Man insists on reading all of wife’s personal messages

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have been together for 20 years. I have never cheated on him or given him any reason to believe I have. But he is constantly on my Facebook account. He also reads all my emails and text messages.

I have nothing to hide, but I feel foolish standing by him as he reads my messages. I feel like a student in a principal’s office waiting to be reprimanded for something I did wrong or said.

If he doesn’t read my personal messages when I am up, he waits for me to go to sleep and reads everything. I have not answered messages that friends have sent me because he reads them, deletes them and then doesn’t tell me I got a message.

He gets mad at me if I tell him I don’t want him looking through my messages because he says I must be hiding something. I have changed Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips. passwords only for him to demand that I give them to him. His actions are making me extremely stressed. Is this normal behavior? – STRESSED SOMEWHERE IN THE USA

DEAR STRESSED: NO, IT IS NOT NORMAL, and it’s no wonder that you are extremely stressed. Your husband’s behavior is extremely controlling, and it is a reflection of the extent of his insecurity.

Your situation is unhealthy, to put it mildly. Has this sort of thing been going on for the last 20 years? If not, it could be a precursor to domestic violence. For your own sake, talk to someone at the National Domestic Violence Hotline about what is going on. Its toll-free number is 800-799-7233. The website is thehotline.org.