I Smell A Cheating Husband…You?
This past weekend, a very close friend of mine, Darlene, phoned me in a tizzy. Out of the blue, she had been accused by a girlfriend of having an affair with her husband. And since I’d recently been accused of the same by a neighbor, she wanted help sorting through the drama.
Now I believe Darlene 100%, when she says nothing was going on. And my goal in writing this is NOT to decide whether or not SHE is guilty. It’s her girlfriend’s husband’s behavior that has me going hmm. And I’m wondering if this case scenario raises any other eyebrows or just my own – after all, maybe I’m biased or overly-suspicious having dealt with a cheating spouse first-hand.
You see, Darlene’s and his relationship was limited to the e-world – hold on, let me confine that even more: it consisted of him regularly forwarding her jokes when he worked out of town. He worked one month on, one month off in the oil industry and boredom often drove him to play in cyberspace. Some of these forwarded jokes were, of course, sexual as is often the case in the e-world.
Only in THREE cases, did Darlene ever reply to him regarding any of these jokes. and they were slapstick one-line responses, perfectly innocent and done in good humor. And one day, thinking she had nothing to hide, Darlene revealed to her girlfriend the contents of one their emails…and THAT was enough to get the accusations flying. ENRAGED, this woman phoned her husband, demanding the password to his email account – for she believed that if ”nothing was going on between them, he shouldn’t have a problem granting her access.”
And w
hat did he do? WHAT DID HE DO? He deleted his entire inbox of emails and told his wife to mind her own business.
Immediately I told Darlene that his actions sent off huge warning bells. Maybe he wasn’t cheating with Darlene…but perhaps someone else? Maybe he was playing on dating sites or porn sites? Maybe he’d reconnected and flirted with old girlfriends?
My friend Darlene couldn’t phathom the idea at all; she hasn’t dealt with issues around cheating before so this is brand new territory to her. She reiterated the husband’s excuses as if she’d bought them hook, line and sinker:
1) It really wasn’t his wife’s business who he spoke to and she had no right to check up on him as if he was a child.
2) He’d deleted his emails in a moment of ‘passion’ (anger).
3) He had confidential work emails in there that his wife shouldn’t be privy to (company policy).
I know all these reasons seem valid on some level. And no matter how we analyse them, the truth of this man’s goings-on will only be known to him. But when it comes to people having affairs, there are a few things I’ve learned these past few years:
1) Cheaters don’t have identification tags around their necks; if you think they can be relegated to a ‘type’, you’re sorely wrong. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “But I’d NEVER suspect him/her to have an affair!”
2) You can NOT go through life assuming that what everyone says at face-value is TRUE!
3) When behavior seems inconcongruent and sends your spider senses crawling into overdrive, there’s usually a reason.
4) When cornered, cheaters react in defensive, offensive and irrational ways…
Like deleting an entire inbox. That’s sure not something I would have done…unless I had something to hide.
9 comments
I haven’t been married in a long time but when I was we both had email accounts and both had access to each other’s email. I mean, if you’ve got nothing to hide why not give your spouse your password from the get go?
As for him dumping his inbox. That indicates, to me that he has something to hide. He could have gotten rid of the emails for any of the 3 reasons you list I suppose.
What I don’t understand is why, in the first place this couple have password protected email accounts. If I were married to a man who didn’t share his password with me that alone would cause me to wonder what he was up to.
Hmmmm, 1) it is TOTALLY his wife’s business. 2) anger is pretty much always an indicator that something’s fishy. 3) so let her know what’s work related and ask her not to read them (the subject line should be a pretty good indicator of content.
Whether he’s cheating or not, there are serious problems in this relationship!
Its sad to say but if we’re trusting and niaive and don’t know what to look for when someone is cheating, we’ll often buy their excuses stories. For me, only after everything exploded did I realize the clues had been there. The passwords on his phone and his computer. The way he was taking extra good care of his appearance. The new sexual manouevres he was trying in bed. There’s a line between trusting and being a fool and enabling an affair. Sounds like your friend is going to be a scapegoat for this man’s behavior. Even if he wasn’t messing around with her, he was up to no good with someone esle. I don’t predict good things for her friendship with her girlfriend.
He was possibly trying to game multiple women at the same time. Just because all was safe and harmless with the friend, doesn’t mean the inbox wasn’t filled up with emails from Ashley Madison.
And yes he was fishing for Darlene. She may not have taken the bait, but he was throwing bait in the water.
Hmmm. Demanding the password to his account?
If he exhibited similar controlling behavior towards his wife, he’d be subject to a restraining order and arrest.
Wake up and start acting like equals. No wonder men are on strike when it comes to marriage!
Hey MJ, strike if you wish. It won’t affect my life in anyway. And tell Zed over at spearhead that us “Western Women” appreciate the mention. It has been great as far as pageviews.
@MJ, men who are “on strike” for marriages are scared, selfish little men. I take offense to your grouping of “men” as if they are all the same.
1) B.S. It is his wife’s business if there is cause for alarm. If he wasn’t doing anything wrong or wasn’t scared of her knowing what he’s been up too, then you would of happily cleared up her suspicions and everything would continue to be happy. If he using this excuse, he is trying to guilt her into leaving it alone. If he didn’t want it to be her business, then he shouldn’t have gotten married, Marriage is sharing in each others business. That’s what a successful marriage consists of.
2) Passion? yes. Anger? yes. But he is implying that it is because of her prodding it. His passion’s lie elsewhere, his anger is that he got caught.
3) If you wanted to prove that the emails were safe, and that there is a company policy (still b.s.), as most companies don’t allow the use of personal accounts, he would of shown her the subject lines and who they were from. She isn’t going to care, until she see that it is a girl, and subject implies anything other than business.
Basically, he is either cheating on her with another women, or he is hiding a bevy of illicit behaviors including dirty jokes, that he may be sending to many women. And having inappropriate conversations. (Not saying that Darlene is a part of that.)
People need to listen to their spidey senses more often.
Most email accounts have passwords, so when he sent that email to her it should have been for her eyes only (not saying what he was doing was right). Darlene betrayed a trust by showing his wife the type of jokes he was sending. If Darlene is truly innocent and wants to clear her name, she can simply draw up all the jokes he sent and show the replies she sent back. By the way JOKES are exactly that just jokes whether they are dirty or clean.
I don’t know how much rationality we can assign the wife, I got the feeling she overreacted when demanding the password from her husband having already falsely accused a FRIEND of having it off with her husband, she was anxious to prove something and IMO would’ve overreacted to any and all perceived flirting in emails, not being familiar with their usual content.