cheated, but it sounds like you did even if it wasn't physical.) What I do suggest you do is get a VAR and put it in her car or if she works from home, in the office or wherever she's most likely to talk on the phone when you're not home. That will tell you what you need to know.

Welcome to SI and sorry that you had to look for us. First, there are some pinned posts at the top of the page that we recommend to new members. Also, the Healing Library has a lot of great information and includes the list of acronyms we use.

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?

Where I go for massages, they take your phone from you and lock it in with your other personal items, like your clothes. For a 60-minute massage, it takes about 1.5-2 hours.

But, some of the other items sound suspicious. Is it an A? I couldn't tell you for sure. Would it be possible that she's planning a surprise for you or your family?

Using a VAR might be helpful, but be sure to check your local laws because state laws vary on what is acceptable (one-party vs two-party consent, etc.)

One thing we all learned here is to always trust your gut. Your gut knows so you need to act on it. I suggest not confronting yet, she will deny and gas light you, then she will take the A underground. You need to further investigate and catch her. I spent a week with my WW's phone before I confronted her, I had a rough idea of what was happening when I confronted her.

Since you seem to be a man of some means, I’d advise you consider hiring a P.I. No, it won’t be cheap, but what’s your peace of mind worth? The PI might also have some ideas how to track your WiFi and potentially at least what apps she’s using on her phone.

Hi FunHouseMirror, I certainly appreciate your skepticism about #2 possibly not cheating, but when her brother-in-law told me and I confronted her, she did confess.

leafields, what you said is very promising. I don't want her to have cheated. I love her so much. Honestly at this point I'm hanging onto every possibility that it could be a misunderstanding. What if that day the parking lot WAS full? This whole thing is tearing me apart and there is a very large part of me that wishes I had never seen the location of her phone. But that of course isn't the only reason for suspicion - it's all the other things that have happened along with that. What you mentioned about the surprise has also crossed my mind and I am playing things low until after Christmas just to make sure that maybe a friend didn't pick her up and they went somewhere together for a special gift and she didn't want me accidentally seeing her location because it would have given it away. Again, I want her to be the one. I want to believe there are honest people in this world and I was lucky enough to find one of them.

Just in case, to rule it out, have you checked your accounts to make sure she isn’t acting shady because she spent too much for Christmas? It’s a tough time of year because good intentions can seem suspicious as people do lie and hide for the sake of Christmas surprises. Also look for brand new credit cards in wallets. She could be treating you nicer than normal because there is an innocent surprise in stall. Yes the phone behaviour is a telltale sign but it normally goes hand in hand with others like detachment, petty fights or new grooming behaviour.

Do you want to confront because the red flags are triggering you do you want to keep hunting? Just keep in mind, even if private investigators are involved, you will never uncover it all.

Since you have iPhones here are some things you can try to get some more information.

If you get her phone quickly swipe down (if that doesn’t work swipe up) it will bring up ‘Siri suggestions’ these are apps she has been using the most in the past 24hrs, even when locked you can see this. If Siri suggestions doesn’t show she has actively switched that off and that’s not good because no one switches that off. Deleted apps will still show. Take a photo of this screen if you can and look up the apps, do the icons match? Sometimes "vaulted" apps hide as calendar or calculator or clock apps but the icons do not match the real icons assigned by Apple, so check just in case she is using a vault, AFAIK only criminals, drug dealers and cheaters use vault apps. Look up any apps you don’t recognise, google if they have a chat feature.

If you get her phone and it’s unlocked go into settings then battery usage and look for the most used apps (this tallies for the week) and again deleted apps will still show. So if she is using Telegram, for example, then deleting it, it will still show up here.

Don’t try and use any third party to unlock the phone, it’ll factory reset itself.

If you use AirPods, activate their tracking feature on your phone and then hide them in her car or handbag, you can track her that way.

​Try holding down the home key on her locked phone and see if Siri wakes up, if so you can ask her to read the last text messages received. You can do this even when phone is locked but don’t get hopeful over this because you can disable this during setup and most disable it.

​You can picture search her main pictures used, like profile pics and see if she has secondary socials like insta.

I hate the unknowns, it’s a true mind f. Avoid alcohol right now only because it will just escalate your feelings, keep hydrated and nourished to keep your mind sharp so you can stay aware of shady behaviour. Keep an open mind however just in case.

Like above. Hire a P.I. You can let someone else find it if it is there. Ask a lawyer for a good reference.

A 60 minute massage can take a significant amount of time. But not usually 2.5 hours. That doesn’t mean she didn’t get a longer service than before, or have something else done.

If it were me, I would call and say ‘my wife was in on Dec XX and I’m wondering if you can help clue me in on what had done that day’ (as her husband ‘looking for a last minute gift’). I would play dumb, ask questions about if she had any additional services, etc. And say it is all part of trying to decide if I should get her a gift card (and I needed to know the amount of all the services to decide on the gift card total, should you decide to come in and pick one up).

If they say she wasn’t there on that day, but try to give you info from another day/visit (the one 5 days earlier), you have a bit more concrete evidence of time loss.

I occasionally get 60 minute massages, I show up about 5-10 minutes before, get the 60 minute massage and am out of the office in 5 minutes. And this is a place that doesn’t have a backlog nor waiting customers, so there would be ample time to chat.

On a side note, I effectively detected my wife’s A through find a phone. She hiked a lot alone and I was always concerned if something happened to her how would I find her. I think she completely forgot that feature was on her phone. Anyway, when places and info about where she was going didn’t match up, I placed an app on her phone. It was an app from our cellular carrier that you can link one phones texts to the app that you can see with your own phone. It rarely worked as IPhones have very good phone to phone encryption. It did finally pick up the texting between my wife and her AP. To install it I had to link her phone number to the app, it sent her phone a text message that had to acknowledge and accept the link so you’d need a few moments alone with her phone, then you’d need to delete the text and the safari link history if she’s keen on phone secrecy. Sorry you are dealing with this.

My ex-wife was very good at being able to hide things from me on her phone. She was tech savvy and I was too trusting. I would ask to see her phone and there was nothing on there. At least that I could find. But there was stuff on there. A lot of stuff in fact. She had it all hidden somehow. I found out she was texting and sending filth to her boyfriend even when we were in the same room, sometimes even when we were in bed together. One time I had my head on her lap watching tv and she was sexting her boyfriend at the same time.

Trust your gut. Always.

Put a voice activated recorder in her car. Put one in the house somewhere that she could be talking on the phone. Put a tracker on her car. Hire a private investigator. But never let on that you suspect her of anything. Otherwise if she is cheating she will just take it underground more secretively and gaslight you. If she isn't cheating you will look like a paranoid suspicious spouse and that will create problems for you. Either way, stay strong and act normal.

Bottom line, it is suspicious that her behavior has changed in the ways that you describe. Next time she parks in a far corner of the parking lot like that, can you take a pair of binoculars and go investigate for yourself? For example with the massage, next time just go park somewhere inconspicuous and watch her to see what she is doing.

It may take some time for you to get to the truth. Act as normal as possible in the meantime.

Hello everyone. I wanted to take a quick moment just to thank all of you for your responses. I am of course incredibly vulnerable at the moment, but all of you have taken the time to help me through this, both to give me methods to find out more information, or to consider other possibilities to what could have been going on instead of an affair. I appreciate each one of you so much!

I created this account at 32, I’m 38 now and still in a position where I’m finding myself circling back to the pain from him doing his dirt to me. Freaking sucks. It’s always the dam phone that gets him caught. Every time my gut tells me to look through it, I find something. I’m so sick of not feeling like I’m enough. I’m sorry you are feeling the way you do., definitely go through the phone.

Hi Torn32. Signs keep coming up, and things keep getting even more suspicious. Last Friday my wife was sick from the temperature change, which is a normal occurrence, so she had been laying in bed all day. Around 6pm I came in our bedroom and saw she had a dialog open with someone and she quickly closed the app. What was strange though was that there were several times that she left the room without taking her phone with her. What that's telling me is that whatever app it is, it's very hard to find and all notifications are turned off for it. I did open her phone and look for cheating type apps or new social media apps that I know she doesn't commonly use and couldn't find anything. By the way, I have a tip for anyone whose spouses use iPhones. You can delete an app from your home screens and still keep it on your phone. The way you can look at all apps is by scrolling the home screen all the way to the right, where it shows you all apps in categories. Look specifically for Social Networking and Lifestyle categories. Back to what I was saying though, I looked through it and could find nothing - not even the app style she was using for that conversation (the chat bubbles were white on one side and gray on the other side, if anyone knows which app that is). This is the thing that sucks; every freaking app has a chat feature now so she could literally be coordinating any inconspicuous app with him to chat on.

I would like to add something else that she just did on Sunday. We usually take her car and she drives. This time we took my car, and she looked in the passenger door and saw a few crumpled up kleenexes and said, "Who's been riding in your car with you?" I responded with, "Who do you think has been riding in my car? Our son." And they were our sons, but I mean, seriously... It's so obvious that she was reflecting the guilt she has onto me by suggesting I have someone else riding in my car.

Her behavior on Sunday sounds very suspicious.

Are you going to confront her or gather evidence?

Hi leafields, I have to be patient and gather actual visual evidence somehow. I make all the money; her business barely breaks even. It’s something she enjoys doing, and something I have always fully supported because it’s her dream. If I were to confront her, she would deny everything because she doesn’t want to lose the comfortable lifestyle I’ve given her.

The hardest part of this is waiting and pretending everything is okay and I’m not in excruciating emotional pain. All I can do is pay close attention to her phone habits and see where she parks when she gets her next "massage" and drive there and watch if someone is picking her up.