Caroline from Detroit recently discovered her husband had been secretly spending his “fun money” for the past three years talking to a woman in prison.
The emotional and financial betrayal has left her shaken and unsure whether her marriage can be saved.
It all started with some unusual phone activity.
“I caught him because I found some suspicious numbers on our phone bill,” Caroline said on “The Ramsey Show” recently.
Her husband had been constantly broke, always waiting for his next allowance of fun money, but had nothing to show for it. That’s when she uncovered the long-running pen-pal connection.
“He said it was ads that popped up on a site, and he got in this cycle and stopped,” she told hosts George Kamel and Rachel Cruze.
But the emotional damage was already done. The woman was a stranger he had never met before her incarceration. Still, he chose to continue the relationship in secret because he was “trapped.”
“He wasn’t trapped, Kamel responded. “He was willfully doing this on his own volition.”
Caroline admitted it went on for three years before she pieced everything together.
“I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t figure it out for three years,” she said.
As she processed the truth, Caroline also expressed fear about her personal safety.
“I wanted to know, like, what did this person go to prison for?” she said. “Am I safe? How long are they in prison for?”
A Marriage Hanging By A Thread
While Caroline had started therapy, other life stressors piled on, like a tree that had fallen on their house, literally putting a hole in their home while she tried to patch up the one in her marriage.
Divorce felt like the logical next step, but she hesitated because her husband had agreed to go to church and attend a marriage retreat.
Nevertheless, Caroline says he resists counseling, suspecting that she still doesn’t know the full story.
“If you guys are going to move forward, everything needs to come into the light,” Kamel said.
Rebuilding Trust Step by Step
The hosts laid out practical next steps for Caroline. First, she needs to protect herself financially by getting a separate checking account.
They also told her to pull her husband’s credit report and freeze it immediately. “You want to make sure there are no outstanding debts you don’t know about,” Kamel added.
Caroline had already started tracking her husband’s fun money more closely.
The couple used to withdraw their personal spending cash, but now, she said, “In order for me to trust, your fun money is going to have to be tracked.”
Cruze supported that idea, stressing that financial transparency wasn’t about control.
“There has to be some visible evidence for trust to be rebuilt,” she said. “I need every account of your phone records.”
Consider Outside Help To Regain Control
Cruze also encouraged Caroline to be cautious.
“I’m just scared that something else is going to come up,” she said, “either more on the infidelity side or more financially.”
According to the hosts, emotional and financial betrayal are becoming more common in marriages.
“Action plus time plus counseling plus God,” Kamel concluded, “that’s going to be the only solution to rebuild this trust and restore this marriage.”