snooping

Old 02-01-2016, 04:36 PM
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snooping

Yup. I did it. Trying to figure out if A is going to pay agreed upon support.

And I see that he's about to lose his job. Already has interviews lined up. He's using divorce as his illness excuse at current job. Not really flying. I kind of felt pity (I know I know).

I know it's not my problem per say. Ugh I just had hopes of actually getting some child support.

I haven't spoken with him in a couple weeks now. Guess you could say he's not really visiting DS 2 either. Makes me sad but DS seems to be handling everything pretty well.

Should I ask him about the money?? Or just contact the attny?

Ugh ugh ugh
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Old 02-01-2016, 04:41 PM
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I'd stop snooping, if I were you. I'm not sure what you're doing or how you're doing it, but some of that stuff is illegal, and it's a bit too close to stalking for my comfort. How would you like it if he were doing that to YOU? Checking up to see what's going on in your personal life? I know you think you have a good reason, but he might have reasons that sound good to him.

Your snooping won't get you any closer to collecting child support. It's only got your mind churning.

If he loses his job, the court will still impute income to him. The arrears will accrue until he's able to make payments.

So knock off the snooping--you'll be better off for it.
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Old 02-01-2016, 04:48 PM
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Don't snoop-stick to your side of the street.
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Old 02-01-2016, 05:31 PM
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you admit to snooping....and then making grand assumptions on what you think you know. i agree with Lex.....if HE was doing that to YOU how would that feel???

altho you stated it was JUST to check his ability to maybe pay support....this was revealed : I kind of felt pity (I know I know).

thus i suspect your motives may be a teensy bit suspect.....regardless, leave other people's personal lives alone. as you wish yours to be.
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Old 02-01-2016, 05:45 PM
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Man, HHTexas, I get it. I understand the desire to look for information. (See http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...ns-us-all.html) Yeah, looking in my case didn't turn up anything helpful - just got me even more angry at him than I had been. I'm sorry it didn't turn up anything helpful for you either.

It it were me, I wouldn't say anything to AXH about the money, because it wouldn't do any good any way.
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Old 02-01-2016, 06:28 PM
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Sorry, just realized I was vague. He left an old cell phone behind and one of his 1000 email accounts is linked up to it. I was wrong, regardless. Honestly, sometimes I kind of wonder if he's alive. Guess he is.
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Old 02-01-2016, 06:48 PM
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Detachment is so hard specially with kids.

Next time you want to find out something about him, come post here first.

Big hug to you.
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Old 02-01-2016, 06:56 PM
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Throw away his old phone, mail it to him, or return it to the cell phone provider. There's no reason for you to be reading his emails.

Lest I sound holier than thou, I did the same thing when my last ex left his email account open, to which I had access on my computer. I actually emailed some woman he was talking to, to inform him he was a liar (he wasn't cheating, this was after we split up). It made me feel creepy and I told him to close the account.

I get the temptation, but no good ever comes of it. Ever.
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Old 02-01-2016, 07:19 PM
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Have to say I have done similar things. Lurking on FB, only to discover that the AXH is telling everyone how great he is doing now that he has no cause to be angry anymore. That he is a much better person now. Like he was before he married.
GRRR.
All that I accomplished was to twist myself into knots. So, I work on minding my own business now.
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Old 02-02-2016, 06:30 AM
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Oh HH, I was the queen snooper. It was the single most destructive behavior I engaged in, and it took me a looooong time to figure that out and find ways to just stop.

Knowing this information does not accomplish a single thing for you. There is nothing you or your attorney can do to make sure he keeps his job. The excuses he is giving his employer are his. You have zero control over this situation. Like Lexie said, if he loses his job a judge will just impute income to him and what he owes you will just start to accrue. Once he is working again, he would be required to make his regular support payment, plus a payment on the amount that has accrued.

I totally get the urge to snoop. Many of us are raised to believe that knowledge is power, and so the more we know about our alcoholic qualifiers, the more power we must have in the situation. Sadly, that is totally wrong. The only thing "information gathering" accomplished for me was to make me physically ill from the stress of the whole thing. I discovered some very hurtful things via snooping, but NONE of those things were what finally made me leave. I had already suspected every single one of those hurtful things, and having "evidence" of them didn't make me any more likely to finally just trust my gut. The snooping just created an increased need to snoop...to find out everything I could...it was wrong, and invasive, and completely disrespectful of my STBXAH's right to have his privacy and live his life as he pleased. And it turned me into an absolutely crazy human being.

((HUGS)) to you. I agree that the best thing to do is to get rid of that phone, and start working on strategies to end the snooping behavior.
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Old 02-02-2016, 07:00 AM
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I mentioned this in another post yesterday, ending a relationship for a codependent is similar to an alcoholic quitting drinking.

In the beginning the alcoholic tells themselves they can go into the bar for just “one”. And as they sit and sip that drink they convince themselves of their entitlement to have another and another.

Kind of like when we snoop, we get the “thought” in our heads until we give in and snoop then we convince ourselves of our entitlement to do so.

It’s a fair assumption to say that the mortal enemy of addicts/alcoholics is “accountability”. When we accept that, we stop having expectations for anything different and that “need” to snoop ceases.
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Old 02-02-2016, 07:09 AM
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When I blocked my ex on Facebook, I did it for two reasons: 1) to prevent him from spying on me, AND 2) to prevent my own snooping behavior and reading his posts to other people. I came to realize that his goofing around as if nothing was going on, him messaging my cousin, and only writing LOL would simply send me through the roof. The less you know about him, the better.
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Old 02-02-2016, 07:17 AM
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Yeah, snooping...when its there in your face its hard to ignore, kind of like a plate of fresh baked cookies sitting in front of you and you're asked not to eat even one. But, no matter the temptation, the snooping always does more harm than good to the snoopee -- at least it did for me. It gave me more anxiety and who the crud needs more anxiety??
In regards to child support or any other payments he is suppose to be giving you monthly, I'd be in contact with a lawyer that way you don't have to have personal contact with him and heap more anxiety on yourself than is necessary.
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Old 02-02-2016, 07:28 AM
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Stop snooping, you are only hurting yourself.

It's likely he would not know what to tell you at this point anyways. If he has interviews lined up, that's good, he will be employed. Unless he has a crystal ball, I am sure he has no idea if they will come through or not.

I say all of this kindly. I usto snoop. I have blocked my X and his now wife on FB, and I schredded all passwords, etc that I had to get into his stuff. I even went so far as to suggest we both change our passwords to everything, and we did. That bought me a lot of peace, it also took away my ability to snoop.

Many hugs, we get it. Truly.
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Old 02-02-2016, 07:47 AM
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Hugs! I think that as much as I blame xAH for making me crazy at times (or the alcoholism and abuse that is) I made myself crazy with snooping and trying to predict the trouble he was creating for himself and our family... Knowing what he was up to never eased the chaos he created...

But I would be lying to say I hadn't done it too-- Is there a friend you can call when you are inclined to check up on him? Or a therapist you could talk to?

I found that owning up to it with my therapist like 3 years ago and being able to talk through how dysfunctional it was, was all it took to bring it to an end... But it was a hard habit to break...

And my snooping was things like checking his hiding spots for booze, looking in his car, scouring our joint bank statements for suspicious purchases etc....
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Old 02-02-2016, 10:00 AM
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OK. Ya'll may shun me here but I'm here to help as much as everyone else is.

When I was going through my nightmare of a life with my ex, I found that the only way to act on information was to have valid information. And any information coming out of the mouth of an addict was unreliable.

Are you drinking? No.

Are you cheating? No.

Are you at work late? Yes

If all you have is their word to act on, you'd never have any way to prepare your path out of this.

If you detach, which trust me is a good thing to do, you still have the dilemma of acting on valid information. I couldn't accuse my ex of lying, if I didn't have proof she was.

So gathering information to develop a plan to protect yourself, to me, is just as important as having that plan.

How are we to know anything, if everything we want to know about is off limits? Except what they want us to see.

My ex only wanted me to see the e-mails she wanted me to see. At no time did she want me to see other accounts she had and didn't admit to having. Or the phone calls she wanted me to see, not the calls taking place on her "work" phone.

The list is long. They spend a LOT of time developing their alternative worlds, that we aren't allowed to see.

I'm sorry, but if I am in a relationship with someone, I feel I have a right to know what they are doing at times that don't make sense. If they don't grant me that right, we have a beginning to a problem.

In my case, I developed a strong case based on REAL things that were taking place. I didn't even need to tell her what I learned. All that would have done is been turned into "How dare I violate her privacy.....blah...blah...blah."

We get tired of being a mushroom.

A mushroom lives in the dark and gets fed sh** to live off of.

If left up to the addict, we'd be a mushroom for as long as they could feed us, and then they'd eat us.

Sorry...but sometimes we have to do some things that aren't normal, when we are living in an abnormal environment.
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Old 02-02-2016, 10:10 AM
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Hangn, HH and her husband are already divorcing. This is not a situation where she is trying to decide whether she should stay in the relationship. I do agree with you that in some situations, we need to at the very least keep our antennae up when we are still IN the relationship and avoid just swallowing the BS hook, line, and sinker. But there is a definite line between being aware of what is going on, and going through someone's email and text messages without their consent. You don't have to snoop or spy on someone to know you're being lied to. I would suggest that if a relationship is at a place where one or both parties feel the need to do that (or that they have a RIGHT to do that), the relationship is probably very unhealthy already. It is also my belief that those of us who were pathological snoopers lived under the illusion that if we found "proof," it would finally be what we needed to leave. But most of us DIDN'T leave, which to me demonstrates that the "proof" didn't mean anything at all. If it did, we all would have walked out the door the very second we found the very first instance of "proof" that we were being cheated on, or lied to, or whatever. The fact that most of us do NOTHING with all the proof we amass during our snooping to me says that it was never about finding proof of anything in the first place. And I CERTAINLY never convinced my STBXAH to acknowledge that I was "right" about anything by confronting him with whatever proof I found. And when he accused me of violating his privacy by snooping? He was absolutely right. I WAS violating his privacy. Yes, he was hiding things from me. But I knew that without snooping. It took me a full 18 months to actually leave after I stopped snooping. Because the snooping and the leaving had nothing to do with one another.

That is why I believe snooping is very much a symptom of the need to control. I am glad that I have come to a place in my life where I can identify a desire to snoop as something dysfunctional that serves no real purpose in my life, and that I can acknowledge that if a relationship leaves me wanting to snoop all the time, there is either something still very wrong with ME that requires reflection and recovery work, and/or something very wrong with the relationship.

And then there's the fact that if someone were to raise the issue in court that the other party in a divorce is snooping/stalking/spying, judges often do NOT like that, and it hurts the snooper's credibility. That's not something I would want to risk in a divorce from an addict when minor children are involved. I would want to make damn sure I had as much credibility as possible while I'm trying to make sure my kids had every protection they need.

Just my opinion. As always, YMMV.
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Old 02-02-2016, 12:10 PM
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That is very true Hangnbyathread, yet the question is how much validation and proof do we exactly need to stop being that mushroom? Because codependents live in denial, then we snap out of it shortly, then denial again, then we snoop out more "proof," then we deny the proof because the truth is too painful to handle. Snooping may become a vicious cycle leading to nowhere. For me, the urge itself to feel like snooping on someone is a HUGE red flag. If I do not trust him and want to snoop, why bother being in a relationship? My spidey senses are already telling me something.
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Old 02-02-2016, 01:09 PM
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There are two sides to the "snoop". I agree with Hangn, if there is reason to suspect and you are in a serious relationship then - yes. Think your partner is sleeping with someone else? I'd say that's something worth finding out.

In this situation its inappropriate for a myriad of reasons. What has come out of snooping is "sympathy" for the ex. If he doesn't pay support, then file your contempt and move forward.

I think its normal to be curious about the father of your child. I would advise to throw the phone away - you'll be happier for it and won't get anchored with sympathy OR fear worried about what's happening.
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Old 02-02-2016, 01:13 PM
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Originally Posted by healthyagain View Post
That is very true Hangnbyathread, yet the question is how much validation and proof do we exactly need to stop being that mushroom? Because codependents live in denial, then we snap out of it shortly, then denial again, then we snoop out more "proof," then we deny the proof because the truth is too painful to handle. Snooping may become a vicious cycle leading to nowhere. For me, the urge itself to feel like snooping on someone is a HUGE red flag. If I do not trust him and want to snoop, why bother being in a relationship? My spidey senses are already telling me something.
If you already in that relationship, and things don't feel right, and they begin to convince you, you are the problem, then you can either get out and never know. Or get out and know, that there were reasons, well founded and verified reasons (because you snooped) why you needed to be sure you acted on the right information.

Trust me I didn't like having to go there. But when I did and it revealed the truth.

That truth set me free.

Had I never "snooped", I'd probably still be depressed, feeling crazy, blaming myself, and hearing how I was the ongoing problem.

Yes I saw e-mails she didn't plan on me seeing.

Yes I saw phone calls and text she didn't want me to know about.

Yes I used these to catch her red handed.

No I have no regrets that I learned the truth. Once I learned it, I acted quickly, with no remorse, and no unresolved feelings.

No I don't ever want to feel compelled to feel like it was a needed action with anyone else in my life......ever.
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