AITAH for snooping on my wife

I didn’t mean to, at least at first.

Before I dig in, a little background. My wife of ~15 years developed feelings for a coworker last year. She swore up and down that it never went beyond her own feelings and was only in her head. I found out when I could tell something was off, pressed her on it, and she came clean. She quit her job and has been employed elsewhere since. Things have been okay since then but of course my trust in her is damaged.

So onto the snooping. This happened yesterday. I was using my PC to browse reddit, somewhat uncommon because I usually use my phone/tablet for reddit. I’m a lurker and don’t usually have a Reddit handle. So, I was on my PC and I noticed that the notifications at the top of the screen were lit up, weird. So I clicked on it and found chats. Well what happened is our shared google account was automatically logged into Reddit. Apparently my wife used our shared email to make a Reddit account, whatever that’s fine with me.

The content of the chats were disturbing to say the least. The most recent chat was with a man local to us. He initially reached out to her looking for a woman to, let’s say, be his close friend. To her credit she declined saying it would be wrong since she’s married. But the chat continued. She sent him her picture, which he responded saying she was sexy, hot, etc. He sent his picture. He asked her out, she declined. Then she goes to talk to him about this other man that she fell for last year, and how she’s lost her spark with me. She brought up a song that this man from last year told her to listen to. I looked up the song, very sexually charged. She got validation from this man she’s chatting with that indeed the other man wanted her. She continues to chat with this man and mentions that she’s okay with flirting over chat but not more than that.

To add to this she has been obsessed with getting a tattoo since last year. Designing and redesigning it over and over. At first I was suspicious since the timing correlated so closely with the issue with the other man. It’s a floral design and a couple years ago she was into this language of flowers, I think from a movie she watched. I’m convinced she wants this tattoo to memorialize her feelings for this other man.

So the first snooping was somewhat accidental. The purposeful snooping happened this morning. I logged into her PC and checked recently accessed files. I found a story she’s writing. It’s a fantasy with the man the from last year. The story starts with talking about issues with me, then evolves into a romance between them.

So, am I an asshole for snooping? I’m guessing so. But I think it’s justified. What do you think?