Am I the asshole for going through my husband’s phone while he was in the shower?
I (34F) have been married to Derek (38M) for nine years. We have two kids – Brayden is seven, Haley is four. We have a house, a dog, a minivan, a joint account. I thought I knew everything about this man.
Three months ago Derek said his company was expanding and he’d need to stay in the city two or three nights a week instead of commuting. He showed me the email from his boss. He showed me the expense report for the “corporate housing.” I packed him a bag with his shampoo and the good pillow because I’m that kind of wife.
But then my friend Courtney called me last Tuesday. She said she saw Derek at the farmers market on Saturday – which was one of the nights he was supposedly in the city. With a woman. And a stroller.
I didn’t say anything to him. I just watched. I started checking when his location was off and when it wasn’t. I started looking at the credit card statements more carefully. There was a Target in a zip code I didn’t recognize. A pediatrician’s office. A Babies”R”Us charge from fourteen months ago.
Last Thursday he came home from a “work trip” and got in the shower, and I picked up his phone off the nightstand.
I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. I just started scrolling.
There was a woman named Vanessa in his contacts listed as “V – work.” I opened their thread. It went back two years. There were photos of a baby. A little girl. Derek is IN some of them, holding her, smiling that smile I thought was only for us.
I put the phone down exactly where it was. I walked downstairs. I sat at the kitchen table and I did not move until he came down twenty minutes later, hair still wet, asking if I wanted to order Thai.
I told him I wanted to take a drive. Just us. He said sure.
He doesn’t know what I found. He doesn’t know where I’m taking him.
I pulled up the address I found in his phone last night. The apartment. I’ve never been there.
We’re three minutes away. I can see him in the passenger seat, completely relaxed, scrolling his phone, and I am so calm it scares me.
I pulled up to the building. I put the car in park. And when he looked up and saw where we were, his face did something I have never seen it do before in nine years.
What His Face Did
It collapsed.
That’s the only word for it. Like something structural gave out. His jaw didn’t drop, he didn’t go white – it was more like watching a person’s face forget what it was supposed to be doing. For about two seconds he just looked at the building, and then he looked at me, and the version of Derek I have known since I was twenty-five years old was just gone.
He said, “How did you – “
I said, “Don’t.”
He closed his mouth.
I had planned, in some vague way, to be angrier than this. I’d imagined screaming. I’d imagined throwing his phone into the street. But sitting there in the driver’s seat of our minivan – the one we bought because Brayden had started soccer and we needed the room – I just felt very still and very tired and very done with waiting for things to make sense.
“How long,” I said. Not a question. I already knew the thread went back two years. I just needed him to say a number out loud.
He looked at his hands. “Three years.”
Three years. Brayden was four. Haley was one. I was sleep-deprived and nursing and making his lunches and he was – three years.
I did not cry. I want to be clear about that. I did not cry in that car.
The Part I Wasn’t Ready For
“She has a daughter,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Is she yours.”
He didn’t answer fast enough.
That was the answer.
Her name is Macie. She’s fourteen months old. I know this because I saw her in the photos on his phone – round face, bald head with a single curl at the top, sitting in a high chair with sweet potato all over her chin. She looked like Haley did at that age. That’s the thing I can’t stop thinking about. She looked like my daughter.
Derek started talking. He does this thing when he’s cornered where he starts providing context, like context is the same as explanation, like if he just gives you enough information you’ll arrive at some kind of understanding that makes it okay. He said Vanessa and he had met at a conference. He said it was supposed to be a one-time thing. He said when she got pregnant he panicked and didn’t know how to tell me and then more time passed and it became impossible and he just – “Stop,” I said.
He stopped.
I started the car. He flinched, like he thought I was going to do something with it. I just needed something to do with my hands.
What I Did Not Do
I did not go up to the apartment.
I had thought about it, driving over. Some part of me had pictured knocking on the door, seeing Vanessa’s face, having some kind of confrontation that would feel like justice or at least like doing something. But sitting in front of that building I realized I had nothing to say to her. She didn’t make vows to me. She didn’t pack his bag with the good pillow. She didn’t go to his mother’s funeral with him or hold his hand in the hospital when Brayden had his tonsils out or lie next to him for nine years believing she was safe.
That was all me.
I drove us home. Twenty-two minutes. Neither of us said a word.
Brayden and Haley were at my mom’s for the night – I had arranged that before I ever said I wanted to take a drive, because I’m that kind of wife, I plan ahead, I think about the kids first. Derek didn’t know I’d done that either. He figured it out when we pulled into the empty driveway.
“You planned this,” he said.
“Yes.”
He looked at me like that scared him more than anything else. Good.
The Kitchen Table Again
We sat at the same table where I’d sat frozen the week before. I made coffee because I needed something to do and because I was not going to fall apart in front of him, not yet, not until I had said everything I needed to say.
I had a list in my phone. I’d made it over the past week, adding to it at red lights and in the pickup line at Brayden’s school and at two in the morning when I couldn’t sleep. Things I needed to know. Practical things. Because I am a practical person, and practical was the only mode I had left.
Does she know about us. Yes.
Does she want anything from you. He didn’t know.
Have you been using our money. Some. Not much. He’d been pulling cash.
Are you in love with her. Long pause. He said he didn’t know. I wrote that down.
I asked him what he wanted to happen now. He said he wanted to fix it. I asked him what “fix it” meant to him, specifically, because I needed him to say the words. He said he wanted to stay. He said he wanted our family. He said he was sorry in that way people say sorry when they mean please don’t blow up my life.
I told him he could sleep in the guest room.
He nodded and got up and I watched him walk upstairs and I sat there until I heard the guest room door close, and then I put my head down on the kitchen table and I cried for a long time. Not pretty crying. The ugly kind, the kind where you can’t breathe right and your face hurts after. I pressed my forehead into the wood and I thought about Macie in the high chair with sweet potato on her chin, and I thought about Haley at fourteen months, and I thought about the good pillow I’d packed in his bag.
I cried until there was nothing left.
Then I washed my face, drank the coffee, and opened my laptop.
Where I Am Now
I have a consultation with a divorce attorney on Monday. Her name is Patricia Sloan and she came recommended by a woman from my office who went through something similar two years ago. I haven’t told Derek about the appointment.
I have not told my mother. I have not told Courtney, who called me to warn me and who I owe a real conversation. I have not told anyone except the internet, because sometimes you need to say a thing out loud to a room full of strangers before you can say it to the people who will look at you with that face.
Brayden and Haley come home tomorrow morning. I’m going to make pancakes. I’m going to be normal and fine and present because they are seven and four and none of this is their fault and they will not spend a single day of their lives thinking it is.
Derek is upstairs in the guest room. I can hear him moving around up there. I don’t know what he’s doing and I don’t care.
The dog is asleep at my feet. She has no idea anything happened. I keep putting my hand on her side and feeling her breathe.
So. Am I the asshole for going through his phone?
I genuinely don’t think I am. But I’ve also spent nine years trusting my own judgment and look where that got me. So maybe don’t ask me to grade myself right now.
Maybe just tell me I did the right thing.
—
If this hit close to home for someone you know, pass it along. They might need to read it.
If you’re still in the mood for some intense family drama, you won’t want to miss the story of a son furious at his mother’s actions at a birthday party, or perhaps you’d prefer to read about a husband who found something disturbing in his wife’s work bag. And for a tale of a dramatic exit, check out what happened when one daughter pulled her mom toward the door with her whole body weight.
