18-year marriage on the rocks after husband finds out that wife secretly gave herself instant access to his photos, lying to his face for months by covering up privacy breach: "This was an orchestrated act of continued deception"

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    Found out my wife monitors parts my life behind my back having trouble getting past this.

    "It was an invasion of my privacy"
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    TLDR: I've known for a while that my wife monitors some aspects of my life behind my back and it was a joke for a while, but recently she accidentally revealed that she's monitoring more than what she let on and that she tried to keep it secret from me.
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    Longer Version: We've been married for 18 years. 2 kids. She's an accountant and is much better with monitoring our bank accounts than me. So when I learned that she would get notifications about my spending on the credit card, it was no big deal since weve been hacked before and want to prevent
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    unauthorized spending. She would make comments about where I had stopped for lunch, for example, which I eventually realized she knew because she got some kind of notification about my spending. No huge deal, and probably a good thing. I wish she had let me know she was doing this in a different way, but whatever.
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    Our daughter is 17, and when she started driving last year, my wife put a tracking app on our daughter's phone (without our daughter knowing) to know where she is. I was a bit uneasy about it, so
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    my wife and I have had conversations about the ethics of that and decided it's a necessary evil since we're dealing with a teenager. We decided not to tell her.
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    Fast forwarding to last week, I learned that my wife at some point gave herself automatic access to the photos on my phone and never told me. In the past if I had been taking pictures at a family event or something, she would ask if she could borrow my
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    phone afterward to send the pictures to herself. I have no problem with that and would hand it over. I don't password-protect my phone and have no concerns about her seeing anything on it, though I think it's common decency to ask first. (I've never needed her phone for anything, but if I did, I would
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    C
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    ask permission first.) While I was traveling for work last week she asked me to take a bunch of pictures to send to her niece as part of a school project, which I did. The day after I got back home, I said something about how I needed to send those pictures to my wife's sister, and my wife said "I already did." I did a double-take and said "When did you borrow my phone?", since she hadn't asked.
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    I figured she would say something like "while you were showering" or something, which would be annoying but not terrible. However, she immediately got cagey and embarrassed, with a look that made it obvious that she knew she had said something she shouldn't have said. I asked her if she has
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    automatic access to my photos somehow and she admitted that she did. I asked how and she said that a while ago she went into my phone and gave herself access to my Google Photos account. She apologized and said she knew she should have asked for permission but didn't. I asked what else she gave herself access to and she promised she
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    hadn't done anything else. We had some arguments about the ethics of that, with her continually making the case that it's more efficient that way instead of borrowing my phone, and my continually telling her that she was missing the point -- that it was an invasion of my privacy to do so without my permission and to then hide it from me.
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    Cheezburger Image 10484015104
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    Since then I've really had my trust shaken. This kind of thing has happened before where she would do something sneaky behind my back, only to backtrack, make excuses, or simply apologize when
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    I found out. I've started trying to figure out if she's doing other things to track and monitor me. I'm torn between the feeling that I have nothing to hide and that it's not a big deal vs feeling that she is violating my trust.
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    How significant is this? BTW, I'm posting from a throwaway account for obvious reasons.
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    Update: Between writing that original post and now, I found the email showing that she had turned on automatic sharing of photos on Halloween. (While I think I'm pretty good at a lot of things, keeping on top of many email accounts is not one of my
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    strengths, which she knows.) I then remembered that several times since then she has asked me for my phone like she normally does to send herself pictures that I had taken. On Christmas morning, for example, she asked for my phone to text herself pictures. I couldn't make sense of why she would do that if she already had access, and it finally dawned
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    on me that she had done that to keep me in the dark. I confronted her just now about the whole situation, but held off on reminding her of that last detail. She claimed that 1) Our daughter knows about the Life360 app and that my wife can track her location. I'll verify later when I see her. 2) She said that she knew she shouldn't have given herself
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    access to my pictures, that she knew it was wrong, and that she should have told me. She claimed there's nothing else she's hiding from me. I told her that she had been doing more than that, that she had been intentionally misleading me about what was going on. She acted like she had no idea what I
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    was talking about and kept playing dumb for a while. As soon as I said "On Christmas Day..." she said "I know, I know." She admitted that she had done that to keep me from realizing she had access, but that she didn't think the time was right on Christmas to tell me the truth. To me, that's a deliberate and calculated lie. Some lies are little white lies meant to protect someone's feelings.
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    Cheezburger Image 10484014848
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    Some lies are lies of omission where someone fails to tell the whole truth. This was an orchestrated (and successful) act of continued deception where the only purpose was to further her dishonesty. She immediately knew what I was talking about and admitted it and said she felt like she had gone too
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    far and had to keep lying. I told her that if she had just asked for permission to access my photos account in tge first place I would have given it to her, so I couldn't understand why all the elaborate lying. She said she had no excuse. I walked out and drove away. That's where we stand now.
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    Update 2: It's the next day. I've followed a lot of people's advice and put more security on my phones, email, and other accounts, partially due to this situation but also just because everyone's responses have made me realize how much more seriously I need to take that in general.
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    • I spoke with my daughter, who said she is aware that my wife uses Life360 on her and is OK with it. When my wife originally suggested we all use it, I declined having it on my phone and had a problem with her suggesting it be done without
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    our daughter's knowledge, but I did concede to her doing it for our daughter anyway. Between then and now, though, apparently my wife did let her know and our daughter is OK with it, so I'm not worried about her breaking that trust.
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    • A lot of people have suggested that I go through my wife's phone and other accounts, either behind her back or right in front of her with no warning. I won't be doing either. I feel so violated by the sneakiness and the subsequent lying that she did, and I have no intention of being someone who does that to someone else. Maybe that's a mistake on my part, but that's how I'm going to handle it.
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    Infamous-City-4196 Yeah man, this aint just about efficiency - its about control. Monitoring your spending, tracking your kid, sneaking into your phone? Thats a pattern. Trust isnt. about "having nothing to hide," its about mutual respect. You're not her child. If she's crossing lines now, what else is she justifying? Time for a serious talk, and maybe a few privacy settings.
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    10000nails He should take the phone to have someone do an assessment of what she's done. This is deeply is unsettling.
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    Squeezemachine99 I fully agree with this. Respect and trust are what relationships are based on. She has shown that she doesn't trust or respect him and unfortunately he can not trust or respect her anymore. She knew what she was doing was wrong and didn't respect him enough to stop herself.
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    Garudakk Hello, wife! you're probably reading this thread right now on your husband's account!
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    Opposite Way8645 OP Thanks for that. I used a throwaway for that reason, but you may still be right!
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    Cmndr_Cunnilingus Yeah, This is a pretty big deal imo. In principle I'm in favour of full transparency between spouses. I'd have no problem with my wife having that kind of access to my phone, especially if we've been together for almost two decades. However I have two large issues with what's going on here.
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    1. The access is one way. You should have exactly the same access to her platforms as she does to yours, any pushback on that whatsoever would be a red flag to me and have alarms bells ringing.
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    2. It's being done without your knowledge, your wife is inserting her access into your platforms without telling you and would continue to do so without your knowledge. Especially when you've given no reasons (at least that you've mentioned) for her not to trust you.
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    Those two elements together reek of toxicity, anxiety, entitlement, mistrust, and a need to control. the lives of others that would require serious discussion and possibly professional help for me to stay in the relationship.
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    And lets be honest OP. your wife probably has remote access to whatever device you're typing this on and is reading this post as it develops since she's clearly Jason Bourne's apprentice

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