Ask Amy: Husband hacks away at his marriage

[conuly]

Dear Amy: I’ve recently caught my husband of two years (father of our two sons) cheating. This is the fourth time I’ve caught him. The first time was just after our older son was born, 18 months ago. Our second baby is just 3 months old.

Every time this happens, he claims he has been hacked.

I have staggering evidence every time that the pictures and the conversations are genuine — they contain things only he would know. But he is always able to show me some proof that he was hacked.

I always choose to believe him, because cheating doesn’t even match his behavior or personality, but eventually I look again, and there it is — all over again.

When I confront him, he deletes Facebook and beefs up the security on his phone, although he never lets me see it.

Even if I choose to believe him, is it right for him to hide his phone activity from me when this is a recurring issue?

Conflicted and Hurt

Dear Conflicted: Your husband doesn’t seem to be effective in preventing these so-called breaches to his security. If Facebook is being hacked over and over again, simply deleting and then reinstalling the app isn’t going to fix things. (And why do these hacks always bring other people sliding into his mentions?)

In short, no — I don’t believe him.

You have two very young children. Yes, trust is a choice. If it is best for you to trust your husband in order to stay in a relationship with him, then you will continue to trust him. However, merely believing his lame explanations does not make your partnership healthy or whole.

The way to recover from cheating (or handle unfounded accusations of cheating) is through complete transparency. He should show you his phone whenever you want to see it, instead of denying the obvious and then gaslighting you.

My favorite book on infidelity contains insight into this relationship dynamic, as well as tools for healing. Read “Not ‘Just Friends’: Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity,” by Shirley P. Glass (2004, Atria Books).

Comments

[conuly]

This dude already is bullshitting his wife about the cheating, and doing it badly. He doesn't care enough to hide his infidelity, and he clearly doesn't think much of his wife's brains.

If she starts checking his phone he's going to spin this to everybody - their family, their friends, his girlfriends, and yes, her - as "she's controlling, she's paranoid, she's jealous" and people will fall all over themselves to reassure him that he doesn't deserve to be treated this way.

I'd recommend couples therapy, but I don't think that's going to do much good either. He's practically rubbing her nose in the affairs as it is. If he cared about her feelings even a little, he'd put the bare minimum effort into hiding them, but he doesn't.

She should leave him, period.

[sciatrix]

Yep. And for the love of god, do not continue having children with this man. Now is the time to see to birth control in as ironclad as possible a way until you are safely divorced and separated from him. (I don't know if that second kid was planned or not, or how much control she has over her own fertility, or what, but getting pregnant so quickly after the first kid and just after discovering your husband cheating on you in the wake of giving birth to your first one? Holy hell these are some red flags that tell me she needs to get away from this dude yesterday.)

[cereta]

Yep. Choosing to believe him has already gone out the window. She made say the words, but she doesn't feel the feelings. She doesn't believe him, and hasn't for a while. And no marriage in which one person's behavior is contingent on another person's constant monitoring of that behavior is going to succeed. It just won't. She needs to get out now while she still has a chance of building a life apart from him, and before his children are old enough to want to borrow Daddy's phone to play a game in the car.

[angelofthenorth]

For goodness sake LW get thee to an std clinic and get tested. And then start saving money so you have something to fall back on when he inevitably leaves you.

[monanotlisa]

Thiiis.

[conuly]

Oh, he's not going to leave her. Why would he? Divorce takes time and money, and it's a lot easier to keep on the way he's been.

If/when she initiates divorce proceedings, bet he's going to whine and complain that it came out of nowhere and that she did him wrong by not putting more effort into the relationship.

[angelofthenorth]

I didn't say he's going to divorce her. Oh no. She's going to be framed as the unreasonable wife who won't divorce him...

[conuly]

Especially if she starts insisting he let her check his phone.

[melannen]

The way to save this relationship is not for her to start policing his social media, it's for him to admit he's been cheating. (He is cheating. If he was being hacked, he wouldn't want to hide the fact that he's improving his data security, he'd show it off.)

Then, if they both want stay in the relationship anyway, they can have the discussion about how they're going to deal with his cheating. Which may involve him agreeing to her monitoring him, or may not.

The other option is for her to decide she can live with him lying, constantly, about important things, which means a) separate finances and b) regular STD checks or condoms in the marriage bed and c) not actually trusting him with anything else important. Some women are willing to make this compromise. Trying to control his communications does not help with it.

Or, she can do that while either waiting for him to come clean or deciding if she wants to leave. But she needs to take practical steps to deal with the fact that the father of her children is untrustworthy either way.

[ashbet]

I often dislike Ask Amy, but THISSSSSS OMG AAAAAAAAA

Want to know who likes to make *unfounded* cheating accusations and would just LOVE to have access to your phone and every private thought you ever had? Controlling abusers. Thanks for giving them ammo, Amy.

On the other hand, THIS woman is basically willfully blinding herself to her husband's obvious cheating, probably because she doesn't want to be left with two young children and no husband.

(I'm not saying it's her fault, I'm saying that she doesn't want to believe it, and is therefore doing everything to avoid confronting the facts. And, no, demanding to read his phone isn't going to fix the gaping cracks in their marriage, chiefly the lack of trust between them.)

Her husband sounds like a real prize -- his excuses are laughable, and the repeated cheating (especially as a brand-new parent) is super fucking gross.

This whole thing is littered with red flags, and Amy's advice ACTUALLY MAKES IT WORSE.

Ugh!!

[minoanmiss]

This, so much this. I was agog.

[conuly]

Want to know who likes to make *unfounded* cheating accusations and would just LOVE to have access to your phone and every private thought you ever had? Controlling abusers. Thanks for giving them ammo, Amy.

Yup. And, btw, cheating asshole over there is absolutely going to use that fact to say his wife is the abusive one, the unreasonable one, the one in the wrong.

[ashbet]

Yep. I usually come down harder on snooping in your partner’s private communications, but when they are blatantly and obviously lying about infidelity AND continuing to have unprotected sex with you (as evidenced by the two closely-spaced children), it is a very rarely necessary/justified act of self-preservation.

(I have done it ONCE, and I’m 43 — I think it’s a breakup-worthy offense, but in that specific case, I had to confirm that I was being lied-to and put at physical risk, the evidence confirmed it, and the relationship ended. Loss of trust is the death knell for a marriage/partnership, where I’m concerned.)

[kutsuwamushi]

What a bizarre "hack" to keep happening. She isn't just talking about pornographic spam here, she's talking about conversations. I've never heard of that happening.

I don't know about the advice here - other people are a lot more knowledgeable about preventing or dealing with abuse than I am. But I also feel like the answer is missing something, which is: That's not how hacking works. It needs to be said more directly Amy says it. Whatever she chooses to do with that information, this woman needs to know that her husband is telling her bullshit.

I can understand the desire not to confront something so hurtful and life-changing and to want to believe alternate explanations. That said, denying the cheating isn't going to buy her any real security. A man who disrespects her enough to cheat on her repeatedly and then lie to her face about it is also a man who will leave her as soon as the cost-benefit ratio works out in his favor. If she doesn't leave him, there's a good chance he'll leave her - and the circumstances of that will be less under her control.

God, people like this are trash.

[conuly]

What gets me is not even the fact that he lied, it's that it was such a stupid lie and he keeps making the same one. He's not even trying to hide it.

[kutsuwamushi]

It's really stupid, but I'm actually not sure he knows it.

Being the moderator of several large communities, I've had interactions with people either threatening to hack me, or claiming that they had been hacked. It almost never makes sense - they've gotten their ideas of how hacking works off of TV shows like CSI: Miami. People really just don't know much about tech.

His wife doesn't believe it, not really, but it worked for him before so he keeps doing it.

I agree with you though, the only reason it keeps working is that it lets them both maintain the fiction he's not cheating. As soon as his wife is ready to leave she's not going to believe him anymore.

[likeaduck]

Darn. You know when you're in an untenable, overwhelming situation and you fixate on a small aspect of it that feels only slightly out of reach? You know, you decide that if you just had this One Thing you could manage everything else? But that Thing, really, is a stand-in in your brain for much bigger and more complex Things like, say, the ability to trust and rely on your partner and feel like he's an equal partner in making your relationship work and that he cares about your feelings and respects you as an autonomous human being? And that One Thing, in the end, would not really give you any of those more complicated Things? But keeping fighting for that thing keeps you from looking at any of the rest of it? And maybe you keep yourself there because it's too scary to look at the big picture, or maybe your partner keeps the focus on the One Thing to keep from having the other conversations, or maybe (most likely) (hardest) both?

Yeah. So. That...sucks.