My Turn to Wonder About Cheating

[karma_gal]

So I have mentioned in other threads that infidelity is an issue that I suspect my husband of in the past.  He typically will start a fight, then end up running out the door in a rage, stay gone four to six weeks, then come back home as though everything is fine.  While he's gone, he will not take my calls, just goes off the map entirely.  In the past, before we were married, when we broke up, he would have a tendency to hit the bars, hook up for a ONS, and then come crawling back home.  I should have left then.  Hindsight... .

During his last disappearance, I received a phone call from someone telling me to check his bag that he took with him.  Lo and behold, I found what appeared to be a condom.  There was porn in the car.  And of course he hadn't sex with me in six weeks because he hadn't been home.  He told me I was the crazy one, raged and screamed, and because I couldn't prove anything, I was never able to verify for sure.

So today... .I just go to grab some shorts out of the laundry basket of clothes he just brought upstairs to settle in to work for the night.  I was rifling through there to find what I was looking for and what did I find?  I found what appears to be a condom that was ran through the washer -- it's got holes here and there at the tip of it. 

So he's at work and I send him a text, "Perhaps you can explain to me why there is what appears to be a condom that went through the washer in the laundry basket of clothes you just washed and took upstairs."  He immediately starts raging at me via text asking, "Are you that effing insecure?  I'm tired of your B.S.  Whatever you say.  I don't want to hear anything more about this."  He swears it's a finger from a rubber glove.  Well, I have looked and don't see four other fingers or any other remnants of a rubber glove that would even make his story plausible. 

Please tell me that I'm not crazy and this could very well be exactly what it looks like.  I am livid right now and can't even think. 

[Seneca]

oh girl, we don't need  to tell you. if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck... you know the rest 

i think us non-BPs have a really hard time with understanding this aspect of their personality profile... the absolute denial that there is anything wrong with them or they ever do bad things. it is pathologic. sounds like if you walked in on him in the ACT with someone else, he'd find someway to blame you and convince you that he just tripped and fell on top of her... .maybe their clothes burned off in a flash fire. wth?

i am so so sorry. this is a boundary issue i would imagine. what is the consequence for crossing this one, only you know that. and you may have to face the fact that you may never know the truth.

?

[willtimeheal]

oh girl, we don't need  to tell you. if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck... you know the rest 

That says it all

[karma_gal]

Seneca:

You are so right, and it's funny that you said that.  One of my good friends just found out her husband had been cheating for two years.  He kept telling her that he didn't mean to.  I was on the phone with her and I said, "What, he just tripped and fell and his penis fell in her vagina?"  I really think these idiots think we're going to buy these stories.

So since I posted I have restored my iPhone using his data so that I could get all of his calls, texts, internet searches, et cetera.  Nothing really exciting except he had just joined a forum posting about "should I stay for my son?"  The search was right on the heels of our annual Xmas argument where I pretty much laid into him because he just sucks. 

Yes, cheating is a deal breaker, but this is so like last time.  I have one little shred of "evidence" but nothing else to corroborate what I'm thinking.  I was hoping to have found a smoking gun in his phone, but no dice there.  Like I said, the last time I confronted with only what appeared to be a condom, he turned it around and made me look nuts.  I just get a creepy feeling from his texts each time, where he immediately turns it around on me, "Are you insecure?  I'm tired of being accused of things you are probably doing."  That just doesn't seem like what I would be saying to my SO if I was being accused of cheating and knew for a fact I wasn't, you know?

I don't know what to do next.  Right now, I'm going to breathe, smoke a cigarette, and regroup.  He's gone until tomorrow night for work, so I may just set his crap on the porch.  Even if I don't find hard and fast proof, I'm getting sick of living like this.  It's one thing for the main issue to be his behaviors; it's something else if he's having sex with random people and exposing me to STDs. 

I hate him. 

[sadinnc98]

I am sorry you are going through this  Like the others said, it seems like this is what is going on. I don't believe his story personally... .

[Seneca]

Karma, do you guys use condoms? I know for us, we haven't used them in... .ever. Twelve years. So if i found one i'd know for damn sure there was no reason for it to be in his possession. I want to throw this out there... if he were having an affair at someone else's house... .a hotel, any normal place, there'd be somewhere logical for him to dispose of a condom. And evidence on the web, the phone, somewhere (unless he was good at covering his tracks). So my thoughts are,  What are the odds its a hooker or escort? 

[karma_gal]

Karma, do you guys use condoms? I know for us, we haven't used them in... .ever. Twelve years. So if i found one i'd know for damn sure there was no reason for it to be in his possession. I want to throw this out there... if he were having an affair at someone else's house... .a hotel, any normal place, there'd be somewhere logical for him to dispose of a condom. And evidence on the web, the phone, somewhere (unless he was good at covering his tracks). So my thoughts are,  What are the odds its a hooker or escort? 

As a general rule we don't, and I could count on one hand how many times we have over the years, so that's why I know it isn't something that just happened to be picked up with clothes from the last time we had sex. 

I totally had not gone there with my thought process, about hookers and escorts, but now that you've thrown it out there, it's definitely a possibility.  Like you said, if he were having an affair, presumably he could have disposed of the condom there, wherever that is. 

I did think about that part of it last night, and the other thing I came up with is I wouldn't put it past him to deliberately bring it home and make sure I found it, just because he seems to revel in watching me ticked off and stressing, knowing that I couldn't actually "prove" anything.  Kind of like getting huge amounts of joy knowing he "pulled one over on me."  God, that sounds so sick just writing it, and it's scary how close to the truth that sentiment is more often than not. 

Here I am today, just like last time, with nothing more than a washer-chewed seems-to-be condom.  There was nothing in his phone, his internet history, his app history.  The only thing I can think of is that maybe he has a burner phone, because in the past he has gone and purchased a secondary phone so that I could not get a hold of him.  When he gets in tonight and goes to sleep, I'm going to check his car.  For some reason, I *need* to know.  As someone said in another thread, though, when it's time to play detective, it's time to get out.  I probably need to sit with that for a while today and start looking at my situation realistically in terms of making that happen. 

When I first arrived here, I was determined to figure out how to make this work, even if only for now, because of the health insurance and pending procedures issues.  The more I read, the more hopeless it seems that anything will ever change, unless I commit to and become okay with being the only one making changes and concessions.  Where I am now, I feel I've done more than enough of that with none coming from his side and I'm just not willing to bend any more. 

I still hate him today, though, so that's pretty telling in and of itself.