It was Thursday, February 28, 2013. My husband went to bed before 10:00 p.m. We used to watch the news together but he said he had to get up early as he was leaving for Vancouver in the morning for a weekend of business that involved going to Vancouver with a couple of other male coworkers to take out clients to lunches, dinners and a Vancouver Canucks game on Saturday night.

I had been spending the week already sleeping downstairs in our unrented suite due to tension in our marriage during the week. I asked him if he was going to say goodbye to me since I wouldn’t see him in the morning. My 15-year old daughter was in the room and he kind of grunted and looked disgusted as I got up to give him a hug. I said, “You don’t want to hug me goodbye?” He said begrudgingly, “You can hug me if you want to.”

That was when I felt that something was more wrong than just a bump in our marriage. I went downstairs but couldn’t sleep. Never in the 23 years that we had been dating, co-habitating and married had I ever snooped in pockets, wallets, drawers, mail, e-mail, pages, phone messages, etc. but something told me to check out his Blackberry.

It was 11:30 p.m. He was already asleep. I crept into our bedroom and went to take his Blackberry off his dresser but it wasn’t in its usual spot. He always charges it in the kitchen so I checked the counter and it wasn’t there either. I decided to just go back downstairs. On my way down I noticed the light on in my 15-year old daughter’s room. She always falls asleep with the light on so I opened her door to turn it off. She was still awake. She said she couldn’t sleep and for me to leave her light on. We talked for a minute and then I left her room and shut her door. I thought further about the oddity of my husband’s missing phone. I snuck quietly back into our bedroom and went into our bathroom. In the dark, I saw the black cord across our white sink. He was charging it in our bathroom. He’s never done that before. I took the phone and when I unplugged it the screen lit up. In a panic, I quickly covered it and ran quietly out into our kitchen. I don’t own a Blackberry and I’m not very technologically-minded. I didn’t know what I was doing. I pushed some buttons to try to look at photos and texts but I couldn’t get anything to open. Next thing I know, it appeared that I sent a blank text to one of his coworkers. I tried to click on a button again and it looked like I sent a second blank text to the same coworker. Now I was afraid my husband would know I was on his phone. My 15-year old has a Blackberry. I opened her door and she was still awake. I apologized to her and said that mommy was on daddy’s phone and that I thought I sent a text by mistake. Could she just look to see if I did that and if I did is there a way that it can be deleted. She told me to give her the phone and next thing you know she was swearing and cursing her father. I was shocked. I was reprimanding her for her language and then she said that dad is having an affair. What? Further shock. She was going through his phone and I was physically shaking. I didn’t really expect to find anything and I certainly wasn’t prepared to find anything. I felt sick to my stomach. She took over and went into parent mode. She showed me some of the content on his phone and said that she was going to send it to my e-mail and to her computer so there was a record and he couldn’t erase it. We went downstairs together and started to comb through the evidence.