You got suspicious because anytime you get near his computer when he’s online he closes all the windows so one day while he was gone you looked up the browser history and sure enough it was brimming with hookup sites and his mailboxes were stuffed with the promise of new meat.
How do you confront somebody with this information? What is the best way of handling it? Especially if you can imagine your life without him but you also can’t imagine staying someone who cheats on your back.
The first thing is don’t tell him you went into the computer and ransacked it. This is a classic mistake because he’ll undoubtedly make your invasion of his privacy a big an issue as his infidelity. You should only bring that up if all attempts at resolution have failed and he continuously denies that he’s doing anything wrong.
Is Infidelity Wrong?
Here’s part of what Dan Savage said in the New York Times:““I acknowledge the advantages of monogamy when it comes to sexual safety, infections, emotional safety, paternity assurances. But people in monogamous relationships have to be willing to meet me a quarter of the way and acknowledge the drawbacks of monogamy around boredom, despair, lack of variety, sexual death and being taken for granted.”
Instead, talk to him calmly. Admittedly, this is very hard to do when you get upsetting news, but you have to get clear in your head that your goal isn’t to give him a personal rendition of the Mount St. Helen’s explosion (he’ll never get over the ash). Your goal is to straighten things out. Here’s how:
Tell him that you suspect he’s he’s going behind your back. Don’t demand or threaten an admission – – invite him into. That sounds weird but hear me out. If you make it safe for him to be honest you have a much better chance of working things out than if you push him into denial. One way of inviting him into a conversation is to say something like, “I’m committed to working on our relationship even if you’ve been with other guys.”
You have to make the price of dishonesty worse than the price of infidelity. As in, “I can forgive anything except lying.” Of course, there is a great possibility that he will still deny it. Should you then bring up your snooping? I still wouldn’t do it. Don’t right a wrong with a wrong. You should not have been snooping in his computer. True, that little crime pales in comparison to his, but you don’t want him using that as an excuse to divert the argument from his cheating to your snooping.
Partly you should avoid disclosing how you got the information because often people are wrong about their partners infidelity. And if you lead with your computer invasion what you are saying is, “My suspicions are more important than your privacy.”
I know a lot of people think it’s okay to snoop on their partners but I actually don’t. Taken to its logical conclusion if you believe that your suspicions are more important than his privacy it means your partner gets to rifle through your diary, your wallet, your checkbook, your emails, your voicemails,and your credit card statements at the slightest whiff of doubt that you are not being on the up and up.
Your partner is innocent until proven guilty. As are you. Once You’ve gotten him to admit his misdeeds there is a real chance at working things out.