Leaving No Trace of The Affair Can Save His Heart

I owe it to my husband.

My cheating will hurt my husband when he discovers it, and I doubt he’d ever forgive me. He is as committed to seeing our marriage through as anyone and wouldn’t stand for me stepping out. So, if he found pictures of me with my lover, it would destroy him.

He deserves better than seeing me in a way he could never forget.

My husband isn’t very technologically inclined. He was the last to get a smartphone, always got the kids to fix the TV for him, and bitches because we have two remotes. The kids once set up the X-box on the main TV and were using the voice commands. If you wanted to override it, you had to press two buttons. Two.

One morning I came down to find him arguing with the X-box. He once sat without it on because he forgot which two buttons to push; I’d shown him a dozen times.

I’m not much better, but at least I try. And I have to. I know the password to his phone, and I used to read them. I still answer them most times if it’s essential.

He wouldn’t have a job without me writing his resumes, applying for jobs, or doing his online tests. There were times when he couldn’t get to an appointment without me reminding him.

I’ve been glued to my smartphone since my daughter, and I got ours together ages ago. I do everything on my phone; it’s my portable brain. When I decided to find someone, I’ve done almost everything on my phone. I also have an old laptop I write on, but 99% of my cheating is on my phone.

I will be sitting in my chair talking to the kids if they’re home, and I’ll be chatting with my affair partner at the same time. I’ve checked out profiles and chatted with cute guys while watching a movie at home. He never asks what I’m doing, never looks at my phone, and forgets his at home or work on occasion. His phone isn’t important to him.

Two things happened in the first couple of months of cheating that shocked me. The first was when I was chatting with my affair partner (we’d already had sex by then), and out of the blue, hubby asked,

“What are you doing on your phone?”

I swear to god; he’d never asked me before! I told him I was looking at one of my groups, and he never asked again, but I couldn’t believe it. It was almost as if he knew what I was doing on some level, and I felt horribly guilty afterward.

Not long after that, he picked up my phone and started using it one lunchtime because he forgot his at work. He’d picked it up while I was serving lunch, and he had it in his hand when I returned to the table with his lunch!

WTF?!!!

He’d never picked up my phone before either! I panicked inside but remained calm and asked him where his phone was. He said work and handed mine back after checking the weather.

I have to say, a guilty mind is a funny thing. I say he’d never picked it before, but I’m not sure if he had or not. Before I started cheating, I never had a reason to panic over it.

Seeing him with my phone reminded me of all the dirty pics, vids, and emails I’d kept. I don’t know where my head was at, but I had a video of my affair partner fingering me I couldn’t bear to get rid of.

I loved watching him touch me. It had been so long since anyone had, I think I need a reminder that it was real. I reminder there was someone out there who wanted me.

These two incidents changed my mind about keeping souvenirs and love letters on my phone.

That night after work, it took me over an hour to sanitize my phone. I had been getting rid of his emails by deleting them, but I hadn’t touched my sent box since the beginning. I had never emptied the trash either!

I had everything from day one on there. Everything. From then on, I started wiping my sent mail and emptying the trash daily. And by the way, we used email because it was easier for him to hide them and not because we’re old, lol. Well, mostly not because we’re old.

I still wonder why I needed to be jarred awake like that. Or why I was never concerned until the moment, he picked my phone up? It all could have come crashing in if he’d gone to my pictures because my sexy ones weren’t even hidden. And each image had metadata pinpointing the time, date, and place I took them.

I attribute some of it to the exhilaration of new relationship energy (NRE) that puts your head in the clouds. I was also a baby cheater then, still trying to figure things out.

What happened was I let my preconceived ideas of my husband’s behavior cloud my judgment. I knew he rarely went into my phone, but that almost didn’t mean never. I should have known that he would go into my phone at some point. And the risk of it happening once should have been enough to tell me to be careful.

I wish I could have lived the rest of my life without sex, but I couldn’t. That doesn’t mean he needs reminding of what he isn’t doing for me.

I’m sure I’ll hear all about my vows someday when I get caught. My only defense will be that I was too weak to live up to them. I was too weak to live without physical and emotional love, but no one will care about that.

There’s still love between us, but for me, it’s more maternal now.

We aren’t lovers but that doesn’t mean I can be careless with his love.

Here’s another article about my smartphone fumbles —Tips for Cheaters on How to Avoid Text Fails
One text can destroy your lifemedium.com

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Why I wrote a book on cheating.medium.com