I (27F) made the worst mistake of my life when I hired a PI two years ago and my husband (27M) recently found out. What can I do to save my marriage and family?

A 27-year-old woman admits to making a huge mistake by hiring a private investigator two years ago to investigate her husband after her best friend’s accusations of infidelity. Although the investigation confirmed her husband’s fidelity, she kept it a secret from him.

Recently, her husband found out and is now distant, hurt by her lack of trust and dishonesty. She feels terrible and is seeking advice on how to rebuild trust and save her marriage.

‘ I (27F) made the worst mistake of my life when I hired a PI two years ago and my husband (27M) recently found out. What can I do to save my marriage and family?’

I (27F) have been with my husband (27M) for four years and married for a little over two and we have a 16 month old son. Two years ago, very soon after our honeymoon, we found out two things – the first being that I was pregnant and the second being that my best friend broke up with her fiance during our honeymoon since he cheated on her.

She went spiraling and was convinced that my husband was also cheating on me. I never had any reason to suspect my husband and I told her that she was projecting her own relationship onto mine and threatened to cut her off if she didn’t stop. She never stopped and being in the initial stage of my first pregnancy,

I was having a tough time thinking straight and I ended up hiring a private investigator to look into my husband for a month, including an out of state business trip. The PI had zero evidence of my husband being unfaithful and assured me of my husband’s fidelity. I immediately cut off my best friend and ever since,

I have regretted hiring the PI. I never told my husband since he literally did nothing wrong and gave me no reason to suspect him and he doesn’t deserve to feel that he did something wrong. I’ve been the most loving, affectionate, and caring wife I could be and everything in our relationship has been great.

I’ve fallen even deeper in love with him seeing him become a father for the first time and how well he took care of me and showered me with love during and after the pregnancy. My husband and I both got new phones very soon after the PI’s investigation but he kept the old phones.

Yesterday, we were talking about some old memories and pictures on our old phones. When he charged up my old phone and went to send the pictures to our current phones, he saw a contact he didn’t recognize and it was the PI. He read the entire conversation and confronted me with it.

I admitted and gave him full details of everything. I told him that my ex-best friend was in my ear and combined with the pregnancy, I couldn’t think straight and doubted him and hired a PI to clear my concerns. I profusely apologized to him and promised that he did nothing wrong and it was a result of my own insecurities.

He didn’t raise his voice or get angry. He just said okay and kissed our son and walked out the door. He came home four hours later and when I asked where he went, he just said “Don’t worry, I wasn’t f**king someone else”. I know I hurt him by not talking to him about my insecurities two years ago and hiring a PI instead and then hiding all of this from him.

I honestly can’t relate to how he feels but I can understand how terrible it must feel to not feel trusted by the person you go to bed with every night. I tried apologizing to him and talking to him last night and this morning but he has been ignoring me. He didn’t hug or kiss me before we slept last night or before he went to work this morning.. What can I do to fix this?

Check out how the community responded:

z-eldapin −  Remember, this is two years ago for you. It is RIGHT NOW for him. Give him some space to breathe, think and process.

Bucketsdntlie −  I genuinely have no idea how I’d react if my SO had a PI stalk me for a whole month. Like how would I ever be able to look her in the eye again, knowing she was getting “status reports” from some stranger watching me eat Denny’s through his binoculars.

Give him his space, be an open book, and do not bring up your batshit crazy friend with literally zero evidence as your main excuse. His first response will be “Why did you believe her/what evidence did she have” and you’re going to look even worse.

Wardial3r −  At this point you can’t really do anything. He will either forgive you or not. Kinda up to him now. You’ve made your choices and now have to come to terms with the consequences.

soradakey −  One thing I noticed you seemed to gloss over, you mentioned how you’ve been the perfect wife ever since this happened. Your husband isn’t an i**ot, he more than likely noticed and remembers that change in behavior. He probably has spent the last 2 years under the impression that those expressions of love came from, well, a place of love.

Now he’s putting two and two together and wondering how much of that change came from love, and how much came from guilt. He’s probably reliving a lot of those special little moments that the two of you have shared since then,

and realizing that while he was staring into your eyes thinking about how much he loved you and how lucky he was to be with you, you were probably thinking about how you have to be on your best behavior and sell this moment extra hard to him.

That’s the thing people never seem to grasp until it’s much too late. Lies like this aren’t self contained in their own little environment. They spread and infect everything they touch, and at the end of the day do way more damage than you could ever realize.

Successful_Bitch107 −  Genuinely confused that so many people think this will just “blow over” – the mutual trust is gone If OP’s husband asked for a DNA test cause he wasn’t sure if OP cheated and if the baby was his or not everyone would be screaming “he doesn’t trust you, the relationship is broken!”

You can’t have a relationship without trust – it doesn’t matter which partner breaks that trust, it is still broken all the same Good luck OP, you have an uphill battle

avast2006 −  You “honestly can’t relate to how he feels?” Try this on for size: imagine that in a few weeks he comes to you and demands a paternity test. No, on second thought: to be fair, imagine he came to you back then and demanded the paternity test out of the blue.

No getting to hang your reaction on “I guess I deserved that, after the way I doubted him for no good reason.” Imagine he came to you, doubting **you** for no good reason, **before** this all blew up, and basically accused you of being a cheat and a fraud, right in the middle of your pregnancy.

You’re aware what the standard reddit response to that would be, right? Pretty much unanimous “d**p his worthless, distrustful ass. You didn’t deserve that from him.” Well, in this situation, that’s you. Reason I mention this is that it’s pretty essential that you DO understand his reaction and relate to how he feels right now,

if you hope to reconnect. If you approach this with befuddled frustration that he’s taking it so hard, you haven’t got a prayer. Beyond that you’ve done most of the right things, like cutting off the toxic friend who set you up.

There will probably be a need for couples counseling, once he’s speaking to you again. But you do need to understand, going into all of the above, that you did the equivalent of demanding a paternity test, with no probable cause.

N0b0dy-Imp0rtant −  Imagine your husband went behind your back and did a paternity test and just over a year later you found out. You would be simultaneously crushed and mad as hell. Hiring the PI tells him you did not trust him and worse you had no reason not to trust him but still didn’t.

willowdove01 −  I don’t know that there is anything you CAN do. You massively invaded his privacy, had him STALKED for a MONTH, for admittedly no reason. And what’s even worse, in my book at least, is you never told him about it.

You lied by omission since before your son together was even born, and he’s more than a year old now. Your husband will either forgive you or he won’t. If I was him, I wouldn’t.

AcrobaticLook8037 −  Moral of the storey, trust your spouse before your friends.

HandBananasRevenge −  Give him space and when he’s ready to talk, be ready to listen, and perhaps be ready to get an earful. If I were in his shoes, the biggest thing for me would be that you just went ahead and hired a PI despite having zero evidence or concerns he was cheating, and that you couldn’t even sit down and talk to him.

Instead, you listened to a friend who, either because she lost her mind because of what happened, or was being malicious, attempted to blow up your marriage (“if I can’t have it, you can’t either”). Yes, you were in a bit of a vulnerable place with the pregnancy,

but I would question why so little trust in your husband and your poor judgment as to how you handled this. And then kept it a secret. While I think your husband would have been upset about the PI either way, coming clean on your own might have been the best thing to do.

As they say, sometimes the cover up is worse than the crime. Cutting off the friend is the biggest mark in your favor in all of this, as it shows you realized what she was attempting to do and you eventually came to your senses.