'AITA for asking my husband why the cameras don't work when he's home alone?' UPDATED

"AITA for asking my husband why the cameras don't work when he's home alone?"

Update at the bottom and my husband has made a very important comment.

Recently married and combined households by moving in together. Great relationship, healthy [love] life, good communication. I (38F) have a few cameras around the house for security and to communicate with the kiddos that don't have cell phones yet, but mainly to see when my kids get home from school.

I could care less about the cameras most any other time. I had these (and more) at my old house, but I've only set up three so far at the new house. The new house also came with a ring door bell camera.

My husband (43M) is WFH. The first few weeks in the house were fine. No hiccups or glitches with the cameras. The ring door bell worked like a champ at every slight bit of movement.

The first week he was solo in the house and the first day the kids go off to school, when they come home, through the front door, there is no ring notification. The time line glitches as if the shots were deleted. He is the main Ring account holder, I'm shared, I can't delete anything.

That evening I mentioned it and he gets defensive, so I initially dropped it. I wouldn't have married him if I didn't trust him, I was just curious on what happened. Later, we talked it over and I explained that I didn't think he did something malicious, but something definitely happened. Agreed to move past it.

I decided to just take notes on when I noticed the 'glitches.' It has happened a few more times and always on days that's he's been at home, alone. Every so often I've asked one of the kids what he's doing when they got home and most of the time he was playing video games or in a work meeting.

Today around 2, I go to check the garage camera to see if he's left the garage open, which he does frequently and we end up with exorbitant power bills. So I remind him to shut the door. I get the error 'live view failed.' I try the front of the garage, same error. I screen shot and send them to him asking if he knows why they aren't working.

He loses his s$#t. Starts saying I'm accusing him of hiding things. Now I don't THINK he's cheating. We have a healthy [love] life, we typically communicate, but I just don't understand. The cameras work great, when he isn't home alone. He has access to the cameras, just as I have access to the ring.

If he isn't hiding anything and not messing with the cameras, why the defense? I didn't ask what he was doing but I did insinuate that I thought he had something to do with it.

TLDR - Cameras 'glitch,' but only when hubs is home alone. He gets defensive when I question it. AITAH for asking about the cameras?

Here's what people had to say to OP:

Some people think he's lying about something, but not necessarily cheating:

HannahLeah1987 writes:

Could he have lost his job and is hiding it?

Ohmannothankyou writes:

He’s buying a lot of stuff and hiding the delivery. Maybe even a lot of door dash.

Other people point out that nothing she's said would make it clear he's not cheating:

PrincessPindy writes:

Having [a healthy love love] does not mean he isn't cheating. Having a healthy [love] life does not preclude cheating. Sad but true. I've shockingly seen it before.

pirate_meow_kitty writes:

My husband cheated despite me having a higher [deleted] drive than him. People cheat despite being married to hot super models. OP could you pop by home during these times ? Don’t question him anymore and play dumb. Then just pop in when the cameras are off

AMen1007 writes:

Agreed. I was engaged and my ex-fiancé and I had an amazing [love] life. I found out he was cheating. One huge red flag was the defensiveness when asking question 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 OP better start hiding her own cameras in the house asap ‼️

peachpantherrr writes:

Something I’ve learned in life: You can always tell someone is lying by how unnecessarily defensive they get.

Some people pointed out that WFH and gaming could be causing internet bandwidth issues:

OrcaMum23 writes:

Could the husband be killing the feed to free bandwidth for his gameplaying?

buddha-ish writes:

She says he’s on work calls or gaming, both situations involving devices that would get network priority.

Q&A with OP:

Agitated_Budgets writes:

YTA. You're upset your dystopian stuff isn't working.

why_are_you_staring OP responded:

I applaud you. You're right. If it was working, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

barnyard_door says:

So obviously he’s doing something he doesn’t want you to see and it’s probably something silly like goofing off when he should be working or smoking or something silly like that! Some people just don’t like being watched or assumed they are being watched

why_are_you_staring OP responded:

I think he was actively in a work meeting when I texted him, which is why I was so thrown off by the high defense.

potenttechnicality writes:

I'd kind of be put off by a wife remote monitoring cameras throughout the day telling me to close the garage door etc. Maybe i wouldnt go so far as to glitch them just to be passive aggressive but someone might. Are the cameras working when you need them to view the kids?

why_are_you_staring OP responded:

I completely get it. That is weird. The only reason the camera is in the garage is because he frequently forgets to close it. It was his idea to put it there so I can tell him to shut it. We don't agree in the power bill and open door correlation, but he's okay closing the door if it makes me happy. The cameras aren't consistently working when the kids come in the door. That's what sparked this whole thing to begin with.

Update from OP after reading the comments:

This got a lot more traction than I ever expected it would. Thank you to everyone who has commented and given me your opinion. It is been greatly appreciated. I don't think I will ever be able to get through all of the comments but what your comments did give me was a harsh sense of borderline toxic reality.

I want to shout out to the IT guys that mentioned bandwidth, which is probably our problem since he's video gaming when I am trying to see the cameras. Also, yes these are Ring and Blink cameras which are known to glitch.

All in all I trust my husband isn't doing anything to affect the cameras nor do I think he's having anybody over to the house. I'm not going to set up a nanny cam or any other camera in the house because I do not feel the need to monitor his every movement. Which a lot of you are concerned about. That's not why the cameras are there and if he felt that way I'd take them down immediately.

My husband said if the situation was reversed he would trust my response and would try some troubleshooting tips instead of assuming I'm hiding something.

For those of you that said that he was getting defensive because his wife was making crazy claims against him are 100% correct. For those comments, I greatly thank you because it helped me see that I was a little bit of the AH.

Comment that came after OP's update:

Uphoria writes:

I'm late to the game, so I'm not likely going to catch your ear - but if I do:

I work in cloud management for a camera security company. can't say who. Security cameras use lower frame rates, lower quality recordings, and other tricks to save on space and bandwidth. No amount of video gaming is going to knock out all your cameras at the same time, especially since each camera stream is FAR more bandwidth than a video game stream, and discord audio.

Whats really going on here, is he's pulling the cameras offline. You can get a stand-alone battery-powered camera that records to an SD card inside itself. Get one, and point it at the spot where your security cameras get internet, be it a wifi router, base station, or switch. If you see him go and unplug it during the day, you've got an answer.

There's virtually no reason for it to go down that often and for that many cameras at once except tampering.