Infidelity Articles By Katie Lersch

By: Katie Lersch: I sometimes hear from people who are struggling with endless suspicions after their spouse has cheated or had an affair. Often, they spend a lot of time worrying about whether the affair is really over or if their spouse is going to eventually cheat again. So they will often look for a way to take matters into their own hands and look for any reassurance that may be available. After all, no one wants to be caught blind sided once again.

I heard from a wife who said: “my husband has been cheating on me with an ex girlfriend. It’s become obvious that he communicated with her in multiple ways including emails, instant messaging, texts, and Facebook. Basically, if one method of communication was shut down, they would just use another form. But they were never truly out of touch. My husband assures me that he is no longer in contact with this woman. I do want to believe him, but I have some doubts. I tried to log onto his email just to make sure there’s no messages from her and he’s obviously changed that password. The same is true for Facebook. So one day I got up my nerve and asked my husband for passwords to any accounts that he used to communicate with her. He became angry. He said that I don’t have the right to spy on him and to violate his privacy. I say that he gave me that right when he cheated. Who is right about this?”

I do have an opinion on this but it’s not very objective. My husband cheated on me once, and I have no problem admitting that I asked for (and received) his passwords. He wasn’t happy about this. He felt that it was a violation of his privacy and he insisted that if I couldn’t trust him, then our marriage wouldn’t survive anyway. These are common arguments from cheating spouses. But what they often don’t understand is that in the early phases of recovery, they should be giving you whatever you need to make progress. And when you are still struggling with insecurity and suspicions, turning over those passwords is an easy way to offer you some reassurance, especially if they don’t have anything to hide. It can help to agree upon some boundaries, which I’ll discuss now.

Agree That Getting The Passwords Doesn’t Give You Free Reign To Endlessly Spy On Him: As I’ve hopefully made clear, I understand why you want and need the passwords. And I believe that you should have them, at least while you are still recovering. But, you have to be careful and strike a balance. Because if you take it too far, the resentment that you both feel can become just one additional problem that you have to deal with.

Check for any suspicious communication and then log off. Don’t use this as an excuse to go digging around into personal aspects of your husband’s life that have nothing to do with you or your marriage. I understand that this may be tempting but if you do this, then you give your husband a valid reason to object to this agreement.

Always Accept That The Goal Is To Progress So That This Is No Longer Necessary: I have to tell you that I no longer read my husband’s emails and texts. And the reason for this is that I no longer feel the need to do so. The trust has been restored and, frankly, I do not want to check up on my husband like I am his mother and he is a child who needs looking after. That would change the dynamic or our relationship and it would not be healthy.  He would resent me and I would resent having to constantly keep tabs on him.

While I fully advocate checking up in the early stages of recovery, I don’t recommend making this a permanent practice. Because the goal should be that you will heal enough so that the trust will be restored and you will no longer want or need to continue. And often, understanding this will help your husband to be receptive to this plan because he will know that it’s only temporary.

So to answer the question posed, yes, I do believe that the faithful spouse has the right to have the passwords in order to ease their suspicions. But I don’t think that this privilege should be abused, nor should it last forever. This is only my opinion and I do realize that not every one agrees with me, but I feel that this is an easy way to offer some temporary reassurance when feelings are still raw and suspicions are still high.

As I said, I did demand information and passwords early on.  Eventually, I stopped logging on and checking up so much until one day, I realized that the whole thing was no longer necessary.  However, in the early days, I checked daily because I felt the need to.  And it helped.  If it helps, you can read that story on my blog at http://surviving-the-affair.com

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