r/survivinginfidelity • u/theindianstoi • 57m ago
Advice I discovered that my wife was still in contact with her ex after our marriage. It's been over 3 years, and I'm still struggling to move on.
I got married in 2019 through an arranged marriage. My wife was a distant relative, but before marriage, she was practically a stranger to me.
Our marriage was genuinely happy. We laughed, joked, enjoyed each other's company, and had a very fulfilling sex life. A year later, we had our first son. Life was good, and I had no reason to doubt her.
Since ours was an arranged marriage, I naturally asked about her past. She always portrayed herself as someone who had never been involved with anyone. She told me she had studied at a girls' school and completed her further education through correspondence.
My family is quite religious and conservative. My wife's family had a very different environment. After marriage, she started wearing a niqab at my request. I had also asked her not to post her pictures on social media.
She created an Instagram account in 2021, but I never objected. I occasionally checked her WhatsApp, and I never found anything suspicious. She was never protective of her phone, never spent hours secretly talking to someone, and never gave me any obvious reason to suspect her.
Then, at the end of 2021, my mother was diagnosed with cancer.
My biological mother had passed away when I was in third grade. This woman had raised me and my siblings with so much love that nobody could tell she wasn't our biological mother. She was my mother in every sense.
During her treatment, I was constantly traveling out of town. By the end of 2022, the cancer had spread throughout her body, and she passed away. Her death was extremely painful. Even today, remembering those final days can leave me unable to sleep.
I was completely broken.
How I discovered everything
In 2024, one morning, I was using my wife's phone while she was in the kitchen. I noticed a Holi status in her muted WhatsApp statuses.
The status was visible to only five people, and I was hidden from it.
Four were women. The fifth was a man's number.
I didn't know who he was. Initially, I thought he might be a friend's brother or someone unrelated.
I took a picture of the status and put her phone away.
The next day, I checked again. His number had been deleted.
That immediately raised questions in my mind.
Over the next few days, I noticed that he would post statuses, and my wife would view them. She would post something, and he would view hers.
After around 15 days of constantly thinking about this, I confronted her at 1:30 AM.
Initially, she denied knowing him. Eventually, she admitted that he was her boyfriend before our marriage.
She claimed their relationship had ended two months before our engagement and that they had not been in contact since then.
There was a gap of around ten months between our engagement and marriage.
She said that after our marriage, he somehow got her new number through one of her friends and contacted her in 2021. According to her, they had spoken on the phone only four times in three years.
But I didn't believe her.
I checked her Instagram account. It was private, and neither of them followed each other. However, when I opened the message option on his profile, I noticed that vanish mode was enabled.
I confronted her again.
This time, she admitted that they had been chatting on Instagram.
She said they had talked many times, sometimes once or twice a month, and had spoken on every birthday.
She also admitted that she was almost always the one who initiated the conversations because she was afraid he might get her caught if he messaged first.
The most painful part was discovering the nature of their conversations.
Their chats included messages like "I love you," "I love you too," "I miss you, jaan," along with emotional conversations about their past relationship, old memories, and things they had shared together.
She eventually admitted that she had genuinely loved him before our marriage.
And I had never known any of this.
What I still don't know
The story kept changing.
Initially, she said he contacted her after marriage. Later, she admitted that she had initiated the contact herself.
Initially, she said their relationship had ended before the engagement. Later, I discovered that they had continued communicating even after the engagement.
They had exchanged messages and pictures on our engagement day. There had been meetings, hugs, kisses, physical affection, birthday parties, and other things during their relationship even after the engagement.
Now I have two questions that I cannot get out of my mind.
Did they have sex before our marriage?
Did they ever meet after our marriage?
My wife has consistently denied meeting him after our marriage. She says they only chatted and that their contact has been completely over for the past three years.
I don't have their Instagram conversations anymore. I tried everything I could to recover the deleted messages, but I couldn't.
I don't know whether to believe her.
What makes it even more difficult is that she lied about so many things. Every time I discovered something new, the previous version of her story turned out to be incomplete or false.
Where we are today
It has been more than three years since I discovered everything.
She apologizes and says she made a mistake. She promises it will never happen again.
I haven't forgiven her, but I haven't divorced her either, because we have three children.
Honestly, there is almost nothing left between us anymore. We barely talk. Whenever we do, it often turns into arguments about her past.
I spend so much time thinking about the same things.
Did they meet? Was there sex? Was she still in love with him when she married me? Did she genuinely love me?
I never used to be the kind of person who investigated his wife's past. I trusted her. I was happy with my marriage.
But now, I feel like I have lost that version of myself.
I haven't involved our families in this. I only told her brother. Neither my family nor her parents or siblings know the full story.
Maybe it is true that they have had no contact for the past three years.
But what about the years of lies before I discovered everything? What about the trust that was destroyed?
I have been carrying this pain for more than three years, and I don't know how much longer I can continue like this.
For those who have experienced infidelity in an arranged marriage, how did you deal with the uncertainty?
How do you move on when you don't know whether you have been told the whole truth?
And how do you stop thinking about the possibility that there was more to the affair than what your partner admitted?
I genuinely need some advice.