“AITA for divorcing my wife after finding her late night walks had a specific destination?”

I am writing this because I’m struggling with how everything went down and need a sanity check.

Background: My wife (43F) and I (43M) were married for 16 years. Unfortunately, we grew apart. I was not blameless in that.

It took two to get us into the position we were in. We were great with our kids (10, 13) but had fallen into a pattern of “trading off” parenting duties rather than parenting together. I switched to a job a few years ago that allowed me to work from home 2-3 days a week, and this seemed to make things worse. It was like we were separated but living in the same house.

I tried to repair our marriage, but she seemed increasingly resentful of the time I tried to spend with her. It normally ended in her yelling at me and storming off (I admit I may be a lot to deal with). I am not confrontational and normally shut down and try to ignore her when she did this. I know that this is a bad way of dealing with it and I am working on this. I was very, very depressed but trying to work through it.

Toward mid-December, she started taking late-night walks after we put the kids to bed. I tried to give her space for “her time,” and even offered to join her, but she preferred to go alone. I usually stayed up for her, frustrated or worried. I even bought her protective lights to keep her safe as the roads in our area do not have lights or sidewalks.

The Event: Fast forward to Jan 5th. She left at about 11 PM. It was 28 degrees outside. By 2:26 AM, she still wasn’t back. I texted asking if she was still walking—no response for 10 minutes. I called; it rang once, then voicemail.

So, I did something butt-holey… I used the “Find My Phone” feature. I had never done this before, and I know it was an invasion of privacy, but a 4-hour walk in freezing weather until 3 AM felt completely abnormal. I was worried for her, but honestly I was also frustrated and angry. I thought I could drive to her and bring her home. However, the location confused me. It showed her at a house in our neighborhood.

Within a minute of me checking, two things happened:

1. She texted me saying she was “almost home.”
2. When I refreshed the map, her location services were turned off.

When she returned, I asked her where she was, and she said “out walking.” I confronted her with the screenshot. She claimed she “may have walked down that street” (which is a 30-minute walk from our house) but couldn’t say for sure. She insisted she was not in any house and the map must have “locked on” to that location. I felt used and lied to. I slept on the couch.

Asking for advice: She continued to deny everything, saying the phone was not accurate. She was my wife and I wanted to believe her but I needed advice. So, I turned to the best source of wisdom: the internet, and the comments were… brutal. Brutal, but helpful. I took another look at the location data and realized two things:

1. I had been to the house before. It was saved in my phone as the home of one of my daughter’s friends who lived with her single dad.
2. It showed that she was logged into his WiFi.

The next night, as she was getting ready for a walk, I confronted her again. I told her I knew who she was with and about the WiFi. She finally admitted she was at the house, but claimed they were “just friends” and she needed someone to talk to.

We live a 20-minute drive from her sister, mother, and other friends, but she claimed she saw his light on while walking and decided to hang out. At this point, I was very angry and told her we were done.

The next weekend: Throughout the week things were very tense, she accused me of not trusting her, trying to control her and not letting her have friends. Six days later, on Saturday, she left early to go “shopping.” I took the kids and the dog for a walk at a local park. After about a mile, we looked ahead and saw a family approaching us. It was my wife, walking with this guy and his kid, holding the guy’s hand.

She wasn’t wearing her glasses, so we got fairly close before she noticed. When she spotted us, she actually ducked behind him and turned around to walk in the other direction. I did the same so we wouldn’t make a scene. My kids asked why we were walking away from Mommy, and I just told them we would ask her later.

She came home hours later, furious at me for being at that park. Her car was not in the car park, so how was I supposed to know? She yelled at me and then lied to the kids, telling them she just “bumped into him” and didn’t see us.

The end: I was done. I decided I could not trust anything she said and told her I was applying for a divorce. I know I could have tried to work through it, but honestly, why? I was always the “repairer” of our relationship, and I just could not let this go.

She called me every name she could think of. She said I was controlling (I don’t think I am), accused me of cheating when I worked long hours (I didn’t), and accused me of watching [spicy] videos (I plead the fifth). I did slow-walk the divorce for months, hoping she would propose counseling or try to make amends, but she did nothing.

I am not the good guy in this. I did invade her privacy by tracking her phone, I did chose to file for divorce rather than to continue to try to make things work, I could have worked harder and insisted on counseling before we split. We do have kids and I have heard of people putting up with each other until the kids leave the house, but that would have been another eight years.

So, AITA for divorcing my wife after finding her late night walks had a specific destination?

This is what people had to say to OP:

Far-Ad1450 said:

NTA She cheated on you and lied to you about it. Then she tried to blame you and has obviously made you feel like the bad guy. If she is unwilling to admit fault and hasn’t asked you to try therapy with her, you can’t really continue to stay married. I’m sorry this happened to you and your children.

Based on what you wrote, you did nothing wrong. If my husband was unreachable after midnight, and I had the option to search his location, I absolutely would because I would be worried about his safety. She could have been injured. If she wasn’t doing something wrong, she would have been apologizing for making you worry. Don’t let her turn her own guilt back on you.

Yveqk said:

NTA She’s trying to deflect blame onto you. Also, I personally don’t think you invaded her privacy. She was out in a walk in freezing temperatures for 2+ hours. It’s reasonable you’d be worried, even if you admit you were also angry and frustrated. Is reasonable you’d check where she was to see if she was safe or maybe needed to drive to her or something.

Brilliant-Fail-4753 said:

NTA absolutely not. And it’s not an invasion of privacy because the find my iPhone you have to send to another iPhone to be able to track she gave that to you so you can look at any point you want

Tasty-Adhesiveness66 said:

NTA, she is gaslighting you and the kids and is covering her cheating habits.

advice-reader said:

NTA you only did what any would do after having such bad experiences and suspicions , never stay for the kids I say that as a mother myself it only makes things worse for them later down the line … explain gently to them and make sure to explain both sides , never bad mouth your soon to be ex or anything of the sort kill her with kindness for the kids and yourself 💕

A week later, OP shared this update:

Thank you for everyone for all of the comments. I am amazed at the number of responses! I tried to read through all of the comments and really appreciate your words. I wanted to start by addressing some of them and then provide an update.

Comment: [Why did you put up with this for a year/the original post is from a year ago?] – This happened last January, I asked for a divorce about a week afterwards. I am just getting around to posting this now (December).

Comment: Why didn’t you confront the guy? – Okay if you mean physically confront him, no. Honestly, I do not blame him. He did not tempt her or trick her and had no promise to me apart from common decency. If my ex could convince me that this was made up then I have no idea what she told him.

Comment: [this is obvious / What kind of a ….. are you? / You should have seen this?] – Yes, I agree in hindsight it is obvious. But when you are in a relationship for 16 years you really, really trust the other person, or at least think you do. I really had no proof that she was cheating apart from these events.

The change in the relationship was gradual but at the end I found myself friendless and isolated, with really only one source of truth, who was telling me that I was crazy. I still loved her and she was still telling me that she loved me. To me that meant something. Finally, I have heard that people repair relationships with counselling even after cheating, or stay together because of the kids.

But there were signs… Oh there were signs, one of my biggest fights with the ex was before Christmas. We were decorating the house with the kids and some of their friends, including the guys daughter. My ex was not helping, I think she was decorating another part of the house, so I left the last of the tree decorations for us to do together and told her so.

I went upstairs to put away some laundry and when I came down the last of the decorations were on the tree and another guy, the same guy, was putting the star on the top of the tree, my tree, with a big grin on his face.

I was so angry, but I did not want to yell in front of the kids. When I confronted her later she said that it was not a big deal, I was being weird, I was not there and anyway *he is taller* and so it is easier for him.

So for an update: It is now December the following year and the documents are signed. I will be divorced in a few weeks. The process was horribly painful, but I am happier than I have been in years.

It was tough at first, I made the decision to cut off all of our joint friends. I did not want them to take sides, though this was probably unhealthy. Since I do not have family in the country was alone, feeling like a failure and a reject. I was spiraling fast. Fortunately, I did get help in time and found a wonderful therapist who helped me and does not take any bull…poop.

The divorce took a long time. My ex had knee surgery in Feb and I took care of her as best I could. I was trying to still be a good husband and figure things out, but things became worse and worse. I did still love her, but my ex made no attempt at reconciliation in months. Finally my therapist told me, “she does not want you any more, leave her alone” and it finally sank in that we were done.

My therapist encouraged me to start taking notes every time I spoke to my ex and showed me how to set boundaries in communicating only via text or email. This drove my ex crazy, but ended all of the “confusion” about what was said in the past. My ex still refuses to use a shared parenting schedule which has caused no end of trouble, but we have a system documented in our divorce doc.

I tried to make the divorce as simple as possible with my ex, but it did not work. We went through two mediation services, both she walked away from until I finally lawyered up. She tried to give me visitation rights instead of join custody of our kids. She refused to pay any bills while living in the house, except for some groceries.

She tried to trick me into giving her the house and paying off the remaining mortgage. She agreed to take half of our pets but ended up abandoning them in the house (I kept them.) She refused to pay any of our shared debt. She finally moved out and among other things took every stitch of clothes for the kids, leaving me with nothing.

My worst experience was with the sale of the house. It was truly the closing from hell. I attended the closing while my ex was vacationing with her family. We had discussed the proceeds being split 50/50 but when I saw the documents she had sent to the closing agent I was shocked to see that she had requested that 100% of the funds be sent to her account.

I called her and she was furious that I “disturbed her on the beach” and told me to just sign it. What followed was three hours of me calling her, the escrow agent calling her and our realtor calling her while we tried to keep the buyers in the room. All she had to do was send an email from her phone with the updated instructions.

I had to choose between trying to claw the money back later or walking away from the sale. Finally my lawyers spoke to her lawyers with the intent of suing her for any future closing costs and decrease in sale price of the home. She relented and we were able to sell the house.

As I said it is now December and the divorce is almost final. I am happy an comfortable with my menagerie of pets, who are a lot to manage, but I love dearly, especially my wonderful, opinionated, husky. I have a great relationship with my kids. With the advice of his therapist I told my son (14) what happened.

We had some difficult conversations but it brought us closer. I decided not to try to reconnect with my old friends. One tried to yell at me in front of my own kids and others helped my ex move. I have no idea what my ex has been telling them, but only one reached out to ask how I was doing.

Bizarrely enough I will miss my mother-in-law who was a dear lady and a gem. I now have a great group of friends that match my weird energy.

It might surprise people but after over nine months of denial my ex and this guy are officially together. I wish him the best of luck. As for me I wanted to wait until the papers were signed before I asked anyone out and I have a date this weekend with a very nice lady. My first date in sixteen years. It’s been a hell of a year, but I think I’m finally ready for my second act.