Thread: Is Text Messaging Cheating?

I have just recently found out my man of 6 years has been texting non stop back and forth with a woman he works with. At first he tried to say it was work-related, but I told him I saw the phone bill ( I found a way to get into the verizon account) I am so very deeply hurt by this, and he claime is was just flirting, and nothing has happened physically, but they have gone out a couple of times. He travels for work, so it makes it even harder, because he is not home to talk about this, and althouhg we have talked on the phone several times, I am not accepting this very well. He assures me that that type of texting is over with this woman, he is sorry I am so hurt. But says they will continue to communicate because they are working on the same "project" I am now blocked out of viewing the verizon account because I put on a parental control, where she could not text or call him and he obviously found out. It has been going on for 3 months at least, and if I wouldnt have just found out, I am afraid of what may have become of this...or is it going to happen anyway??? I am wanting to trust him, but I just can't and I am even trying to get a job with verizon so i can see if he is being faithful or not. anyone have any suggestions??

The few posts I have read on here seem to be all from women regarding their husbands/boyfriends so I hope no one takes offense to one from a man regarding his wife. I think a woman’s perspective on my situation would be better anyway. I am sorry this gets a little long, but I wanted to make sure as much of the information was available as I really want some honest opinions on my situation.

To start from the beginning, my wife and I have been married a little over 5 years. We have 3 children (2 were hers from a previous marriage). We have had our rough times over the years, but have always managed to work things out.

A couple of months ago, she was all excited one evening that she “saved” an old friends marriage with some advice she had given him (they reconnected on facebook). I congratulated her and didn’t think anything more of it. The other day I noticed here receiving and sending quite a few text messages (which she normally doesn’t do as her phone plan wasn’t set up for it, so I just recently upgraded her plan due to overages). I didn’t think much of it, but I looked her direction and caught a glimpse at the name out of the corner of my eye (I honestly wasn’t looking to see her phone). It was a name I only recognized as someone she had talked about from her past. That nite, while she was getting ready for bed, I looked at her phone (I am not the kind to be snooping and usually respect her privacy, but my curiosity got the best of me). Her message inbox and outbox were full of texts from this guy. This upset me a bit, but I figured I would keep my trust in her and forget about it.

A couple days later, I realized I hadn’t paid the cell phone bill yet so I went online to pay it and saw that she had used about 3 times her allotted text messaging, so I looked at the detail. I have found that in the last 2 months, she has sent and/or received over 1,700 text and picture messages from this guy (mainly text). Before I dug into the full extent, I questioned my wife about this. The guy is someone she dated long ago (she was about 18 and in college at the time). They dated about a year and were intimate. The guy lives about 2,000 miles away from us where they went to college

We went out on a rare date night since this happened and discussed this a little more. I told her I wasn’t going to tell her what she could and couldn’t do, but that I wanted her to know this really bothered me. She said she didn’t think I would mind, but now that she knows, she would stop. Well, we changed up our date night and instead of a movie went to a bar and danced. We pulled over on the way home and got a little crazy and intimate (she let loose and drank a little much as she rarely gets the chance to let loose and I stayed sober as I was driving). After our little intimacy moment, while we were driving home (maybe 10 minutes later), she kept reaching down to her purse and phone. I asked what she was doing and she said that is what she does when she has drank too much, she continually puts on lipstick and checks the time. I pointed out there was a clock on the radio on the dash.

After we got home and she was getting ready for bed, my curiosity got the better of me again, so I checked her phone, and sure enough, she had received and replied to a text to him. The next day I asked her about this and she at first got upset as I was “checking on her” (which she has the right, I know I shouldn’t invade her privacy, but felt I was justified given the current situation.) I feel this was very disrespectful given we had just been intimate and am now wondering if it was me or him she was intimate with that evening.
She says there is nothing going on, the texts are just for fun, like jokes and things and they remind her of the person she was and the fun she used to have before she got married. I told her I think about those times as well, but the reason they were fun wasn’t because of who we were with, but because we didn’t have the grown up responsibilities of children, marriage, careers.

I know the other guy lives 2000 miles away, but her parents and the rest of her family is within a couple hours of this guy so even though there is no chance of her physically cheating on me with him during the normal course of our lives, there is always the chance that she may be there visiting family some time and I am not with. (this would not be normal, but we had previously talked about the possibility of her going to do just that this summer while 2 of our kids are with their biological father, and I joining her for the last part of the visit). She swears she would never cheat on me, but I consider this cheating. When we got married, I cut ties with all my old female acquaintances, even ones that were just friends, out of respect for my wife.

I am curious how other women view this situation. To me, this is cheating any way you look at it. Maybe just because I am hurting from this my judgement is clouded, but I don’t think this is right and I am not sure if I should be the bad guy and demand she stops, or just wait another month until the new phone bill comes out to see if she has followed through and stopped or what (I guess she could always switch to emailing him, I know her email log in information, but I don’t feel right checking it, I believe in trusting each other and allowing some privacy).

Does anyone else have some suggestions on how I should approach this?

Thank You Hopeless, I try and be playful with her and compliment her (though she usually responds in a negative, such as I will tell her how good she looks in something and she will say no she doesn't) so the compliments have gotten to be fewer and farther between. She catches me looking (at her) all the time. I guess no matter how much and how often we think we do these things for our partner, they can always be done more.
I am not a very emotional person, probably less so then even most guys, as I look at things primarily from a rational perspective which often contradicts an emotional one. I realize she, in some way, is filling an emotional void by doing this. I just don't know how to provide the emotional support she needs/deserves. I can not rationalize emotion, therefore haven't been able to figure out how to extend it more. I have done things in the past like send flowers to her work for no reason (which she always tells me she doesn't like getting flowers, though I think she secretly really appreciates this) and things like that, obviously I haven't been doing this enough, and don't really know what else to do to be there emotionally for her.
I do appreciate your response and insight on this. Thank You