Expert: Don - 4/14/2007

Question
We have been married 10 years and have 3 kids. We are used to him being gone (legitimately) in the military. About 6 months ago I found his profile on facebook. I asked him what he knew of it and he said "I have friends who have used, but I haven't". He then deleted the history and so forth of the computer when I left the room. He had all female friends on his profile, pictures, quotes, etc. but nothing that seemed worth hiding. The next morning when he left I dug a little deeper and found a profile of him wanting oral sex on an intimate dating site with his user name and his new "secret" password tied to an old e-mail address he supposedly didn't use anymore. Of course it said he was never married with no kids and lived in a different city with a different job (ladies beware!) but everything else was him all the way. I confronted him and he deleted the site and said he would never use the e-mail again.

Here is where I start feeling guilty. I was trying to get up the courage and timing to leave (such as trying to find a job first) when I got curious and logged on his email as him and found more sites that he had a dating profile on. I didn't bring it up because I knew it would be more denial on his part.

Then this last month: I had been trying hard to see if there was anything salvageable at all about the relationship and trying to blind myself to the feelings of mistrust I felt. Then I happened upon a computer he uses outside our home. When I logged on as him to innocently print something, I saw that he had done a search for {new religion} singles. I looked at the cookies and sure enough it looks like he spent four minutes there,  and a few weeks later a different singles site. Only now if he is on these new sites it is with a e-mail that I do not know how to trace.

I am frustrated because I wouldn't have defined setting up an Internet profile as cheating prior to this situation. I am scared of how all of this will look in divorce court. Meanwhile, I can't seem to trust him and he knows it. When I look at the sites it doesn't look like he has saved any as favorites, emailed, or winked at anyone, maybe just looking - who knows? It is hard to stay with a partner who is looking for other partners.

I was just curious if as a guy you thought I was making to much of this. Would you consider his actions to be cheating?

Answer
Well technically you don't have any physical proof that he actually cheated, the fact that he actively looking for a woman outside of his marriage, even if it is just Internet profiles can be a course that leads to him cheating. If I were you I would have printed out all the proof of his dating websites while I had the chance and if you do still have the chance go back and print those out, because you can use those in your divorce proceedings to show how he wasn't a willing participate in your relationship.

I don't think your marriage is salvageable so maybe it's time you talked to a lawyer and looked for a way out, I'm sure with 3 kids, he'll have to pay you some form of child support, and if you can find some form of job you should be making more than enough to financial stabilize yourself. So go for it, leave him and see how he acts.

I hope this helped and good luck