Hi all, I’ve been looking to find somewhere to get some advice and hopefully this is the place. Here goes...
My wife and I have been married 10 years, I would say our marriage is pretty good, not perfect, I don’t communicate with her as much as I should, but that’s just my personality. We have 2 kids (3 & 5). My wife is a nurse and probably a year and a half to 2 years ago she started in a new position at the hospital in nursing education. She is one of the younger people in that department (we are both 36). There is a similar age male in her department that she pretty much immediately took to because they were close in age. Fast forward a little while and they’ve become pretty good friends. On their breaks at work sometimes the walk around the hospital campus. He is married with no kids. I knew that she texted him a lot after work hours discussing work related things and also just general texts that you might send to a friend, but just recently as I was setting up a new phone for her, I saw what was a huge amount of texts to this guy. To put it into context, on her phone the three largest and longest text threads are #1. Me, #2. Her sister, and #3. This guy. Now consider that she’s only known him for maybe two years and he has the 3rd largest text thread with her.
So, being curious as to what they talk about so much, I scrolled through the last couple months of texts. I found a lot of work related things, a lot of conversations about how their days are going and what they are doing on the their days off, never anything together, from what I can see, unless she is deleting those parts of the texts. But a lot of back and forth in a lot of detail about their lives, she talks to him about our kids a lot, things that we do together, she sends him selfies, and he does the same. Nothing provocative, but I think they could definitely be consider flirtatious.
The two most concerning things I found in the texts were 1. Almost every day they text each other “Good Morning” and “Good Night” and 2. I scrolled through the part of the text that shows all the pictures that they’ve exchanged, and she sent him a picture of her bra and panties laid out on the bed. It wasn’t a pic of her wearing them, just the bra and panties on the bed. And that pic was deleted from the main text thread, but you could still see it in the pictures sent portion.
In the past I’ve sort of made jokes about her and this guy that I thought it was kind of weird that she was such good friends with a guy, and that it was a little odd that they would take walks together at work. She said that all he is her “work best friend”. She doesn’t know that I went through her phone, she may suspect it because I had it for a while trying to set It up for her, and she asked me if I found anything interesting on there, and I told her that I didn’t look through it, and she said “I wouldn’t have just given you my phone if I thought there was anything on there that was bad”.
I have been caught by her 2 other times looking through her phone, I was just curious about the things she talks about, which I know, is a complete invasion of privacy, and I was wrong for that. But now with this, I want to ask her about everything, but I fear that she is going to get really upset that I went through her phone again, and may not fully trust me ever again. I can already tell that she doesn’t trust me with her phone after snooping though it before because she never leaves it accessible to me. It’s always on her.
So I’m at a loss, do I bring up all these new concerns and risk a giant blowout that results in her losing a lot of trust in me for again, invading her privacy, or do I not bring it up and risk what could be semi-serious flirting turning into something more serious and possibly ending my marriage. Sorry for the long post, but I really don’t know what to do. In her defense, I really don’t think she is the type of woman that would cheat or set herself on a path to cheat, but I see the “flirting” that she may not think is flirting, just being friendly, and maybe he takes it as more than it is and tries something with her. To my knowledge, the only time they hang out outside of work is in big group with other people from their department, they’ve all gone to dinners and small get togethers at someone’s house.
So, with all that said, any advice would be appreciated, thanks!
My wife and I have been married 10 years, I would say our marriage is pretty good, not perfect, I don’t communicate with her as much as I should, but that’s just my personality. We have 2 kids (3 & 5). My wife is a nurse and probably a year and a half to 2 years ago she started in a new position at the hospital in nursing education. She is one of the younger people in that department (we are both 36). There is a similar age male in her department that she pretty much immediately took to because they were close in age. Fast forward a little while and they’ve become pretty good friends. On their breaks at work sometimes the walk around the hospital campus. He is married with no kids. I knew that she texted him a lot after work hours discussing work related things and also just general texts that you might send to a friend, but just recently as I was setting up a new phone for her, I saw what was a huge amount of texts to this guy. To put it into context, on her phone the three largest and longest text threads are #1. Me, #2. Her sister, and #3. This guy. Now consider that she’s only known him for maybe two years and he has the 3rd largest text thread with her.
So, being curious as to what they talk about so much, I scrolled through the last couple months of texts. I found a lot of work related things, a lot of conversations about how their days are going and what they are doing on the their days off, never anything together, from what I can see, unless she is deleting those parts of the texts. But a lot of back and forth in a lot of detail about their lives, she talks to him about our kids a lot, things that we do together, she sends him selfies, and he does the same. Nothing provocative, but I think they could definitely be consider flirtatious.
The two most concerning things I found in the texts were 1. Almost every day they text each other “Good Morning” and “Good Night” and 2. I scrolled through the part of the text that shows all the pictures that they’ve exchanged, and she sent him a picture of her bra and panties laid out on the bed. It wasn’t a pic of her wearing them, just the bra and panties on the bed. And that pic was deleted from the main text thread, but you could still see it in the pictures sent portion.
In the past I’ve sort of made jokes about her and this guy that I thought it was kind of weird that she was such good friends with a guy, and that it was a little odd that they would take walks together at work. She said that all he is her “work best friend”. She doesn’t know that I went through her phone, she may suspect it because I had it for a while trying to set It up for her, and she asked me if I found anything interesting on there, and I told her that I didn’t look through it, and she said “I wouldn’t have just given you my phone if I thought there was anything on there that was bad”.
I have been caught by her 2 other times looking through her phone, I was just curious about the things she talks about, which I know, is a complete invasion of privacy, and I was wrong for that. But now with this, I want to ask her about everything, but I fear that she is going to get really upset that I went through her phone again, and may not fully trust me ever again. I can already tell that she doesn’t trust me with her phone after snooping though it before because she never leaves it accessible to me. It’s always on her.
So I’m at a loss, do I bring up all these new concerns and risk a giant blowout that results in her losing a lot of trust in me for again, invading her privacy, or do I not bring it up and risk what could be semi-serious flirting turning into something more serious and possibly ending my marriage. Sorry for the long post, but I really don’t know what to do. In her defense, I really don’t think she is the type of woman that would cheat or set herself on a path to cheat, but I see the “flirting” that she may not think is flirting, just being friendly, and maybe he takes it as more than it is and tries something with her. To my knowledge, the only time they hang out outside of work is in big group with other people from their department, they’ve all gone to dinners and small get togethers at someone’s house.
So, with all that said, any advice would be appreciated, thanks!