I'll agree with that completely.

If we are all equally searching and working for what we want, the results will work themselves out.

High five to you, /u/robesta, as another brother who still lays the pipe with the ex-wife on occasion.

Why not. It's just sex!

And now that I read your question fully...no. I didn't pull-up the phone number from the contact. I need to match them up to be certain. Thank you for stimulating my thinking.

I do understand what you're (hamster is) saying.

'just deleting messages from the step daughter'

operative word, 'just'

The question remains, WHY? With the agreed on policy of open phones, etc., WHY have a secret from your husband? Regarding HER adult step-daughter? That's a pretty weak relationship to the husband. What possible activity could be between those two that hubby SHOULDN'T know about?

Ultimately, we can come down to the fact that if she is hiding something (from her husband), it is because SHE thinks she has a good reason to believe that if her husband knew what she was hiding, the situation would be worse for her than if her husband were ignorant of what she's hiding. And THAT, given the inherent opposition between male/female mating strategies, seems to be what you're missing.

My first instinct is to tell him to try to bang the stepdaughter.

That'd cure this problem once and for all.

Maybe you have a more personal experience with trust, and how it might have hurt you.

This isn't about me. It's about a guy whose wife is censoring/deleting text messages from her phone in violation of her understanding with her husband.

More to my point, if you are in a relationship with a woman, there are only two outcomes.

People are not static. A person that you can trust completely today may change over time into someone you cannot.

If you are with the type of girl who may and will cheat

They're all not cheaters on day one. Some stay that way. Some don't. There's no registry or crystal ball to know which one you got and she may not know either.

no amount of text or email reading will prevent that

True, but discovering it will give you a chance to know your situation and act accordingly. Not knowing prevents that.

your incessant checking, surveillance, and lack of trust

Wha??? I never said any of that. I specifically said check for fire if you smell smoke.

You are placing women (or spouses) on a special pedestal here. If I had an employee that I had good reason to believe was stealing from me, I'd put a tap on his work phones in nothing flat. And so would any good businessperson. If you are working with a business partner and they might be colluding to take your designs elsewhere, maybe you encrypt them. If your kids are acting up, you monitor what they do to follow up and keep them safe from whatever is going on with them.

If the NSA does it, it violates our rights, but if a husband does it, it's perfectly fine?

You're comparing legality to whether it's 'nice', so that's not very meaningful. As for the legality aspect, obviously one has to be wary of the law regarding surveillance. But if you read up on the law, you might be surprised what is perfectly legal when the other person is your spouse. For non-spouses, obviously monitoring is probably not going to be legal, so yeah, that's probably a very bad idea. That's why I said "Wait 'til it's your wife."

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