First of all, you should not be looking at your wife's phone. The two of you need to work on mutual respect.

Your wife has no business messaging or visiting the old boyfriend. Whether or not those activities led to romantic or sexual activity is beside the point. It's totally inappropriate for married persons to be contacting old boyfriends or old girlfriends. It kind of sounds like the two of you were not really ready to marry each other. There wasn't the trust and respect that marital love requires.

This mistrust of her that you feel didn't just come down out of the blue after you checked her phone. It was already there. That's why you checked the phone. I'm wondering if, maybe, you got married with the hope that marriage would fix your doubts and give you the trust you never really felt towards this young woman? As you are finding, getting married doesn't fix problems like that.

Talk to yourself about the roots of your mistrust and about the problems that were in this relationship back when the two of you were dating. Your wife does not feel honored and respected. Maybe she doesn't deserve a lot of respect? If that's true, then there's a back story to that, which you both know about.

This is a marriage in deep trouble. Your wife isn't very sure she even wants to be married to you. I have to wonder about the maturity level of a young woman who gets married with such an apparent lack of commitment. She's sending you a message to that effect. If your wife really wanted to do something behind your back, she could certainly delete phone records. You only found things on her phone because she left things there for you to find. She orchestrated this whole drama. That's her passive-aggressive way of signaling her discontent to you. Stop taking the bait. Stop playing detective. Tell her that you realize that it may have been a mistake to have gotten married and that maybe you two need to separate. Then leave the ball in her court. She has something on her mind and she needs to spit it out. Hang back from her and wait for her to put things on the table.

Some of your confusion may be that you'ld rather be confused than admit you know there is a big problem here that didn't start with you seeing stuff on the phone. I think you've been wanting to make believe that this was a normal new marriage. Meanwhile she is unhappy but wants you to guess that. So she leaves disturbing clues for you to discover. She wants you to feel disturbed, and she has succeeded. Either she's cruel and likes playing with your head because arousing your jealousy makes her feel more desirable/powerful . . . or . . . she is very unhappy and needs you to notice that.

Don't make this about the old boyfriend. That relationship fizzled out. This is about the marriage. Your wife is clearly not happy about being in this marriage. Before you go starting a family and having a crapload of other tough problems, find out why she is so not satisfied. Maybe it can be fixed. Maybe not. But the game playing should stop. No more her leaving around hints and dropping little revelations for you to bump into in the house and in the garage. Stop being baited. Time to really clear the air. It's not about another guy. It's about does she really want to be married to you? If she only married you as some kind of a favor, then that's not a marriage you want to be in.

A lot of this is theory . . . but you have to start somewhere.