u/Easytoremember199

Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationship\\\_advice/s/55m2YoioXz

Well, you guys convinced me that something was definitely up. And unfortunately, you were right.

My wife went to bed, but I still wasn't feeling okay about the whole situation. I went upstairs and told her I wanted to see her phone. I told her that the whole "principle" argument was bullshit at this point. She said she'd let me look if I could promise her that we'd be okay afterward. I told her I obviously couldn't promise that before knowing what I was going to find, and that I just wanted to look at the phone.

She stood her ground, so I stormed out and slammed the door, which is extremely out of character for me.

She came running downstairs after me and told me I could look through her phone. She later told me she'd been scared because she thought I was going to do something crazy. For the record, I wasn't going to hurt her or myself. I was just incredibly frustrated and upset.

I went through everything. Instagram DMs, deleted messages, deleted photos, hidden photos, etc. I found nothing.

I then asked her to pull up her ex's Instagram profile. She fumbled around trying to explain that she'd unblocked him at some point but hadn't followed him again. Sure enough, she pulled up his profile, and she wasn't following him.

I then followed the advice one of you gave me and tried to go down the Instagram "download your information" route, and that's when I found something interesting.

She had already downloaded her Instagram data two months ago, on the exact night she received the Instagram call.

Well, shit.

It all came out after that.

As it turns out, the Spotify messages weren't innocent background noise. And the whole situation had nothing to do with her ex.

It was the coworker.

She met him on her last work trip at the end of June. They got along well and started chatting frequently during the workday. Eventually, their conversations moved over to Instagram.

According to her, their Instagram messages were very flirty. Not sexual, but definitely flirty. She sent him a few selfies, and he sent her selfies as well, including shirtless pictures.

I also went through their entire Microsoft Teams chat history. They talk quite a bit, and there are occasional flirty exchanges, although nothing particularly egregious (makes sense, its teams after all). I'm still waiting for the Instagram data download to come through so I can understand the full extent of their conversations.

So, to be clear, I still haven't established that anything physical happened. The message timelines line up with her not having gotten close with him until a good bit after the work trip. I don't know whether there was more to their conversations than she's admitted, and I don't know how far things would have gone if I hadn't confronted her.

But at this point, the issue isn't just a single lie about an unexpected call from an ex. It's the repeated lying, the secrecy, and the fact that I had to push this hard to get anywhere close to the truth.

I came into this with eight years of a relationship that I genuinely thought was rock solid. I never imagined I'd be in this position with her.

I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to move forward from this. Part of me wants to believe that this was a terrible lapse in judgment that never went beyond flirting. Another part of me is wondering what else I don't know.

For now, I'm trying to process everything and figure out what comes next. I'll update again when I have more information.

What are your thoughts?

Thank you to everyone who took the time to offer advice, challenge my perspective, and help me think through this. I wish you guys hadn't been right, but I'm glad I listened.

UPDATE POST HERE - Automod wouldn't let me post on this sub for some reason: https://www.reddit.com/r/Marriage/s/TbDgYrBSoM

My (27 M) wife (28 F) and I have been together for 8 years and married for 6. Our relationship has always been incredible. She moved to my country to be with me after initially coming here temporarily for school, and we've built a life together. We're aligned on pretty much everything, barely fight, have complete trust in each other, and have the exact same silly sense of humour. We're best friends, share everything, and naturally operate as a team. We have a puppy we adore and are excited about our future together.

I've been cheated on before, so I'm not exactly naive to the fact that things can come out of nowhere, but she's really never given me a reason to suspect anything.

A few months ago, we were watching TV on the couch after having smoked weed and eaten dinner, which is a pretty normal evening for us. Her phone lit up with an Instagram call. This immediately struck me as odd because she never uses Instagram to call anyone.

She grabbed her phone, turned it away from me, and spent around 30 seconds doing something on it while looking confused. I repeatedly asked what was going on, but she either didn't respond or said things like, "I don't know what's going on, this is weird."

I asked to see the screen, and she said to wait because she was trying to figure it out. Eventually, she put the phone down and told me it was a random spam call and that she'd blocked the person.

Her reaction was completely out of character. In eight years together, she'd never acted this way, and we'd never had issues with trust or hiding things from each other.

The next day, I brought it up again because it was bothering me. She apologized for how she'd handled it, saying it was just a random call, and she was confused, partly probably because she was high. I wasn't entirely convinced, but I let it go.

A month or two later, I asked her about it again. She said she didn't really know why she'd reacted that way and apologized for not letting me see her phone.

Today, we were working on some home renovation projects together, and I used her phone to set up Spotify. I noticed she had a Spotify conversation with a man I didn't recognize.

There were fewer than 20 messages spread over roughly a month and a half, starting a few months ago and ending about six weeks ago. They were sharing songs and there was one Spotify Jam request. Nothing was overly flirty or inappropriate.

She explained that he's a coworker. He lives in another country that she occasionally travels to for work and he controls the music at their office. He's around our age, they get along, and he's a chill guy.

I wouldn't normally think twice about this. She has friends at work, and I'm not someone who expects her to disclose every conversation she has. What struck me as unusual was that she talks about several of her coworkers, but I'd barely heard about this guy.

Combined with the Instagram incident, though, it made me uneasy. So I brought up the Instagram call situation again.

After I pressed her about the Instagram call, she finally admitted that it had been an ex from her home country calling her. She said she panicked because she felt weird about him contacting her unexpectedly, so she lied about it being a random call.

She said she'd blocked him during that initial interaction. I explained that the lie itself was making it difficult to trust her explanation, and she said she understood and was sorry. Her explanation was that she didn't know why he was calling, panicked, and then felt compelled to maintain the lie.

I asked if I could see her Instagram blocked list. She refused, saying that we don't look through each other's phones and that she wouldn't do it on principle.

For context, we have never had a rule against using each other's phones for ordinary things, and we have shared finances and a very open relationship (as in open to sharing things with each other. I even have access to her email). We just haven't made a habit of going through each other's private conversations.

I pushed back, explaining that the situation was different now because she'd admitted to lying and that seeing the blocked list would help reassure me.

She eventually started saying she couldn't remember whether she'd kept him blocked or might have unblocked him later. We checked the blocked list together, and he wasn't there. She said she thought she must have unblocked him at some point.

I then asked if we could go through her phone together, with her present the entire time. She refused again, saying it was a matter of principle. (She's also very stubborn and her standing on principles when doing the opposite would be easier is not at all out of character).

I told her that if our positions were reversed, I believe she'd also want reassurance, and that I didn't understand why she'd refuse if there was nothing to hide. We couldn't get anywhere with that conversation, and that's where things stand.

I want to be clear that I don't have any other concrete evidence of infidelity. Our relationship is genuinely great. We spend lots of time together, share our lives, trust each other in practically every other respect, and have plans for our future. She's never given me a reason to suspect she's cheating.

There also isn't much unexplained time in her schedule, although she does occasionally travel internationally for work.

The things bothering me are:

• Her initial reaction to the Instagram call was extremely unusual for her.

• She deliberately turned her phone away and wouldn't let me see what was happening.

• She lied about who was calling and maintained that lie over multiple conversations.

• She said she'd blocked her ex, but he wasn't on her blocked list when we checked.

• Now that she's admitted to lying, she's refusing to offer any further reassurance by letting me look through her phone.

• The Spotify messages with the male coworker are innocent on their face, but the timing and the fact that I barely knew about him have made me question things I otherwise wouldn't have questioned.

At the same time, I recognize that refusing to let a partner inspect your phone doesn't automatically mean you're hiding something. I don't want to become controlling or turn a previously healthy relationship into one where we have to prove our innocence to each other.

I'm struggling to figure out how much weight to put on the fact that she's never given me a reason to distrust her versus the fact that she has now demonstrably lied to me about something.

What do you think?

I'd appreciate honest perspectives, including if you think I'm handling this badly. I'm not looking for people to automatically tell me she's cheating or that I'm right. I want an outside perspective on what's reasonable here and how to move forward.