Yesterday, I heard a strange sound.  An old cell phone my husband stopped using last summer began to ring.  It has a very distinctive ring, so I instantly knew what it was, even though he had “retired” it.  I had noticed that it was in the charger tray, in fact, I think I saw him connect it.

By the time I got to the phone, it had stopped ringing.  I pulled up the screen, which informed me that it had been a “Number Withheld” call.  Hmm.

I asked him when he came home if she called him on a “Number Withheld,” and he said no, she wasn’t tech-savvy enough to be able to do that, but that her husband had called him that way.

Eventually this brewed into “you shouldn’t make me ask you again for the phone bills, in fact you should offer them to me, not to mention all of your passwords to all of your emails.”  Not that he couldn’t hide emails and phones from me, anyhow, but he’s not careful in any sense of the word.  He either thinks that I am stupid, wants to be caught or thinks he lives in a magic bubble where all will go well for him, no matter what he does.  I’m beginning to think it’s the latter, based on a string of very poor maneuvers and those are only the ones I know about.  I have come to the conclusion that this affair is the only one he has had since I have known him.  A lot of that comes from my gut, the same gut I accused of failing me during his affair, but which I have since realized, did indeed suspect some mischief.

When the company Husband works for gave him this second phone from which to pull TV signals onto for validation while he was working, I remember thinking…and extra cell phone.  Hmm.  Anyone I’d ever known with a second cell phone used it for no good and it briefly occurred to me that he could hide an affair from me.  No if I checked the bills, of course, but I didn’t check the bills and so….opportunity awaited.

Back in November when I was traveling back and forth to another state to be with his parents before his mother died, I was home one night and he walked behind me in the kitchen without my hearing a sound.  This always annoys me, highly, how quiet he is, and I remember thinking, “He is so sneaky.  I am sure he is doing/has done sneaky things that I don’t know about.”  Of course follows the old, “The quiet ones are the ones to watch out for,” which I have observed to be true, more times that I am willing to count. Even if it is just walking quietly, it’s just plain  sneaky.

That night, he printed 12 months of phone bills where I was able to see when she first began to call him, say, a month after he had the phone activated.  There are several numbers from her area code, one from her residence, one from her mother or sister’s residence in another city, two from another city and 2 cell phone numbers.  They spent a lot of time on the phone in fact, he clearly spent much more time talking to her than he did to me during that time, when he was working extra long hours, which as far as I know, he was…but he managed to steal away some time for her in his day.  Many, many, many days.

This went on for a few months and then all of a sudden, her calls disappeared.  This apparently occurred when her husband discovered the affair and began to threaten my husband via email.  At that time, it apparently occurred to my husband that this affair was really not such a good idea.  Maybe he realized he could get hurt, because it sure as **** was not on my behalf that he began to behave himself.

A few weeks passed and a number began recurring on the bills…all zeros marked “Blocked.”  The first call was a 40 minute call. 1, 1, 5, 2, 18 minute calls.  I don’t know what is up with these calls, yet.

SO.  I conclude that this very phone is the means of their primary contact with all of the hours they racked up.  I asked him if this had been the case and he confirmed that it had been.

I now carry the phone in my pocket, but am unsure what to do when it rings with a number withheld call.  Is her husband calling my husband, again, or is she using her husband’s phone to call my husband?

In any case, I’m agitated, agitated enough to talk about some other issues this morning and how they relate to his decision to have an affair, the way he thinks and how he views my part in our marriage.  He doesn’t agree with me or see that much of our marriage has been conducted on his terms and when he dismissed me last night, telling me that he didn’t think he could block her numbers on his Blackberry and besides, since she hadn’t called since he cut her off in December, then, he didn’t think she would call at all.

Yeah, likethatchangeseverything.He also didn’t think he’d have an affair when he knew I’d object to his connecting with her on Facebook.  He thoughthe could handle it.  He has been wrong other times and guess what?  Whether he is right or wrong in this case he should do it solely on the basis that I have asked.