I never imagined that I would one day hire a private investigator to find out whether my husband was cheating on me. For most of our marriage, I trusted him completely. We had been together for many years, built a home, shared responsibilities, and gone through difficult periods together. I never considered myself the kind of person who would secretly investigate her spouse. But over the past several months, his behavior had started changing in ways I couldn’t explain. He became increasingly protective of his phone, started taking calls in another room, and suddenly had far more reasons to stay late at work. Whenever I asked about it, he would tell me that work had become stressful and that I was reading too much into ordinary changes. I tried to believe him because I didn’t want to become suspicious without a reason. The problem was that the explanations started becoming less convincing. He began coming home later than usual, sometimes smelling like a different perfume, and there were several occasions when he claimed he had been working late only for me to later discover that he had left the office hours earlier. I didn’t immediately accuse him of cheating because I was afraid of destroying our marriage over assumptions. Instead, I started paying closer attention to the small details.

The person who made me most uncomfortable was his secretary. I had met her several times over the years, and there had never been an obvious reason for me to dislike her. She was professional and polite whenever we interacted, but recently my husband started mentioning her constantly. He would talk about how helpful she was, how much she understood his schedule, and how she was the only person at work who could keep up with everything he had going on. At first, I thought nothing of it. Then I noticed that he was texting her outside of normal working hours. When I asked who he was messaging late at night, he would sometimes say it was someone from work. If I asked whether it was his secretary, he would become defensive and tell me that I was being unreasonable. One night, I happened to see a message pop up on his phone while it was sitting on the kitchen counter. I didn’t read the entire conversation, but I saw a heart emoji and a message that said, “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.” When I asked him about it, he immediately grabbed the phone and said it was an innocent joke between coworkers. He insisted there was nothing romantic happening. I wanted to believe him, but something about his reaction made me feel that he was hiding more than he was saying.

Over the next few weeks, I found more inconsistencies. He started making excuses for why he needed to travel for work, even though some of the trips didn’t appear on his usual schedule. He became more distant at home and seemed irritated whenever I asked normal questions about his day. Eventually, I reached a point where I realized I could no longer live with the uncertainty. I didn’t want to secretly search through his belongings or follow him myself, so I decided to hire a private investigator. It was one of the hardest decisions I have ever made because part of me still hoped the investigator would tell me that I was completely wrong. Instead, after several days of observation, the investigator contacted me and asked me to come in to discuss the findings. He showed me photographs and information documenting several meetings between my husband and his secretary outside of work. They weren’t simply having coffee or discussing business. They were meeting at hotels, restaurants, and other private locations. The investigator also found evidence that my husband had been telling me he was working when he was actually spending time with her. The most painful part wasn’t just discovering that he was cheating. It was realizing how easily he had lied to my face while I was trying desperately to trust him.

When I confronted my husband, I decided not to tell him immediately that I had hired an investigator. I asked him where he had been the previous evening, and he repeated the same story he had given me before. He said he had stayed late at the office and then gone home. I looked at him and asked whether he was sure that was the truth. He became annoyed and asked why I was interrogating him. That’s when I told him that I knew about the secretary. His expression changed immediately. For several seconds, he didn’t say anything. Then he tried to claim that they had only become close because they worked together and that nothing serious had happened. I told him I had evidence showing otherwise. He eventually admitted that the relationship had become physical and had been going on for months. He apologized and said he had never intended for me to find out. That sentence hurt more than almost anything else because it made it clear that he wasn’t sorry for betraying me until he was caught. He said he still loved me and that the affair didn’t mean our marriage was meaningless. I asked him how he could say he loved me while repeatedly lying to me and meeting another woman behind my back.

Now I am left trying to figure out what happens next. My husband says he wants to save our marriage and has promised to end all contact with his secretary outside of necessary work communication. He says he made a terrible mistake and wants another chance. But I don’t know how I am supposed to trust someone who spent months looking me in the eyes and lying about where he was. I also can’t stop thinking about the fact that I had to hire a stranger to investigate my own husband because I no longer believed what he told me. Some family members think I should give him another chance because we have spent so many years together, while others tell me that the affair shows a complete lack of respect for our marriage. I haven’t made a final decision yet. Part of me still loves the man I thought I married, but another part of me wonders whether that person ever really existed. The hardest thing is knowing that even if he promises never to do it again, I will always remember the moment I discovered that my suspicions were right.

Read Story…

OOP hired a detective and caught her husband cheating with his secretary.

I’m not the OOP. This was posted in r/relationshipadvice by u/spirited_owl_2020.

Mood Spoiler – i just read a post here with a happy ending so here is a bad one

Hired detective, caught husband (M40) cheating with his (F33) secretary.. next steps?

Original and Updates

ORIGINAL (9 Oct 22)

Hired a detective last weekend, he caught my husband with his ex-secretary on Saturday night. Plenty of pictures, there isn’t any disputing this or the happenings. Kissing, hand holding and back to her room together for the entire night. Zero doubt on the events of the evening.

They were at a weekend business conference, I suspected it and was right. I actually felt like complete shit in the lead up and to a lesser degree still do, but his behavior was a bit off for a couple weeks, I had that terrible gut feeling. I let him know over text this morning that he was caught, read receipt but no reply. I didn’t state any intentions, I just told him I will just take a break to gather my thoughts, he should do the same and I need to see if I can find a way to trust again. As expected, today has been a rolldercoaster of emotion, anger and tears galore. This is the absolute worst feeling ever, I wish this on nobody, which leads me to the next thought…Do I send the pics to the secretary’s husband. I’m conflicted on that, I’m not a vindictive person and it is not intended to hurt the secretary, but my thinking that I would want to know if he had found out instead. But, this emotional pain is so heavy.. terrible to inflict on someone.

I haven’t shared with anybody. I feel this is “our” issue at the moment. Anyone I share with will simply hate him forever.

I have so many pics of them together, I stopped looking and moved them to a folder on my PC and zipped them up.. looking at them just stirs me up.

I feel absolutely horrible that I did this, but I also realize that I needed to confirm the affair.

1. Am I a horrible wife for hiring a detective? Didn’t he break the trust first?
2. Should I share the pics with her husband?
3. Is taking break a reasonable strategy?

Thanks all, just writing this out has been a bit therapeutic

Update 1 (10 Oct 22)

Where to begin… for those that remember that he turned off his findmy, I was mistaken on the time stamp, it was before anything went down. (1 day) That Is still a huge 🚩. Anyhow,. the events went like this:

1. He was sleeping with secretary, received my message calling him out
2. He immediately went completely mental, dressed and left room, not before throwing his phone into the mirror (Hotel will bill us plenty I’m sure) * this was confirmed by his best friend who went back to retrieve his belongings and remains of his phone.
3. Ended up as a “complete wreck” at his best friends house. He was bawling about how he ruined his life, he very well may have. He has been staying their in their guest house.
4. We have not had any contact
5. Best friends wife (my bestie for 20 years) came by this morning and is worried that he may be suicidal, they are bringing him into the main house. She was to pick him up a new phone later this afternoon. She said he is in no condition to talk to me. A complete wreck and they are worried for his life.
6. They are monitoring him, he has been just lying in bed, crying off and on. As far as they can tell, he has not slept. If he doesn’t soon, they will get him something to help. They brought him food and he has hardly eaten.

Now a quick background on the friends. She is my best friend for life, probably 20 years, we are extremely close and confide on everything. her husband is now his best friend, and was in our wedding. They have been for 12 years. These are both professional people, they call bullshit when needed, but these are people that would go to the ends of the earth for you. Good wholesome people, they pull no punches but like me, they do not react poorly under stress, but are pure “no bullshit”. He can stay there as long as he needs, but knowing my bestie, she will have his ass cleaning house or doing yard work. no pity party over there. She did mention that this morning she went into his room and basically berated him for 30 minutes, told him “shut up and listen” and she will likely come back with more.

While I have sympathy for his current situation, it doesn’t have a whole lot of bearing on the bigger picture. I still need to work through my next moves. I’m back and forth on divorce, but I never want to react out of emotion. His drama is meaningless

I thank you all for the excellent advice. I’ve received 150 or so DM’s, mostly helpful. A few guys looking to “help me pickup the pieces” a couple even sent their pic. A couple solicitations for online counseling $$. Pretty crazy stuff here. I did get some great links to online articles that seem helpful, believe it or not I got about 15 links to this article https://www.brides.com/the-one-way-to-know-your-marriage-will-survive-an-affair-1102868 which is very helpful as well aa a website SurvivingInfidelity.com

The last thing I would like to mention is the “Divorce him“ people.. I totally get it and I am leaning slightly that direction, but at the same time, I am a believer in responsibility and being responsible. We are in this marriage for better or worse, this is clearly the worst. Infidelity may be beyond the scale of worst, it really hurts. I’ve hardly eaten or slept, but I don’t want to pull the trigger on that too quickly. Building trust again would be a HUGE task, before even considering that I need to think this through. Again, his current situation will garner no pity from me. He did this, and this is the beginning of the price he will pay for his actions, regardless of the outcome.

I will likely sleep later, I’m beginning to resolve myself to the whole situation. We have no children, we’re considering it maybe next year, he has really been wanting them, I do as well but this, if we reconcile, will push that timetable or possibly even take it off the table. Money is not an issue, he does well and will survive without me. I work part time from home, I was fortunate to work from day for a dot.com that went public 5 years ago and I’m pretty set for life. He would never go after assets, that’s simply not him Yes, i know “divorce changes people” I feel I know him better than that, even if he did, it would not me a major impact.

tl;dr: leaning toward divorce, but leaving door slightly cracked. Time will tell if he deserves my consideration.

Update 2 (11 Oct 22)

He messaged me last night, appeared apologetic and full of shame. He wanted to call or come over this evening, I told him to leave me be and I will let him know. He has done nothing but apologize about his behavior to me and our friends. He feels he has done irreparable damage, and he has. Our previous relationship has ended. TBD if there is another in the cards.

My bestie came over early this morning, let herself in and surprised me with breakfast and flowers, she insisted I eat and said she would stare at me until I ate something. She said he is very remorseful and would not elaborate on him any more. “This is about you”. We went for a run and it seemed to help clear my mind. I work as I please so I have no work schedule so that makes it easy. She will stay the next couple nights, we are going out to dinner tonight, maybe a getaway this weekend to Cabo or somewhere warm.

I may not have been clear, but we have no children (several posters thought we did) Also, I am 32yrs old.We do have a pre-nuptial agreement, the reason being is that my cash windfall from the sale of a Dot.Com startup I worked from day one, well before marriage is well into 7 figures (nearly 8). I don’t need money and if the marriage were to go south, he would simply get a $500k payout. That is in place for 20 years from marriage date. I could possibly fight that payout as well, I really don’t care about it. The house is paid for, his settlement would only be the 500K and “personal belongings”.

• My bestie is referring me to a therapist and an attorney. I am investigating all courses of action.
• I will not send the proof to her husband at this time, not until I consult with the attorney and therapist. This isn’t “street justice”, but if after consultation with them it makes sense, I will. One thought from my bestie is to have the attorney serve as proxy.
• He will be moving to their guest house on the weekend. He can stay indefinitely and she will require him to pay her $750 a week. He can have NO visitors and he does not have house or pool privileges. Park in street. he has to pay for a housekeeper weekly as well. (told you she takes no bullshit!)
• Hotel billed him $600 for the mirror and room cleaning
• He reimbursed my bestie for the replacement phone from his own account. Before someone digs meaning into that, he has an account with a few thousand for spending money. I have full access to it. We have joint credit cards, his have limits less than 10k each. All advised by the attorney that did the pre nup and estate planning.
• I don’t appreciate the harsh DM’s… I also don’t appreciate the guys asking if we would like to meet, nor the one that offered to be my personal sexual slave, just sick
• I do appreciate the helpful books and links. I have an analytical mind and working through the process, good or bad helps.
• Also, thanks for the great YouTube links

Finally.. divorce is absolutely on the table, but so is reconciliation. I didn’t get to this place in life by making rash decisions, it all has to be worked through and planned.

Reminder – I’m not the OOP

My Husband’s Sudden Change Made Me Hire a Private Investigator to Find Out the Truth

I never imagined that I would reach a point in my marriage where I would feel the need to hire a private investigator to find out what my husband was really doing. For most of our relationship, I trusted him completely. We had been together for many years, built a home, shared responsibilities, and supported each other through difficult periods. I never thought of myself as suspicious or jealous, and I certainly never expected to become someone who questioned where her husband was every evening. But over the last several months, something about him had changed.

At first, the changes were small enough that I could easily explain them away. He started working later than usual and occasionally came home after I had already gone to bed. He said his company was going through a stressful period and that he had more responsibilities than before. I believed him because there had been busy periods during our marriage before. I didn’t want to assume that every late night meant something was wrong.

Then his phone habits started changing. He used to leave his phone on the kitchen counter, the living room table, or even beside the bed without thinking about it. Suddenly, he kept it with him constantly. If he went to the bathroom, the phone went with him. If he took a shower, he sometimes left it outside the bathroom instead of leaving it on the table where I could see it. He also began using a password I didn’t recognize.

When I asked him about the password, he told me that his company had recently introduced stricter security requirements. That explanation sounded reasonable enough, so I didn’t push the issue. I didn’t want to become the kind of wife who demanded access to every message and email. I believed that married people could still have some privacy without hiding something serious.

Around the same time, he started talking about his secretary much more often. He would mention her when discussing work and tell me how organized she was. He said she helped manage his schedule, reminded him about meetings, and handled many things that used to take up his time. I didn’t think much of it initially because secretaries and assistants often work closely with their bosses.

Eventually, though, I noticed that he seemed unusually interested in her personal life. He knew details about her family, her weekend plans, and even what restaurants she liked. I asked how he knew all of that, and he casually said that they talked at work. I remember thinking that it was slightly strange but not enough to accuse him of anything.

The first moment that really bothered me happened when I saw a message appear on his phone one evening. His phone was sitting on the kitchen counter while he was in another room. I wasn’t trying to look through it, but the notification appeared on the screen. I saw his secretary’s name and part of the message. It said something along the lines of, “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”

I immediately felt uncomfortable.

When my husband returned to the room, I asked him about the message. He looked at me for a moment before saying that it was nothing. He claimed she was talking about a work meeting and that I was taking the message out of context. I asked why she would phrase a professional message that way, and he became defensive.

He told me I was being paranoid.

That word stayed with me.

I didn’t accuse him of cheating. I simply told him that the message seemed inappropriate and that I didn’t feel comfortable with the way they communicated. He promised me there was nothing going on and said he would never betray our marriage. I wanted to believe him, so I tried to let it go.

For a while, I convinced myself that I was imagining things. But then the late nights became more frequent. He began traveling for work more often, and some of the trips were arranged with very little notice. Whenever I asked about them, he would give me vague answers. He sometimes couldn’t remember exactly what hotel he was staying at until the last minute.

I also noticed that he had started taking more care with his appearance before going to work. He bought new shirts, started using cologne more often, and seemed unusually concerned about how he looked. Again, none of those things proved anything. People can change their appearance for many reasons. But when all the small details started adding up, I couldn’t ignore how different he had become.

One evening, he told me he was staying late at the office because he had an important project to finish. I didn’t question him. The next morning, however, I received a message from someone who worked at his company. The person casually mentioned seeing my husband at a restaurant the previous evening.

I immediately asked myself why he would be at a restaurant if he was supposedly working late at the office.

I didn’t confront him right away. Instead, I waited until he came home and asked how his evening had gone. He repeated that he had stayed at the office until almost midnight. I asked whether he had gone anywhere afterward. He said no.

That was when I realized I couldn’t keep pretending everything was normal.

I spent several nights thinking about what to do. I didn’t want to secretly follow him myself, and I didn’t want to go through his personal belongings looking for evidence. At the same time, I couldn’t continue living with the uncertainty. I felt like I was slowly losing my mind because every explanation he gave seemed to create another question.

Eventually, I decided to hire a private investigator.

Making that decision made me feel ashamed. I kept thinking that if I truly trusted my husband, I wouldn’t need to investigate him. But then I reminded myself that I hadn’t stopped trusting him for no reason. His behavior had changed, his explanations weren’t adding up, and he had already lied to me about where he had been.

The investigator asked me for information about my husband’s schedule, workplace, vehicle, and usual routines. I provided what I knew and then tried to continue living normally while waiting for answers. Those few days were incredibly difficult because I didn’t know whether I wanted the investigator to find something or find nothing.

Part of me desperately wanted to be wrong.

I wanted him to call me and say that my husband was completely innocent and that I had been imagining everything. I was almost hoping that the entire investigation would prove that my fears were irrational. Instead, the investigator contacted me after several days and asked to meet privately.

The information he gave me completely changed how I saw my marriage.

He showed me photographs of my husband meeting his secretary outside of work. They had been seen together at restaurants and other private locations. There were also photographs showing them entering a hotel together during one of his supposed work trips.

I remember staring at the photographs without saying anything.

The hardest part wasn’t seeing them together. It was realizing that the man in those photographs was the same man who had looked me in the eyes and told me that nothing was happening.

The investigator also found evidence that my husband had been lying about his schedule. Some of the evenings when he told me he was working late were actually evenings when he had been meeting his secretary. Some of his supposed work trips had included private meetings with her that had nothing to do with his job.

When I left the investigator’s office, I sat in my car for a long time. I didn’t immediately drive home. I felt numb. I had spent weeks wondering whether I was being paranoid, and now I had proof that my instincts had been right.

When my husband came home that night, I decided not to confront him immediately. I wanted to see whether he would continue lying even when given another opportunity to tell me the truth.

I asked him where he had been that afternoon.

He gave me a completely normal answer.

Then I asked him about his secretary.

He immediately became defensive and asked why I was bringing her up again. I told him that I knew they had been meeting outside of work. His expression changed almost instantly.

For several seconds, he didn’t say anything.

Then he asked me what I knew.

I told him that I had hired a private investigator.

He looked shocked. He asked why I would do something like that instead of trusting him. I told him that I had trusted him until his behavior gave me reasons not to. He tried to explain that his relationship with his secretary had started innocently and that things had simply become complicated.

Eventually, he admitted that they had been having an affair for several months.

He said he was sorry.

He said he still loved me.

He said the affair didn’t mean that he wanted to leave our marriage.

But all I could think about was how many times I had asked him if something was wrong and how many times he had looked me in the eyes and told me I was imagining things.

Now he wants another chance. He says he will end the relationship with his secretary and do whatever it takes to rebuild my trust. He has offered to go to counseling and says he is willing to be completely transparent about his whereabouts.

I don’t know if any of that is enough.

My family is divided. Some relatives believe I should leave immediately because the affair was not a single mistake but something that continued for months. Others think that because we have been married for so long, I should at least consider giving him an opportunity to repair the damage.

The secretary still works at his company, which makes everything even more complicated. My husband says he has no control over whether the company keeps her employed, but he promises that he will have no personal relationship with her anymore. I don’t know whether I believe him.

The strangest part of all is that I still love him. Discovering the affair didn’t magically erase all the good memories we have shared. I still remember the person I thought he was when we first met, and part of me desperately wants that person to be real again.

But trust doesn’t disappear because you stop loving someone. It disappears when their actions make you question everything they have told you.

Right now, I haven’t decided whether I am going to stay in the marriage or leave. My husband says he is willing to do anything to save us, but I keep wondering why it took being caught for him to finally admit the truth. I hired a private investigator because I felt like I was losing my mind, and instead I discovered that my instincts had been right all along. Now I have to decide whether the marriage I spent years building is something I can rebuild after this, or whether discovering the truth is the beginning of the end.