Facebook AGAIN...

Almost 4 years ago, my husband began going through a pretty serious mid-life crisis. A lot of things happened during that time, but one of those was the he developed an attachment to a much younger woman that he worked with. He talked about her constantly at home, and insisted on traveling out of the country with her to be a part of a ceremony when she received an award from work, even though I was uncomfortable with the trip and asked him not to go. She transferred a few months later, but 8 months after she left, I found out that he was messaging her on facebook, calling her when I wasn't around, and sending her gifts. He swore that it wasn't a romantic attraction, but I didn't (and still don't) believe that for a second. He agreed to cut off contact, and as far as I know, he did. During that time, he also agreed to give me his facebook password, but never did that, and since it made me feel pretty pathetic to even have to ask for it, I let it go. After that, we had some serious conversations, and I made it very clear that I was uncomfortable with him having private friendships with other women—I don't care if he talks to women at work or the gym or whatever, but sending personal letters to one another about activities, feelings, etc. is just not appropriate in my view, particularly since I know that he is capable of letting those relationships get out of hand. Over the last few years, our marriage has improved, at least on the face of it, but I've never been able to completely get past that whole incident. My self-esteem, never good to begin with, is completely gone, and now that I know that my husband is capable of being dishonest with me, I just can't ever trust him completely. Within the past year or so, I've noticed that my husband uses facebook messaging quite a lot, but when I ask him what he's doing on the computer, he gives me a vague answer. He is also almost religious about making sure to log out of facebook whenever he leaves a phone or computer, which, to me, is odd, since we all have private laptops. But while I've felt a little "hinky" about things for a while, I haven't wanted to come across as controlling or insecure, so I haven't said/done anything. This past weekend, we were on a vacation and husband was in the shower. Not wanting to get out of bed to find my own computer, I picked up his iPad to surf the net while I waited for him. I was surprised to see that he'd actually left himself logged in to facebook. I know it wasn't a good thing to do, but curiosity got the better of me, and I clicked to see who he'd been chatting with. I honestly expected to see a list of his guy friends and to feel stupid, but instead, there were a list of women, some of whom I've never heard of. I clicked on the top 5 names or so, just to see if these were real conversations or a quick Q & A or something, but these were paragraphs long messages. I didn't even read much of the content at all—enough to see he tell one woman to keep her "pretty blonde head" safe—I was so upset I just closed the computer and put it away. From the way that the facebook app works on the iPad, I know he must have seen that somebody was clicking on these messages, and I expected him to say something to me. Instead, he was all sweet and cuddly with me last night, which is not his usual behavior and makes me wonder if he feels guilty about something. Whether it's rational or not, I feel really betrayed. While I didn't seen anything overtly inappropriate in the messages, the fact that he's secretly writing about his personal life with women that I've never even heard of seems really shady. And the fact that I told him that I found these types of relationships inappropriate and he's still pursuing them tells me that he's getting something important out of keeping up these contacts. So I guess my question is this: Am I being ridiculous? Overreacting? Should I bring this up, or do we just act like it never happened?

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2629979