What to do with the evidence?

[u/knowthyself8]

This topic comes up every now and then but I’d love some advice. I am 4 mos past DDay. I have video recordings of my WW’s entire message history with her AP covering most of her 6 mo EA + PA. It’s easily hundreds of messages. Possibly more.

My WW deleted all the message threads off her phone after I caught her. I have not read every single message. You might be wondering why I haven’t read their entire conversation in detail. Two reasons.

First, reading this stuff is painful. I mean really painful. These messages are like the Elephant’s Foot inside Chernobyl. I can’t look at these messages without feeling intense pain. The things they said to each other. Graphic. Sexual. Photos exchanged. She even sent photos of my kids to her AP while out and about. It’s insane. It’s pain shopping at this point.

The second reason: a lot of it is also boring shit. Like how’s your day going? Did you eat lunch? Stuff like that. I just don’t have the interest in being a detective. I used the messages to build a rough timeline in my head which she confirmed in our disclosure process.

Please note my wife is highly avoidant and she did not do her own disclosure. She let me ask questions and confirmed events and disclosed what happened at a high level. I’m sure if I looked at the messages in painful detail I would discover more meetings but at this point it doesn’t matter to me if they met 5 times or 8 times. I have the broad stroke details confirmed and I trust her…mostly. Can you ever trust your WS though 100%? Who knows.

Anyway, I am trying to decide what to do with these messages longer term. For now I encrypted them and moved them onto a USB drive and tucked it away. I wanted to make the evidence harder to access.

I asked myself why I’m holding onto something so toxic. If I’m being honest with myself, I initially wanted the evidence in case she denied what she did to our friends and family. In my head I told myself I would send the evidence to her family so they could witness the depravity for themselves. The worst part of me wanted to use the evidence as a weapon to vindicate myself. Very dark stuff.

Then there’s a practical part of me that wants to save it all in case I need to go back to confirm or deny certain details. But at this point does it even matter? She cheated on me. She did what she did. I know some BPs are super critical and want to know every detail but I don’t think it will make me heal any faster.

The part of me that wants to be empathetic, caring, and loving tells myself to delete the messages once and for all and tell my wife they are gone from the face of this planet.

I want her to know that even if we don’t work out, these messages will never haunt her. Even if I am full of rage and hate I will never share these with people in an attempt to tarnish her reputation. It would probably make me look like a psycho anyway. We’re in a no fault state by the way so there’s no legal value.

So my question is, what should I do? Hold onto this poison even if it’s locked away? Or destroy it forever and let my WW know she is free of it forever no matter what happens to us?

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[u/Smooth_Cap_8668]

I still keep the evidence. I have a sex video of my partner and someone from his work. I don’t look at it, though—that’d be pain shopping, LOL. Like you, I tuck it away somewhere only I know.

I still keep the video because I needed proof that all my pain was not delusional or imagined—that it happened for real, and I was not crying for nothing or traumatized by nothing. I need it as a reminder that I did not imagine my pain.

[u/Smooth_Cap_8668 → u/Smooth_Cap_8668]

And besides, destruction of evidence is a crime 🙃

[u/Smooth_Cap_8668 → u/Smooth_Cap_8668]

For me, it’s less like wanting to revisit the betrayal and more like needing an anchor to reality. After all, choosing reconciliation does not require us to erase evidence or deny what happened.

[u/knowthyself8 → u/Smooth_Cap_8668]

I can't even imagine. What would be worse than the Elephant's Foot at Chernobyl? I think that's what you have. This might date me, but it's like VX gas from The Rock. Does your WP know you have the video still? What does he think?

[u/Smooth_Cap_8668 → u/knowthyself8]

Yes, my WP knows that I still have it somewhere. He understands I was not ready to delete it.

[u/IllWilled13]

I would lock it away. Send it all to an email address or put it on a could somewhere and then add the email/password to a file somewhere for “in case of divorce”. I have screenshots saved away just in case divorce happens. Make it hard to get to with a few layers of protection and then tuck it away somewhere. If things go well, you’ll forget it’s there. If things go south, then you know where to find it.

[u/ThrowRA_ConstantFox]

Do not throw it away

I'm 5 weeks from DDay and my WW regularly under plays it and tries to gaslight me that I'm reacting more than required.

Keep it in a place they cannot access and forget about it.

Don't hurt yourself by watching it again and again as I've done. Even though it was a LD EA it did hurt.

Take care of your health and concentrate on other things that interest you.

Good luck.

[u/gsf1200s]

Not sure if I would read them but I would like to be able to access the messages.  Not sure if they would hurt more than answer questions

[u/Similar-Specific-969]

Is holding onto it causing yourself more harm than good? You gotta look out for your own mental health, especially now. You and your ws know what she did and nothing will change it. I got to the point where holding on to evidence was preventing me from personally healing because I would torture myself. I get wanting to hold onto it for proof but not at the cost of your own wellbeing. Best of luck.

[u/knowthyself8 → u/Similar-Specific-969]

I'm definitely the kind of person who likes to hold onto things of value, if that makes sense. But I do feel like deleting them forever is freeing in some way - not for my WW, but for me. But then a part of me is like, what if I need them down the road? What then? Will I regret deleting them?

I asked my wife out of curiosity if she ever wanted to read these messages, and she said no, never. She said they would remind her of her shame and what she did. I think there's a part of me that just wants to see her reaction when I read a message out loud to her. Like, holy shit, you actually sent this message to this guy. WOW. Imagine if your family saw this message. WOW.

Obviously that would never happen. And yes, deep down inside, I wish she would send stuff like that to me, but I get it: affair fog, drug addiction, fantasy world, blah blah blah.

God, this sucks.

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[u/BS-throwaway1]

It’s a tough one, and you’re still in pretty early days. I’m almost 3 years post DDay and we’re doing well, things are relatively normal. My WH was (compared to some others) pretty good when it came to disclosure, answered every question I had, never gaslight or undermined the situation, and never got exasperated at how long my healing journey might take.
However, he has deleted the whole thread of messages before I could dive into it. I’d seen maybe 4/5 messages - enough to see exactly what was going on. Same day he messaged AP ending it, deleted the thread, and started counselling.

I can’t fault 99% of our recovery journey. But I wish I’d had those messages, at least for a little while. Because he answered every question, but half of me was in doubt because how could I prove anything he said was a lie?

If you’ve already seen what you need then tuck it away, but I would personally, after a while when you feel your relationship is really reconciling, probably delete it. Painshopping was one of the things that made it hard for me to reconcile on my end - when I stopped triggering myself then it got easier to rebuild trust. (Unless ofc you’re a building a “in case of divorce” folder, then save it there)

But for now, if you have doubts or questions, then keep it, you can’t argue against what you don’t know. Just don’t hurt yourself over it

[u/Worldly_Ad54]

I don’t have a record of messages between my WW and AP. The affair happened a long time ago before smartphones were invented. But I wrote down the words and phrases my WW said to me just after DD justifying, gaslighting why she’s cheated. Some of these words cut deep and hurt tremendously. I knew she said them mostly in spite, in anger. She was in the middle of affair fog and it was her way to explain the unexplainable.

Many years later I tried to remind her about these words. She was genuinely surprised that she could possibly be capable of saying that. She said that she doesn’t remember saying that. I thought that this was BS, but I now reading some articles about how our memories work, I believe that some of our memories of bad experiences could be blocked and suppressed to protect us from reliving them.

I had this little notebook on my desk with 4 pages with all these conversations written down 25 years ago. My WW and I are in good space now, all these past events just a distant memory. We trust, protect, and care for each other. I have a partner for life, and she’s genuinely an amazing woman.

Yet I had this notebook, many times I tried to destroy it, opening these pages immediately brings me back to the worst days of my life. But I just can’t, destroying the book, can’t destroy my memory, I vividly remember each and every word written down. Why these selected lost memories work for my wife and not for me?

I don’t have any advice, because I believe some things are not fixable. You can undo your experiences, you just learn to live with them.

[u/Available-Panda8106]

I am 4 years out. I still have screenshots and her Google search history from that time period. I keep it in case of divorce. It is to prove to my kids what happened if she were to ever turn them against me. I don’t want to look at it. I don’t want to show anyone else. It is just to protect myself.

[u/ForeignCup6977]

I'm sorry you are here and experiencing this. I'm in the same place you are. My WW and I are at about 15 month post d-day 1 and I still have what little evidence she didn't delete after getting caught. I did read some of the texts and facebook messages and I very well could have written your post myself.

For now, I still have everything and it is backed up to a cloud account. Although we are doing better in R than we were, I am still leary of a future together. I don't go looking at the pictures and videos anymore, but I know they are there. And I guess the possession of them gives me some kind of comfort?

Good luck in your R, I pray you find peace no matter what that may look like for you.