How to Do It
I Found the Texts Between My Wife and the Man She Cheated on Me With. It’s Worse Than I Thought.
June 18, 2026 12:00 PM
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Dear How to Do It,
Fifteen years ago, my wife had a year-long affair with her boss. They would hook up on business trips. It stemmed from her feeling ignored by me because of the amount of time I spent with our kids and work (commuting to and from work takes three-plus hours for me). Her boss, who had his own troubles in his marriage, planned out a scenario where he could get her alone and proposition her. At first, she said she was taken aback, but after a few weeks of flirtatious texts, she succumbed to him.
The more involved they got with each other, the less interactive and engaged she was with me. We went five-plus months with no intimacy. I had chalked it up to her business schedule, and became more withdrawn, and got lured into chat rooms and watching MFM porn online to masturbate. Her boss convinced my wife that I must be doing something deviant, why else would I be withdrawing, and convinced my wife to put spyware on my phone to catch me in the act of “something.”
When she confronted me about what she knew about me going online, I admitted it, and we had a fight and I mentioned her boss, and she got defensive. A few weeks later, I found a list she made comparing him and me; everything from our family, career, to kissing style and penis size. When I confronted her, she broke down and admitted she was having an affair. We healed and had two more kids. But every time I would ask her for details about the affair, she would tell me, “I’ve blocked it out” or “I can’t remember.” I knew she was lying, but I love her and wanted to move on.
Now it’s 15 years later. I was cleaning out our old hard drives, uploading family pictures to the cloud from an old computer, when I discovered files she had uploaded from her old phone. There were texts, voice notes, and emails that the two of them shared. I know I shouldn’t have read them, that I should have deleted them, but curiosity got the better of me because the answers were in those files. I read them.
My dilemma: I confronted my wife with the files, and she finally came clean, but now she’s angry with me for bringing it all up again. How do I get past this? I’ve gone to therapy a few times … and have been told I have to learn to let it go and build on the relationship we’ve built going forward. I love my wife, but can’t unsee or unhear some of the hurtful things from her 30-year-old self. Is it just me? Am I broken? Or am I just having a tough time coming to grips that a 15-year obsession for finding out answers is over, and I don’t know how to finally shut the door on it in my head?
—Loyal to a Fault
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Jessica Stoya: There’s the statement, We healed,” and there’s the entire rest of the letter. The two do not match up, because the writer’s choice to investigate these text voice notes and emails, the feelings that he’s still feeling about them, the wife’s, I think, unreasonable anger, makes it sound like the two of them haven’t healed at all.
It’s not like he was watching birds and all of a sudden, 15 years later, was like, “Hey, this bird makes me want to ask you all over again for details you’ve been telling me for 15 years that you don’t recall.” She left evidence again. He stumbled onto it. It sounds like it was a shared storage device. Why did she put that stuff on a shared hard drive in the first place? Why didn’t she go back and delete it? He didn’t go into her phone. He didn’t go into her email account. It’s slightly less cut and dried than when someone snoops, and it’s like, “Oh, you went looking and should not have.”
Still, he can’t unsee or unhear it. He’s still fixated on finding answers; he’s using the word obsession; and the wife is angry at the consequences of a time bomb she left on a shared device. There’s more work they need to do.
Rich Juzwiak: This remains unresolved. He’s gone to therapy a few times, but what about her? What about them?
The MFM porn detail threw me for a loop. I suppose maybe it can somehow be perceived as damning if you’re ostensibly straight and you’re watching this kind of porn. Oh, your wife caught you doing this—what does it mean about you, kind of thing? But also, you’re watching MFM porn, and you’re kind of being cucked in a way non-consensually. I wonder if, with the obsession with details, any…
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