Partners or Adversaries

I hear about people who, upon finding out about their spouse’s affair, take such actions as stealing their cell phone or searching through their personal belongings in order to gather evidence with the primary intent of humiliating their partner.  I can understand the desire for your guilty spouse to feel the full weight of the hurt they’ve caused in light of their betrayal.  But I was never looking for that “a-ha” moment to shove in my wife’s face since that would give me nothing more than a bit of short term satisfaction at the potential long term expense of our marriage.

I did need to do some investigative work in order to initially determine that I was indeed dealing with an affair and then to learn its details.  I  decided early on though that I needed to determine my personal boundaries.  If I was preparing for divorce, then I would have had no concerns and simply gathered everything I could.  Since I was working to save my marriage though, I had to consider the consequences of my actions.  I certainly had every right to any and all information I could obtain, and I had the technical means to access quite a bit more than your average person.  But regardless whether I had the right to that information though, it was questionable whether accessing it would be in my best interest.

I first had to think about the effect that such information would have on me.  I assumed that she was venting about me and possibly professing her love for this other guy.  There was probably some sexual conversation as well that I certainly didn’t want to hear.  It’s bad enough think about that kind of that conversation going on, but it’s quite another to actually read the words.  If our marriage was able to survive the affair, how could I profess my love and commitment to my wife with those words echoing in my head?

I also had to think about the effect on her.  She obviously couldn’t logically argue that I was invading her privacy; she gave up any right to ethical claims like that when she decided to violate the marriage.  But just because she couldn’t claim the right didn’t mean that she wouldn’t feel violated.  I was trying to save a marriage, not win a court case.  If I did uncover information that we needed to discuss, I didn’t want to give her the chance to divert the blame to me overstepping my bounds.  My desire was to eventually return to our roles as trusting partners who didn’t need to spy on one another for trust.  Privacy invasion would be a precedent that we would need to overcome for that goal had we allowed it to be established.

The basic rule I adopted for myself was that I wouldn’t access any account that wasn’t mine.  That included logging on to her e-mail or Facebook account or swiping her cell phone to read text messages.  Everything else was fair game.  If I happened across a clue as part of my maintenance of our phones and computers, then so be it.  Credit card records and the GPS in the car were of course well within bounds.  Multiple times I considered breaking those boundaries, but I had to assume that at some point I would have to admit where I got any information that I might have.  If I wanted to claim to her that I wasn’t reading her text messages for example, then I certainly couldn’t have information that could only have been achieved through that means.

Once I had confronted her with the critical incriminating information and the affair finally ended though, my investigations didn’t cease.  Now I was looking for reassurance that it was really over.  I needed to know that she was no longer in contact with the other guy.  I needed to know that when she said she was going to dinner with a friend, that’s where she was actually going.  I needed to know that when she texted me an excuse for being late, it wasn’t a cover for some other activity.  She actually encouraged me to spy on her during this time to give myself the piece of mind that I needed.  She even gave me license to exceed the boundaries that I had previously set for myself.

For several weeks I digitally watched her every move.  I would check the cell phone records and her e-mail a couple of times a day to ensure she didn’t communicate with someone I didn’t approve of.  I checked the GPS in the car and did a periodic location check on her phone to ensure that she was actually where she said she would be.  I watched her Facebook and e-mail to ensure there wasn’t any communication out of line there.  Unfortunately, none of this gave me the piece of mind that it was meant to.  Rather than assuming that no incriminating evidence meant that there was no crime, I assumed she had just figured out methods to avoid my detection.  Instead of my interest in spying gradually tapering off as I had originally intended, I was becoming more obsessed with it as it became a standard part of my daily activity.

I soon started to realize what a toll my active spying was taking on both of us.  My original intent was that I would steadily regain my trust in her to the point that it was no loner necessary.  The problem was that we were doing nothing to establish a foundation for a trust that didn’t require constant validation.  My wife was no longer my partner but had instead become my adversary as I was constantly waiting for her to make a wrong move.  She felt that pressure as well to the point that she would panic if she made an innocent put suspicious looking change to her plans.

There is a cliché that asks whether you would commit a crime if you knew for certain you wouldn’t get caught.  Is a person truly honest if they only behave themselves out of fear of repercussion?  The actions that my wife was taking were less important than why she was taking them.  If she was simply behaving herself because she thought that I might be watching, then our marriage was ultimately doomed anyway.   For it to survive, she had to be truly committed, and that’s not something that I had any control over.  If I stayed paranoid and suspicious, the only thing I could possibly accomplish would be identifying the marriage’s demise a bit sooner.  The spying was doing was not only exhausting, but it was entirely pointless.

I did my best to abruptly stop my surveillance, but even I didn’t realize what a compulsion it had become.  She would leave the house, and I would stare at my computer screen aching to click those buttons that would pinpoint the current location of her cell phone.  I might walk into a room just as she was putting her phone down and think that she was hiding a text message.  I would do my best to put the suspicion out of my head but would later break down and check our cell phone records.  It wasn’t a sense of satisfaction I would get when I determined that she was communicating with a good friend of hers; it was guilt.  I felt like an alcoholic who had broken down and taken a drink after a considerable period of sobriety.

The difference by that point though is that I had made the commitment to actually work on building proper trust with my wife.  While it was difficult to wean myself off of the surveillance, the suspicions slowly diminished.  I also steadily learned the difference between healthy awareness and paranoia.  As simple as it sounds, the key was no longer holding in any secrets.  If I felt anxious about her text messaging or  or if I saw an anomaly on the car’s GPS, I’d simply ask her about it.  That’s what partners do.