AITA Am I the asshole? My husband and I have had a roller-coaster relationship since the day we met. We were both coming out of a marriage and had no interest in settling down with anyone. We met on a dating site, both planning on just dating around for a long time. But we quickly realized that we were going to be more than casual. As the months went on and I learned more about his colorful past relationships, I told him I didn’t care about the colorful past; it was the current and future I cared about. I thought we were exclusive, but on one of our dates, another woman that he had hooked up with was messaging him; turns out they had continued to talk after we got together. I was pissed because we were already saying I love you, he had met my kids, and he kept it a secret.
NYE, he was trying to dance with other women and hit on other women. It has never stopped. He views all women as potential hook-ups. He is always texting, all day and super secret about his phone; it is never out of his hand or pocket. Now, this is where he gets pissed, I have gone on his phone after all this, I found nd messages to other women, inappropriate messages for someone who is in a relationship. I have addressed it numerous times and explained how much that hurts, and it is a form of cheating. He disagrees; he thinks if he does actually touch them, then it doesn’t count and gets mad that I invaded his privacy. We tried an open relationship, but he got jealous and didn’t like it when I started talking to another guy, so I ended it. I thought we came to the agreement that it would be just us, no extra characters in our relationship. Time went on, and we ended up sloping. Right away, he started to message an ex-girlfriend that he claimed to never be talking to because she was “dangerous”, but he let her know he got married. Turned out they had been talking, and he wanted to make sure he was married before we potentially ran into her at a concert. I was hurt because it didn’t feel like he was genuinely wanting to be married to me, just anyone, so he could “stick it to her”. We again worked through it. But intuition screams at me when his behavior changes. A couple of months later, he was staying at a hotel, and I last minute joined him. But something told me to check. Looked at his messages, and he had been messaging women to see if they wanted to hook up with him that night before he knew I was coming. And again, he was pissed that I invaded his privacy, apologized for asking them, and we moved on. Then last week, after seeing a FB post telling a “friend” that he had a spare room at the apartment he keeps, I looked at his messages, and she was sending him sexy photos of herself in new lingerie. I again addressed it, and he got mad because it is his phone.
My phone is always available to him; he can read anything he wants because I have nothing like that going on it. He keeps bringing up this last girl and asking it we could at least both hook-up with her. There is so many more things that have happened, but the core of it is the secret texting and asking to hook up.
Am I the asshole for looking in his phone?
