The first time I looked through my husband’s phone, I found him telling other women he loved them, missed them, and wanted to see them. There were several women. There were hearts, heart eyes, and fire emojis. What I had been uneasy about for so long was suddenly there in words I could read.
We’ve been together for four years. Throughout that time, he has been very private with his phone. I don’t know his password. That was unfamiliar to me when we got together, but I decided to respect it. Being married doesn’t mean two people stop having anything of their own, and I had tried to leave room for that.
Still, I had a feeling about what might be on it. I can’t turn that feeling into proof that I knew all along, or pretend that looking through his phone was how I wanted to find out. It was the first time I had done it. Now the question of why I looked sits alongside what I actually found. One doesn’t make the other disappear.
The messages weren’t just a conversation I didn’t happen to be included in. He was flirting. A heart on its own might leave room for an argument about how somebody texts. Telling several women he loves and misses them, and wants to see them, gives those little symbols a much clearer context. I wasn’t trying to decode one stray emoji. I was reading romantic attention he was giving other women without my knowledge.
I don’t know from those messages whether he has met any of them. Wanting to see someone isn’t the same as having done it. I don’t want to add an encounter I haven’t discovered, but I also don’t need to invent one to explain why this hurts. The flirting itself is something that happened.
I asked him to delete them. It was a specific request, directed at the women I had found him messaging. I can’t say that removing contacts would settle everything I now wonder about. It wouldn’t tell me why he sent those messages or make me forget them. But it was what I asked of him after seeing them.
He seems to be having a hard time doing it. That is the part I am left with now: I have found the messages, I have told him what I want, and he seems reluctant to let those contacts go. I don’t know what is making it difficult for him. I only know how it feels to be his wife, asking.
I’ve never had a man make me feel insecure like this. I don’t even know exactly how to feel about it yet. The person giving other women that attention isn’t somebody I’m just getting to know. He’s my husband, and I’m still waiting on the request I made.
