The Fog Of Whore

The Fog of War is often used in computer strategy games to hide the position of enemy units unless within the current line of sight of your own units. This is to mimic the reality of warfare where you don’t know where enemy units are, unless you’ve scouted their position out.

The Fog of Whore is the lies, bullshit, deceit and misdirection an unfaithful spouse uses on the unwitting faithful spouse, when an affair is in progress or being considered. Affairs require secrecy. And yes indeed, your good, moral, sweet, loyal and, not meaning this to sound like a cheap shot on the religious… even your Christian spouse can be laying on the manure two feet deep.

So…. having caught her husband in an emotional affair…

Reader:  So, back to the point. I snoop, multiple times a day, at work, etc. Again, I’m just so wary of being burned. I haven’t found anything. I don’t think I will find anything. He has a government e-mail account which he cannot delete or change (because, duh, it’s a government account). I’ve explained to him that even if she did e-mail him, I won’t hold that against him– only if he were to respond. I feel like a crazy person. And it’s only a matter of time until his patience wears thin. He understands to me this was emotional cheating, but I know he doesn’t really believe it was cheating, and that I have blown it out of proportion.

What is reasonable in a situation like this? Where is the line between paranoid, obsessive stalking and reasonable self-defense drawn?

Athol: The line between paranoid obsessive stalking and reasonable self-defense is very blurry, simply because reasonable self-defense snooping will make you feel totally paranoid and obsessive. Then because you now feel paranoid and obsessive… you can’t stop snooping. The only way to feel trusting again, is to actually trust and not snoop. Your feelings follow your actions.

I do advise people who suspect their partner is involved with someone else to actively seek to find out if there is someone else… by which I mean snoop. However I always warn them that they will feel extremely anxious and paranoid when they do so. So whatever snooping you do shouldn’t turn into an endless stakeout.

There’s also no perfect solution here either. If you do snoop, you’re paranoid and controlling. If you don’t snoop, you risk not catching the affair in progress. Plus people engaged in affairs or considering them create a great deal of distraction and always attempt to hide the affair from discovery, so a merely casual investigation isn’t likely to find much of anything.

My general advice is if you get a nagging sense that something isn’t right, check into things thoroughly once, and if you find nothing, stop. It’s a somewhat jaded view of things, but good people occasionally do very bad things… even to people they love… or perhaps more correctly, once loved.

Overall though, more information is better than less. Sometimes you just have to clear away the Fog of Whore.