Found messages last night and we’re due to go away Friday, am I overreacting

[vaguelyvexed]

Hi all,

long time lurker, first time actually posting so go easy on me 😂

i've read this place for YEARS without making an account but i've finally caved because i've gone round and round in my own head.

Basically last night i found out my husband had been messaging another woman. I wasn’t snooping, he left his phone on the sofa and went for a shower and the message popped up

Before anyone asks, no they weren't explicit. No meeting up (as far as i know). No declarations of love. Nothing like that.

She was quite a bit younger than him, and what i can't seem to get out of my head is that she's almost the same age i was when we first got together (21) he had 2 DC already now 17 & 14 and we have 4 together, our eldest together is 11 and i got pregnant with him quite quickly into the relationship

He says it got out of hand, he's apologised, showed me everything that was still there, blocked her without me asking and has basically done everything i'd have wanted him to do afterwards.

But i still feel rubbish and was got a busy house, six kids in total and pets and it being school holidays and he's doing shifts so i'm trying to keep everyone alive until September 😂 so it's not like i've got loads of time to sit dwelling on it, but i still do. We’re due to go away on friday and i think maybe a week would do us good but I don’t know if im mad for even considering going. I haven’t told anyone which is why im finally posting here after being a lurker for years

am i making this into something bigger than it actually is because i'm in my own head too much? but also this isn’t the first time

Happy to answer questions if i've missed anything because i almost certainly have. Please be kind if you can

He’s having an emotional affair. I’d go away for the kids and plan to leave when you’re back. It’s a bit creepy with that age gap, he could be her dad. Texting at 2am is so wrong.

He’s 44 and messaging a 21yr old new recruit at 2am in the morning? 🤮

This is what hit me too. What a revolting specimen of a man. Can’t stay faithful and goes for the ones drastically younger than him. Disgusting behaviour.

You're underreacting if anything.

Do not play the cool wife. Been there, done that. You will get burnt.

My last ex had a female friend which I didn’t like the sound of from the beginning. Didn’t show any of my concern and he shagged her hours after he introduced us to one another! I only found out as her fiancé messaged me.

From my personal experiences (romantically and direct observations), cops, doctors, pilots and engineers are notorious for this kind of cheating with younger co-workers.

Sorry to read this OP. He is emotionally checked out. If I was you, I'd be getting my ducks in a row.

You dont even know what the messages are and you are advising to LTB?

He’s got another woman’s number and is messaging her and says he’s sorry
guilty as hell

Go on the holiday. You’re forgiving him anyway, no point in upsetting the kids.

Try and carve sometime out for yourself at some point to reflect on whether you can trust him and if he’s worth it. 44 flirting with a 21 year old especially due to the senior / trainee element. He’s a creep. There’s a good chance he’s also a cheat. But you don’t need to blow your life up if you’re not ready. But do know you deserve better

This is the go to response to any misdemeanour. Lazy husband -= ltb taking his family side in an argument ltb, he slept in ltb, he forgot to drop their dry cleaning off ltb. Honestly, it pisses me off that people think it’s sound and good advice

Does she know he's married with six children? Because I doubt any 21yr old would want a man with six children.

Police. Oh dear...

It is a profession absolutely rife with affairs, emotional and physical.

Looks like he wants a do over with his carefree 21 year old. I imagine he's hoping this one doesn't get pregnant so soon.

OP, I'd be concerned about his employers finding out. If he is in a position of training this much younger woman who he's flirting with, there's all sorts of scope for him to abuse the situation because of the imbalance of power. And if he has just cut the woman off (assuming that's what he's done), she might not be very happy with that and might seek to cause him problems at work as revenge. I'd go on your holiday, for the DC's sake, but I'd also use the time to question him as to what's really going on in your marriage and to alert him to the danger he may have put himself in at work. Where you go from there, will be up to you depending on what happens next. Wishing you all the best.

It's an emotional affair at best, do with that what you will but this certainly wont be the end of it. Get your ducks in a row and prepare to leave

Sounds like an affair in the making, early stages. If it were me, I’d go on the holiday & be distant & act as if he’s irrelevant. If he asks what’s wrong, tell him you’re considering the next stage of your life. Stay confident & cold, no drama, no questions. Smile & chat to all other men except him. Let him have the anxiety.

The ex of a friend joined the Met a few years after she did, so both worked there. He had an affair with the victim of a crime that he had interviewed to take a statement....he did not lose his job. From what my friend said he got a slap on the wrist and basically told to be more careful in future, so the message was "dont get caught next time". She was pretty much told that it happens, get over it, this was about 12 years ago so can't imagine that attitude has changed much. Thankfully she is very happily remarried, her ex was a total cunt anyway and being in the police just made him worse.

I don't think whether she wants to marry him or enter into a long term relationship with him is even relevant

Whatever the young woman's intentions are they aren't really OP's concern. What is her concern is what her H is up to : cultivating an inappropriate relationship with a junior colleague young enough to be his daughter.

He got you pregnant at 22 when he was 33? Gross 🤢
And now he’s messaging a 21 year old at 44. Yeah, he’s not a good bloke.

at the very least give him a scare and yourself a few days off and go to a hotel for a couple of nights and let him deal with his six children, he won’t have time to text anyone

I’d be wary OP. It’s not ok to text another woman at 2am, it’s not really ok to verge on the kind of messages you’ve described. Sounds like he’s flattered, and if the opportunity arose he’d be tempted. I’d sit with it, in your head for a bit, but it’s not a good news 😕

The 2 examples given was she makes him laugh & blimey long time since I was 22. That’s as bad as the texts were. Hardly incriminating

But they're just the ones left on his phone, he could well have deleted saucy ones and left the safe ones to "prove" she is just a friend. If OW has those she could try to make trouble with them.

Other than opportunity, false intimacy created by being in high stress situations.

He is a married man with 6 children messaging another woman at 2 a.m. in the morning. The messages don't have to be overtly sexual for that not to be OK. He is at home with his family and yet his thoughts in the middle of the night are on this much younger woman. He is building a close relationship with her.

Yes to going on the holiday. No to the forgiving him forever, if you can't move past the interactions he had. It doesn't have to be terrible in order for you to break up. You can change your life for any reason.

Usually I’m on the side of men and women can have opposite sex friendships outside their relationship. With this, though, there are professional and personal red flags. Professionally, it’s deeply inappropriate for a senior officer to be having ‘banter’ type conversations with junior officers, never mind at 2am. I’m not in the police, but am public sector and this sort of behaviour could cause real issues for someone in our profession.

@vaguelyvexed From a personal perspective, I’d be wondering how/why he has this young woman’s number and is interacting with her like this, of the likely vast number of colleagues he could potentially be work with friends with? What would a (probably) forty-something man have in common with a 21 year old woman? Age-gap friendships can exist, of course, but genuine ones when one party is that young aren’t that common, in my experience.