What I’m having trouble believing is a man who not only does the laundry but puts it away.
Alibi? Right. Cause when I go a-cheatin’, I like to leave little suspicious gotchas around the house. A little love letter that’s actually just song lyrics, a package of condoms despite my wife being on the pill, except it’s unopened. Airtight alibis, I tell ya.
“I think your husband suspect something. What should we do? Cool it for a while?”
“Pfsh! Just write down some innermost thoughts and I’ll hide it next to my panties. When he finds it, it’ll TOTALLY allay his suspicions.”
This is the female equivalent of the men who go into serious threads involving breast-related issues and ask for pictures.
It says “diary” in the title of the op.
Why would she care? It’s HIS family, not hers. Why would she feel so protective of the BIL’s privacy? And why has it been there for two months? That doesn’t make sense if all is innocent.
I’m by no means an expert on other people or relationships. But this… screams the obvious.
Munch said:
Agreed. In the original incident “a few years ago”, your wife “accidentally” texted your BIL a message that she said was intended for you. Well, was she in the habit of sending you texts like that? Did it make sense that she would text you “I miss you”? Sounds fishy.
Cat Whisperer said:
Bolding added for emphasis. If she accidentally texted him instead of you, why did he agree, instead of saying “Why did you send me this?” (Or “y did u send me ths”). Does not speak of innocense.
Wilbo523 said:
This seems a reasonable course of direction. Alternately, you could pursue gathering as much information as possible before springing this, i.e. travel records, phone bills, etc. But I wouldn’t wait long.
grayhairedmomma said:
Spot on. He told her he had a journal, she wanted to read it to get to know him better. They’re involved.
Shagnasty said:
Playing psychological games is one possible reaction. Whether it’s hide it and wait for them to react, plant a comment and wait for them to find it and react, put the book somewhere for them to discover in your house in the open and wait for them to react, it’s all the same thing, just a choice of what form of torture you like. Myself, I couldn’t do that. How you react is as much a statement about you as it is about them. You need to pick a course of action that you can live with. I’m a “high road” kind of guy. YMMV.
You might also wish to consider what you hope to accomplish out of this.
Meatros said:
The OP said “years ago”, so it’s unlikely to be related to a journal from last year.
Cat Whisperer said:
This is the real issue. Right now trust has been hammered. If you bring this up with your wife, her trust in you will be hammered (whether she’s guilty or innocent). Right now, your relationship is about to hit a very narrow bridge over a giant chasm.
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Do you honestly feel that you can salvage the marriage? Even if we ignore the previous accusation of a relationship between the two of them, you have suggestive evidence of some wrongdoing. There is very little justifiable reason for your BIL’s journal to be in your wife’s panties. It just does not make sense except as something he gave to her to read and she is trying to keep you from finding. He accidentally left it? “Oh, crap, BIL left this here, I need to get it to him.” He gave it to her under false pretenses, to “safekeep from his wife”, but really so she would read it and fall for him? Why would she (a) agree to keep it; (b) not tell you; © keep in her underwear drawer? The only reason I can see for © is that she thinks that’s one place she thinks you have no reason to be looking - although you ended up with a reason she didn’t anticipate.
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Suppose you as innocently as possible bring it up with the wife and she gives you a plausible answer that somehow convinces you she’s innocent. The very fact you brought it up will hurt her, especially in the wake of a prior accusation. Especially when she thinks you didn’t defend her enough last time. That means she is going to feel you don’t trust her, even if she convinces you it was innocent. The fact that you asked means you don’t trust her. Ergo, your marriage is going to take a hit. How big a hit? I can’t guess, but hit #2 is a lot harder than hit #1, independent of the nature. The effect is at least cummulative, if not exponential. I do not know how she will be able to get over you doubting her again.
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Independent of your own marriage, this is something that affects your sister, too. At some point she will find out, whether it is because of the fight between you and your wife, or because of the fight between you and your BIL, or because you tell her, or whatever. So you will need to consider what you actually know, and how you wish to have your sister find out.
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BIL is a major dick. He admitted to pursuing your wife before. He deserves a kick in the balls. I don’t know how you were able to work out things before, given his admitted interest in screwing your wife and screwing over you and your sister. I don’t know why your sister was able to work things out with him before, but given her reaction last time was stronger than yours, I strongly suspect this will end it for them regardless of what happens in your marriage. I just can’t see this as anything but an emotional (if not physical) pursuit on his part, and that is a declaration of intent to cheat even if not cheating in itself (debatable). She should give him a walk, because he isn’t faithful to her.
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Ask yourself what is it you wish to achieve out of this with your wife? If you wish to continue your marriage and stay happy, then drop the journal back in the dresser, never say a word, and hope you can forget you ever found it. I suspect that you can’t, and will just grow to resent it.
I wish there were helpful advice I could give. Maybe collect info on where she is and where BIL is now, maybe look for evidence. Maybe talk to the sister and collaborate on phone bills. I don’t really know.
My brother got a rude wake up call when he found out the first wife was cheating on him. His first clue should have been when a buddy of his told him that he was screwing around with a married woman, but felt guilty because the husband was a decent guy. Instead, his first clue was finding love letters while the wife was away. Given all the other stuff going on, that was an immediate sever to the relationship. Regardless of whatever else he felt for her, there was no way he would ever get over that breach of trust. I fear you are in the same situation. At least one of you or your wife will have a breach of trust that is unrecoverable. I suggest it already happened from the last incident, and this is stage 2 of that previous breach of trust playing out.
I still think BIL needs a kick to the balls.
I think it’s safe to say that if the OP ever hopes to have a straightforward relationship with his spouse that playing games with the issue will do him more harm than good.
Except that I’m serious. It makes me question everything the OP says.
What’s the big deal? I like writing. I’ve been keeping journals since I was a kid.
Why would I need to keep a journal? If I have a stupid thought I just write about here.
Right, but you know what isn’t unreasonable? A woman who fucks people other than her husband. Not hard to believe at all.
I hope you’re kidding. My hubby washes his own clothes, folds them and puts them away.
My husband often washes his own clothes and puts them away, but he doesn’t wash mine, and if you saw the way he does laundry, you’d wouldn’t let him wash yours either. 
OP said he’s done this before (put away his wife’s clothes). I assume she knows he does this, so why would she leave BIL’s journal where her husband might find it – especially after being accused of having an affair with the guy?
I just gone done putting away my wife’s laundry earlier this evening. I also do all the cooking and clean the kitchen.
Why is writing something that you have to give up your man card over?
I’m with astro on this. This is reminding me too much of the Pyjama Pants Girl Incident.
My husband washes and puts away my clothes.
This stuck out to me too. OP said the journal “wasn’t there last time I did the laundry” which makes me think he routinely put his wife’s laundry away. If she is trying to hide it, why would she leave the journal where he is likely to find it? Not just where he could find it, but where it would stick out like a sore thumb if he merely saw it. If I wanted to hide a journal, I would stick it in a big pile of books and other detritus, in with the cookbooks or long forgotten unread classics; somewhere that a book - one of many - wouldn’t be obvious and raise suspicions just by its presence. I um… have a lot of experience hiding things. Successfully.
I do my own laundry, too.
Re the laundry conundrum: Maybe the OP added a detail in order to keep the discussion from revolving around his snooping. I think I might, in his shoes.
I’m still stuck on how she got the diary. BIL sounds like a true narcissist. Maybe he thought so much of his daily drivel that he figured letting her read it would make her fall madly in love with him. And maybe he’s so utterly self-absorbed that he never stopped to think she might be disappointed not to see any reference to herself in there.
One other (scary) thought. Is there anything there which may parallel what she was doing at the time? iow, could he have given her the diary in order to show her how much he knows about her daily activities, and how close he was to her on given dates through the year. It would be a stalkerish thing to do.
The element of all this that keeps me on the fence is her concern that her husband didn’t defend her before. Maybe the BIL has been harassing her, and she feels she not only has to fend him off, but to hide the nightmare from her husband, for fear she’ll be blamed. That would totally suck, and we’d all be on the first bus to hell, I can tell you. Given what happened before, and the way it fell out, it’s possible that he could control her to a point just by threatening to make accusations which would destroy her marriage. And maybe, in such a case, she would leave evidence where her husband would find it, in the subconscious hope that he would step up and defend her, or help her.
Not trying to feed any codependent tendencies, here. I’m just responding to what I always hope for when I bring something to the Dope - the need to suss out all possible tangents.
Forget the diary what else does she hide in her underwear drawer? bank notes? guns? dope?
I haven’t used my “underwear drawer” as a hiding place since 9th grade. Everyone knows the first place you look for contraband is in the underwear drawer. So secret is the underwear drawer it would be the last place a snoop would look, right?
frankly what amazed me in the first place, is the idea of a man putting away his wife’s clothes !