A woman is seriously considering divorce after receiving a suspicious photo from her husband's ostensible business trip. She shared her story on the parenting website Mumsnet, where she said that she began to think that her husband was cheating on her after he started a new job.
According to her post, her husband recently started a new job and told her he had to go away for training on a Friday and Saturday, which was no issue for her since she was often by herself with the kids. However, on Friday afternoon, he called her to say he was running late as were some other people, and he would have to stay Saturday night too since they would finish the training on Sunday.
Initially, things felt a "bit weird" to her, but her husband eventually sent her a photo from where he was supposed to be that day, and she checked that the location was correct. However, at 8 am on Sunday, he sent her a photo of the training course, which was a screenshot with no metadata attached. She then looked again at the deleted photo from Saturday and discovered that it was taken ten days before.
When her husband returned home, she confronted him about the photos and asked him "what was going on." He seemed a bit flustered and admitted the photo was not taken on Saturday and that he didn't know why he did it. He showed her his photo on his phone, and one was a hotel lobby-looking photo where they'd got coffee. When she asked to look at the details, the location was 30 minutes from their house in a different direction from where he said he was, two hours away and taken at 9:30 on Saturday morning.
The woman noted that her husband had "no explanation" for the photo other than "the phone was wrong," and he insisted it was taken on Friday. When she asked to see the photo again, he would not let her touch his phone and had deleted the metadata. He then got angry and started shouting, causing one of the kids to come in. When she asked again to see the photo, he threatened to throw a tantrum, so she "dropped" it.
She revealed that their marriage had been very up and down for years, mainly due to different sex drives, and that it was very down at the moment, with them basically just living in the same house. In the last 12 months or so, he has started working away at weekends occasionally, which she initially joked meant he was having an affair.
The woman's post on Mumsnet garnered a lot of attention, with many users offering their advice and support. Some advised her to consider leaving her husband, given the clear lack of trust in their relationship.
"You've answered your own question. Whether there is 'proof' on his phone or not, you don't sound happy and have lost trust in him," wrote one user, emphasizing that the woman's happiness and emotional wellbeing should be her top priority.
Another user echoed the sentiment that the woman's husband was not being honest and that the situation had gone beyond salvaging. "Whatever's going on he's not being honest and you sound beyond wanting to find out. Mainly threatening to have a tantrum. How could you ever be attracted to him again after that?" they asked.
"I can't help but feel for this woman. The mistrust and lack of transparency in her relationship are deeply concerning and can be emotionally damaging," says Wilda Harrison, a relationship psychologist.
