Poll: Confront or Forget?

[Dustforbrains1014]

Jesus, help me, my hands won't stop shaking. I am putting this out on every forum I am a member of, under an assumed name, of as a plea for help.

A little bit of background is needed. My wife and I love each other with all our hearts. We have known each other for over 10 years now. She was my best friend in middle school, my crush/high school sweetheart, she is the woman I lost my virginity to, and we have been married for going on 3 years now. Unfortunately no children.

A few months ago; due to stresses from work, bills, and other issues; I was having some major depression problems. As you can imagine my relationship with her suffered. I was cold and distant, not just from her but from everyone.

One night, much like this one, she went to bed early for work and I stayed up late on the computer messing around. Her phone buzzed on the charger by the sofa, not 3 steps away. Now I don't know why I did it, could be that she had mentioned her sister was sick, but I innocently picked it up and looked. It said it was from some guy, I thought it might be her brother in law updating her. I opened it, the biggest mistake ever.

What I found was a conversation that she had been having with this man about things of a sexual nature, and it wasn't just one guy. It was at least a dozen. Seems she had been on a meeting sight. A BDSM lifestyle website. Now I am a pretty vanilla guy so quite a bit of this stuff that was being talked about struck me as off. Very graphic stuff.

As you can imagine it felt like my heart stopped. I was enraged, I felt like bursting in there and telling her off. I calmed down and rationally woke her up and confronted her as calmly as possible. That is to say that within 5 minutes of her waking up I was yelling and screaming at her. What was she thinking? How could she do this to me? To us? How could she cheat on me after all these years?

She just cried. She said she was sorry, but she felt like she needed someone to talk to, she wanted to feel wanted. She said that she didn't think I found her sexually attractive anymore and that it had been months since I even touched her. Besides, she explained to me, it's just conversation. It's not like she was doing anything physical.

This didn't sit well with me, I still felt angry and cheated and a whole bunch of other emotions. She felt like I had violated her privacy. But, like the kind and forgiving person I am, I forgave her after a great deal of talk and a lot of missed sleep we made up.

Time passed and my heart healed. We were close again, we talked, things went back to normal. We were happy and in love, maybe even more so because we almost lost each other.

This brings me to today. As a surprise I found my wife's old laptop and I planned on doing some small labor on it. She wanted a new one for work, but I insisted that the old one would be just fine with a bit of TLC. When I booted it up after upgrading a few hardware components I found that it was password protected, okay she uses it in public doesn't want anyone getting on it and stealing info. After logging in as the admin account via safe mode I disabled the password on her account. I logged on and was installing and updating the drivers, running a few scans of the system. While I was waiting for a defrag to run I was flipping through her media files looking at her music collection and planning to back up her stuff when I came across her pictures.

The one folder was full of pictures of her. Some with intimate apparel, some nude. These were the photos she had been uploading and sending to those guys months ago. Quite a few caught my eye, and yes I must admit I was perving on my wife a bit at this point.

Then I found a few that sent me back to that night. One had a hand spreading her open, it wasn't her hand. One had her trussed up like a Christmas goose, all tied to a chair with a blindfold and a gag and a vibrating wand between her legs, I never bought any of that stuff and if she had how did she get into it all without help? Who took the picture? And the one that is going to be the last nail in my coffin, the one that was taken in a point of view had her giving a blowjob to someone and it wasn't me.

I know this all happened months ago, and I thought we moved on, but I am now so sick with nerves over what to do. I hid the laptop and haven't said a word to her over it.

Do I confront her with the pictures? If so she will be mad at me violating her privacy again. I could lose her over this.

However, I am so very sick at the thought of keeping this knowledge bottled up inside that I can't sleep or eat or anything. Should I try to forget it and just pretend I never saw it?

This has filled me with doubt as to the authenticity of my marriage, not to mention my pride as a man.

Please help me.

Edit: It's been a long hard past couple of days, I finally got the courage up to talk to her, yes we fought, but in the end I was able to make her see what she had done to me. I felt like I had lost everything that I was. I thought that we were connected and that I was special and now I feel like I'm disposable. We are talking to a councilor and they seem optimistic that if we were able to talk it through and get to this point then we should be able to save the marriage if we work together.

Thank you everyone for the kind words, the encouragement, and for giving me a place to put this out there so it's not taking up space in my head anymore. The Escapist may have just saved my marriage and my life.

 

[manic_depressive13]

Oh wow. It really depends on whether this is something you're willing to work through. You say you're afraid to lose her, but can you really trust her after this? She had told you it was nothing physical. Why would she keep pictures of that...

If I were in your position I would justy walk away. If you're determined to try and make it work though, you should confront her. She has no right to complain about you violating her privacy when she's demonstrated that she can't be trusted. It's not like you were deliberately trying to snoop. Your intentions were innocent both times you stumbled across this stuff.

Ignoring this is about the worst thing you can do. You'll just grow increasingly bitter and resentful and it will be toxic for both you and your marriage.

 

[Tiger King]

Jesus man! I'm so sorry for you, and I admire you for keeping your cool, I don't think I could of myself.

You have to confront her on this. She has lied to you and lies and deceit cannot stand in any relationship.
The argument that you violated her privacy is rubbish and just a poor attempt at palming off some of the guilt she feels.

Good luck buddy, I hope you can work things out

 

[BrassButtons]

Yes, you need to talk to her about this. I won't say "confront" because that sets it up as a fight, and I don't think it needs to be that way. But you can't simply ignore this--there is obviously something wrong with your marriage, and it needs to be worked out. Marriage counseling, if you can afford it, should be a priority.

When you talk to her, try to stay calm. Agree at the outset that if either of you start to get angry you'll take a break to cool off before resuming. The goal is to understand why this happened, not to hurt each other or pass blame around. And be up front that you realize you violated her privacy, and that it was wrong of you. Make it clear that you've both screwed up, and you want to work together to make things better.

You also need to think about what you want out of this. Obviously you want to stay with your wife, and her to stop keeping secrets from you, but what else? Do you want her to stop the BDSM stuff entirely, and only be intimate with you? Or is her having play partners alright, so long as she's up front about everything?

 

[Batou667]

I'm sorry dude. She cheated on you, multiple times. Unless you're willing to look past that (and I suspect you're not) then I think this is probably the end.

My advice would be to get a good (expensive) lawyer before you even confront your wife, and try to get through the divorce as quickly and cleanly as possible. Your first instinct may well be to delete the photos but for God's sake don't, in fact you should back them up just in case you need evidence and your ex decides to dispose of the computer. There are no kids to complicate the issue and since it's quite obviously your ex-wife's fault for the breakdown you should get a fairly good deal. Hang in there mate. It might take a while but you'll find somebody better.

Best of luck.

 

[Smeatza]

Cut that ***** out of your life like a tumour.
How much of your life do you have left? Is it worth wasting all the time and effort trying to salvage a marriage with a weak, disloyal wife?
She had a chance to come clean, when you confronted her the first time. But she didn't, she continued lying to you.
Can you really trust her to tell you the truth ever again?
My advice would be to speak to a lawyer ASAP and start collecting evidence.

 

[NoMercy Rider]

Wow, man, first of all, very sorry for all that you had to go through.

Like everyone else said, not only should you confront her, but also think about ending the marriage altogether. First of all, she hid her actions from you and when you confronted her, she flat out lied about physical contact.

I don't have personal experience, but my parents went through a similar situation with my mother. I am just gonna be blunt, since that might be the best way to approach her. Despite your best efforts, you will NEVER be able to trust her again. Once you have been betrayed to such a deep level, it is nearly impossible to regain that trust. Sure it can happen, but extremely unlikely.

Also, to put it plainly, if she has already cheated on you, chances are very high that she will cheat on you again down the road. Of course it might not happen, but there is some validity to the saying, "once a cheater, always a cheater." Again, speaking from my parents, they were married 20 years before getting divorced. My dad was in a similar situation as you are. He caught her cheating on him when they were married 12 years. Like you, he forgave her and tried to move on, but never regained that trust. Everything seemed to be going great, until he found out she cheated on him AGAIN at 16 years of marriage. Tried to work through it again, same story all over, and she cheated on him a THIRD time at 20 years. At that point he finally called it quits and went through a divorce. Now I come to found out she has been caught cheating on her new husband recently.

Maybe it won't happen to you, but chances are the pattern is just going to repeat itself. I really think you should cut it off while you are still young and before children get involved in the mix.

 

[Cloudydays]

I'll bring a different voice to the crowd here.

Based on how much you are willing to overlook, I think you should forget about it. Check when the pictures were taken, if it was back then when she was speaking to those guys. It seemed to me that the two of you had worked past that (but only the conversations really) and that you guys are back in love and everything is working fine and smoothly. If you believe that it'll stay like this - that the two of you will pay attention to each other and love each other then you should overlook it. Those pictures were part of the mistakes made BACK THEN and you just happened to stumble upon it. I'm not sure if either of you would want to go and drudge of the past again and splay it across the table. If she is over her BDSM days (which is a whole other matter because she might just have liked it and may still feel an urge to try it some more) or at least is over those guys then, in my opinion, you should try and work past it. Bumps occur in a relationship and this is a major, major one but it comes down to whether or not you want to salvage this relationship or keep going back to those days a few months ago. Because, okay, if you get past this picture and you find some physical pictures a few more months down the road? Then what? You would have already worked over this twice.

If anything, I'd ask her to get rid of all the pictures and text messages and any voice messages or any of that she might have if she wants this to work - and this is not at all an unreasonable request. If both of you want to get over this, try looking towards the future instead of the past. Maybe get into the children idea more, maybe take a vacation to somewhere, etc.

 

[sneakypenguin]

Honestly I'd lawyer up, try to secure as many assets away and get as much evidence as possible. I'd also dig a bit deeper into her past/current life. Unless theres clear evidence she abandoned those actions (cheating sending pics etc) then on the advice of an attorney i'd bring out the divorce papers.

 

[Cloudydays]

I would talk to her. Be upfront and tell her that you saw these pictures and you need to talk about them. Rather than going into the conversation looking to assign blame, try to find out why she didn't talk to you about BDSM. The fact that she was on a BDSM lifestyle website suggests to me that her interest runs deeper than a touch of bondage.

You did invade her privacy. It turns out that she was misbehaving, but you didn't know that at the time, so I wouldn't try to use her behaviour as justification for your actions. She'll be unhappy with you, to be sure, and I think she'll be right to be. The conversation will probably be more productive if you accept that rather than trying to deflect it back onto her.

You may well be able to salvage your relationship, but if so then don't expect things to just go back to how they were. There will likely need to be differences. If she's that interested in BDSM it's unlikely that she'll be happy with a vanilla sex life. Having said that, you mentioned that you were perving on your wife in some of those pictures, so perhaps you'd enjoy mixing things up a bit...

Bottom line: I think that calm conversation and a genuine effort to understand will give a better outcome, whether that is a continutation of the relationship, or both of you coming to the understanding that it can't continue. Raised voices won't help, trying to understand her actions will.

Or this.
I mean, either way you have to decide whether or not you're going into this to make up and be able to salvage your relationship or if you really don't want this to continue and are afraid of what might happen.

Completely overlooking this'll be bad. If you ever get into a flaming argument with her something one day, you'll probably (even if it's accidentally) bring up this whole mess to throw at her.