Parenting Magazine

{Relationships: What to Do If You Suspect Your Other Half is Cheating?}

By Glasgow_mummy @glasgow_mummy
Step One - Stick your head in the sand
This is exactly what I did when some of my friends started questioning my husband's behavior. I stood by him and of course told everyone there was absolutely no way he'd be having an affair. At least three friends had asked, and I perhaps should have taken more notice.
{Relationships: What to do if you suspect your other half is cheating?}Head in Sand, Jennyann Carthern
Step Two - Sticking with the sand theme... Do some digging
I'm not saying this is necessarily the best thing to do, but by this point my husband had become more elusive (is that the right word?) about his whereabouts and my friend that was staying with me at the time sat me down and told me that his behavior was not normal.
So the next day when he was at work I did a little digging. I managed to check his browser history on his laptop and had a flick through his bank account records (which were on the shelf in our home office, so it's not like I had difficulty accessing them). There was a whole heap of transactions that just didn't add up. I called my best friend who came over to have a look with me - I needed to check I wasn't being OTT.
{Relationships: What to do if you suspect your other half is cheating?}{image source}
It may be wise to skip this step though and move straight onto Step Three. However, I think if I had skipped straight to Step Three then the evidence would have promptly been removed and I may have never known either way.
Step Three - Talk

This is easier said than done. But I desperately needed to know, and so I sat my husband down and asked him the question - are you having an affair with X? (I had a pretty good idea of who it was because there had been transactions from his account into her account)
I already had an inkling that he was on the basis of what I found during Step Two. But I tried not to jump to conclusions and gave him the benefit of the doubt.
He explained most of the transactions and told me I was being silly. But I just had a gut feeling that he was lying.
{Relationships: What to do if you suspect your other half is cheating?}Let's Talk, Gregory Radionov
Unfortunately, things didn't change and actually got worse... his bank records disappeared from the house, his laptop was then password protected & he put his status as single on Facebook. 
I gave it four months, but ended up moving then to Step Four.
Step Four - Hire a Private Investigator
This isn't going to be an option for everyone as it's very, very expensive. However I think it was worth every penny. If I hadn't been stuck in with the kids every night, then I'd have tracked his whereabouts myself but it was just easier to pay someone else to do it. I hired a private investigator to find out for me. Everything was a bit of a whirlwind if I'm honest and even after the first phone call, the investigator could tell that we would catch him up to no good. I guess I was on 'auto-pilot' of some form, keeping going for the children. It all felt very surreal.
They got me the evidence I needed & then it was up to me to decide what to do next...

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