Throwaway.
We are Middle aged.
Past:We were friends in college. Wife (then friend) was in LDR. BF was studying in another city. He cheated with a friend of his. Eventually came clean as he was trying to move forward with his friend. Then married someone else the year after.
It caused a lot of damage and i helped wife to pick up the pieces.
We got together 2yrs later. Married 2yrs after that.
A year after we married i found some pics on wife’s laptop of ex and his young family. They were saved from SM.
I was NOT happy. When i asked wife, she was evasive.
According to her the pics didn’t really mean anything and she was just angry so looked him up.
She said something along the lines of hating him for what he put her through and that he did not deserve the happiness now.
My view was(is) that it was clear as day that she hadn’t really moved on and was holding on to the past.
Was it not enough that she already had her own life, being married to someone she claimed to love dearly. Then why would she go intentionally digging up graves from your past in order to get upset and hurt about it. It felt like she could not be happy about what she had going on in her own life and was still holding on what may have been.
I know my wife and she wouldn’t intentionally hurt me. I felt like the consolation prize she settled for. I love my wife but this was too much.
Plus this was just creepy as hell to stalk exes and worse, families.
We got nowhere with the fight and I let go of it.
Note: We hadn’t consummated our marriage(She had intimacy issues). Also, she was away on work for 6 months by choice.
Conflict. FF over a decade.
A few months back i was in my wife’s phone (i have full access) and saw a recent message from the ex. I went through it. He had reached out six years back on her birthday. After that they have been chatting regularly and been meeting up for lunch everytime we visit the city he lives in (We live in a different country now and visit for a few weeks every year as we have family there). Everything was hush-hush, even their mutual friends are not aware of this.
When i brought it up my wife said he was "just a friend" and as she was not doing anything wrong, she had made the decision to meet him. She said I was jealous and if i trusted her then i should stay out of it.
Knowing her i know that she is not one to be unaffected. Or that she may not still have strong feelings as the pictures incident suggests, which happened 5yrs after they broke up and an year after we married.
Wife had been asking to move to the city to be near family for a few years, i had been reluctant.
She brought this up again now when we visited last month and i am open to the idea.
I not thrilled about the Ex being a more constant presence in my life if we moved back. I don’t want any presense of his in our lives.
Given the history, my view is she poisoned the waters. Am i jealous or being gaslit.