I've never personally understood why someone would NOT want to gain the TRUTH about what's going on in their marraige, and -- by extension -- in their family. Yes, I do get the "some people can't handle the truth" thing, but for those I usually either advocate that they LEARN to better handle it, or, they only check the intel, say, 1x/week or 2x/month, OR, they ask a trusted third party to monitor the raw intel for them and report to them only what is needed.
From my personal archives:
On snooping “makes you nuts” – I say just the opposite! :
You know, it's funny, but every time I get into one of our frequent "Snooping is bad!" debates around here (I am very pro-intel, as you all know), one of the arguments that the anti-snooping crowd always give is, basically, "It'll make you nuts!"
I contend just the opposite. Us humans are wired to fear -- to "go nuts" -- over the UNKNOWN, not the KNOWN.
Ronald Reagan said, of the Soviets, "Trust -- but verify." It is in that verification that we can either find STRENGTH AND PEACE OF MIND (if nothing is going on), or KNOWLEDGE AND DISCERNMENT about the right course of action (if something is).
For the life of me, I can't see anything wrong with that.
Pro’s and Con’s of “Snooping”:
1. to verify initially whether or not there is infidelity involved in your sitch, so that you can attack it appropriately.
2. to establish evidence/grounds for a possible divorce action if yours is a "fault" state.
3. to gather evidence for a possible custody battle, and to help you make a determination as to whether or not you SHOULD go for custody (is the cheating spouse engaging in risky behavior that would make them a poor parent in their current state).
4. to determine what it is that OM/OW is providing your spouse, so that you may begin to better provide it. To determine what OM/OW is doing that ticks your spouse off, so that you can avoid those behaviors.
5. as an early warning system for any possible financial or legal threats.
6. to monitor what outside pressures are having an affect on your spouse (her parents, her friends, your adult children, etc.).
7. to determine if the affair has gotten physical (medical risk).
8. to verify no-contact once no-contact and transparency have been agreed to as part of reconciliation.
9. to determine the extent to which you believe OM/OW may be a risk to your spouse and/or your family (ex.: abuse, unstable behavior, etc.).
10. to expose deceitful tactics of the cheating spouse which, if unverified, may lead you to make false assumptions and tactical errors (ex.: cheating spouse says they want to go to MC to try to work on reconciling the marriage, but they confide to a BF that they are only doing it to buy time while they squirrel away marital assets to be used on a divorce).
Those are some "pro's" just off the top of my head.
On the "con" side, all I can come up with is:
1. If you don't control your emotions, you may not be able to handle it.
I'm sorry, this whole "snooping is BAD!" thing, to me, is just one of those mantras that gets mindlessly repeated, until it becomes part of the official catechism, without stopping to consider the real merits of it.
Puppy
I suppose you can safely try "2b", regardless of the accuracy of the sitch, but you'd HAVE to have good intel to try "2a," and since some form of "2a" is what almost every infidelity expert out there (Glass, Tupy, Harley, McGraw, et al) recommends when dealing with an affair, you'd HAVE to know the truth about OM/OW.
