SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've posted my story here and a few updates but it's been awhile. Long story short... 3 DDays w/ same EA/PA... my discovery of weird phone behavior typically led to each DDay... been 19 months since final DDay and real reconciliation... No need to recap IC and MC, measures taken, etc. It's all been done and we've been in full R for awhile w/ no setbacks. I went through a hard period of POLF but in general I would characterize the last few months as good (as good as R can be after all we went through).

Yesterday as we were laying in bed and texting friends, I noticed my W's frequently/recently used emoji menu had some odd emojis in it. I've never really thought about this imessage feature, but I checked mine and all of the emojis that pop up here are ones that I've actually used regularly or recently. Her menu has several that she uses a lot, but it had some other weird ones that you wouldn't normally use. Now, the eggplant emoji was in there, but she actually told me a few days ago how she had accidentally sent it to me and my daughter in a groupchat and unsent it and we laughed about it. When she told me about it I didn't think a thing about it. She said "OMG did you see what I sent you and (daughter)?" I hadn't seen it, so she told me, and we laughed about how my daughter would probably think we were being dirty w/ each other and accidentally looped her in on it (our kids joke about us being so flirty w/ each other and they hate it).

So then last night when I saw her recently used emojis, that one was there, but there were others and it naturally threw my guard up. She didn't hide the phone, and I opened it back up and saw several strange ones. One was the "strong" arm one, one was the heart eyes, but the other weird ones were a calendar one and the number 2 with a blue box around it. Obviously the heart eyes and strong ones were something I wanted to check out, and when I searched for them in text history, nothing popped up in her texts that showed her typing those. Of course they wouldn't show up if those texts had been deleted. The other two (calendar and #2) seem innocuous but just... strange.

My W didn't totally freak out. She just said she didn't know why they were there, she never uses those, and didn't even really know about the recently used emoji menu. Still it got me thinking... especially why the eggplant one would even pop up as an option for her to accidentally send to my daughter and I.

I desperately don't want to go down this crazy road if there's nothing there. But I couldn't help but do a bunch of research on this feature and just can't find a valid reason for those emojis to show up in her recently used if they haven't been recently sent. I can reset her keyboard settings to delete all recent used emojis, which restores apple's default emojis to pop up, and then monitor to see if these weird ones show up again, but I haven't had the chance to do that today.

While our initial conversation last night did go sideways, with some frustration from her, this morning she explained how much she understood my triggering (and it was definitely the worst triggering I've had in months), how she feels powerless when I trigger because she knows she's being honest but understands why I still worry, and that she just wants to be able to put my mind at ease for good.

I'd love some thoughts on this situation, without the requisite "she's cheating again... leave" stuff. Just legitimate thoughts on how I can address it, anyone's experience with something similar, etc.

[This message edited by Carpenter81 at 5:44 PM, Friday, October 9th]

You describe the trigger and how it sends you on a chase down the rabbit hole, whether it’s grounded or not, it affects you deeply.

I have another thing that jumps to my eye, this one:

Yesterday as we were laying in bed and texting friends

The casual mention of this makes me think that is a normal occurrence.
Before going into it, is this something you two entertain normally?

I have another thing that jumps to my eye, this one:

Yesterday as we were laying in bed and texting friends

The casual mention of this makes me think that is a normal occurrence.
Before going into it, is this something you two entertain normally?

I just mean right before we went to bed and she was texting her friend and our daughter and I was texting some buddies about football. It's not like a daily routine. Just meant what we were doing in the moment when the issue came up.

"Where there’s smoke, there’s fire" isn’t always true.

For betrayed spouses especially, once you’ve had your reality blown apart, it can become very easy to see signs of continuation everywhere you look. Sometimes those signs matter. Sometimes they don’t.

I think the best way to approach something like this is simply as data. Nothing more, nothing less.

You saw something inconsistent with what you expected. Make a mental note of it. If more inconsistencies start appearing and a pattern develops, then you have something meaningful to address. But in isolation, I don’t think a handful of strange emojis in a "frequently used" list tells you very much.

Especially because the emoji list itself does not appear to be perfectly reliable. Apple says the section contains recently used emojis, but there are also plenty of reports of emojis remaining there for months, failing to update correctly, or otherwise behaving strangely. So I would be very hesitant to treat the contents of that list as forensic evidence of anything.

The important thing, in my opinion, is not to ignore inconsistencies, but also not to turn every inconsistency into a conclusion before there is enough information to support one.

Track the data. Watch for a pattern. Deal with the pattern if one actually forms.

Apple’s recently used emojis are all kinds of screwed up. While it will show some frequently or recently used ones, it also can populate it with ones that have never been used. The more advanced iOS gets, the more I’m seeing all kinds of weird issues and bugs.
That said, I wouldn’t discount it and I also wouldn’t necessarily bring up it to her. I would store it in memory and keep my eyes open. If there is any chance of something going on, you’re just giving her a heads up to be more careful.

I like LittleMonk's advice. Treat it as data, make a note. Don't blow it up. You having a trigger isn't a failure of reconciliation. It just happens.

I don't see a need to go into full blown detective mode, but like said above, keep an eye out for clusters.

I'm an Android User so I know nothing about iPhones other than one important thing, text messages sent from iPhone to iPhone iPhone do not go through your cellular provider, they go through Apple servers so if you were to search your cell phone bill for text message history, those texts do not show up.

ETA: you can enable a setting on the iPhone to force all text messages to go through your cellular carrier. Maybe tell your wife you need her to do this for now while you work on R?

When I became suspicious of my wife the first thing I did was check our cell bill and nothing strange. I almost gave up but my Spidey Sense was tingling so I checked her tablet midday while she was at work. Thankfully her tablet and phone were synced and that's how I discovered she was sexting with a coworker, both of them use iPhones

My wife was cognizant enough to remember to delete their messages just before leaving work in case I happened to look at her phone, no evidence.

There is a recently deleted folder on iPhones. If you go into messages and then click on edit you can find that folder and you can restore the messages. I strongly recommend you do so because wondering about it will/may cause you some issues. If your wife has nothing to hide she will have no problem with you doing this and she will understand why you are doing it

Now if she has a problem with you doing it, that's a huge red flag to me

[This message edited by WB1340 at 4:29 PM, Monday, October 12th]

Thanks for the advice, guys. At this point, I'm treating it as data. She's completely transparent with all devices and has been for the past 1.5 years now. And yeah... that imessage BS about not showing up on phone records is a B&%$#@... been down that road... should be illegal!