I posted about a week ago with concerns over my wife’s interactions with a co-worker, and later posted an update with the outcome of our conversation. You can read about it in my profile since some subs won’t allow links to other threads.
Anyway, I did have that conversation with her and thought we put it behind us. However I still have some nagging concerns, mainly due to getting a lot of advice regarding her deleting the text thread with the co-worker. I am 99.9% sure there’s nothing there, but I since learned that iPhone retains a deleted text thread for 30 days. I have about 10 days left on that clock to ask her to retrieve the thread, and to let me more thoroughly read it.
I also wasn’t happy that, in our conversation I let some of my questions and issues slide so easily, but I was anxious to let her off the hook.
To recap, I saw a text thread where a male co-worker sent her a bitmoji of his head and upper body holding heart hands to her. There were other things that bothered me, but this is what set me off. I didn’t read the entire texting thread while I had her phone (that she had given me to read). Later that day, I decided I would like to read back on more of their thread but she said she had deleted it. I didn’t know it could be recovered at that time, and a lot of redditers said her deleting it was a red flag.
So ever since getting that advice, it’s been bugging me that she deleted the thread and that I didn’t get to read it all. However, I felt we had put it behind us (and so does she) so bringing it up again now is just picking a scab… and I already don’t like how this episode has made her look – like she misbehaved.
But now I’m thinking about asking her to get the text thread back so I can see it, but there are at least four possible outcomes and none are good:
1, she gets the thread back and there are no other problematic texts, in fact there are almost no other previous texts. This is what I expect to find, and if true it would show her I didn’t believe her when she told me there’s nothing there, and show her I don’t trust her (bad).
2, she gets the thread back and there’s a lot more texting, mostly work but also more “flirty” stuff I already saw (which she denied, so now she’s ‘in trouble’ not only for flirting but for lying – BAD).
3, she can’t get it back because she went in and double-deleted it making it impossible to recover (REALLY BAD).
4, I do nothing and let the 30 days elapse, return to my “blind trust” and never know (bad).
So what do you think? Should I ask her to try and get the thread back? Which of these possible outcomes is worse in your opinion?
Thanks for your help.
tl;dr Still need advice, whether to ask her to try and recover the deleted text thread with male co-worker, or not.