AIBU to feel our marriage may be over after deleted messages

[Poomonster]

Long post warning!!

I’m posting because I honestly don’t know whether I’m being unreasonable, or whether I’ve just reached the point where I can’t carry this anymore.
I’ve been married to my husband for 15 years and we have a 9-year-old daughter.
About five years ago, I found Instagram messages between my husband and another woman. I didn't confront him directly at the time, but I made a comment/hint about men and women messaging each other on Instagram. The next time I looked, the messages had been deleted.
When I questioned him, he said he had deleted them because he realised they might look suspicious. He completely denies that there was anything inappropriate going on.
My problem is that I can't get past the fact that, if there was genuinely nothing in them, why delete them? I know that doesn't necessarily mean he was having an affair or doing anything wrong, but once the messages were deleted, I could never know what had actually been said.
There is another part of this which makes it particularly painful.
Around the same period, my husband told me that I had become unattractive. I had put on quite a lot of weight at the time, and that comment really affected me. When I then found the messages with another woman, it inevitably made me wonder whether there was a connection between the two things.
Since then, he has become much more protective of his phone and, whenever I raise the Instagram situation, he gets annoyed and doesn't really want to talk about it. He continues to say he did nothing wrong and that I'm dwelling on something that happened five years ago.
But I can't get over it.
I don't necessarily think he had an affair. I don't even know what was in the messages. What I do know is that my trust was damaged, and I don't feel like it was ever properly repaired.
I feel as though I have spent five years trying to convince myself that I should be over it, but I'm not. Our relationship has never felt the same to me since.
I'm now wondering whether the marriage is actually dead and I'm just too scared to admit it.
We have a child, we've been together for a long time, and obviously I don't want to destroy our family over something I can't even prove happened. At the same time, I don't want to spend the next 10 or 20 years feeling suspicious, disconnected and unhappy.
Part of me thinks I should just accept his explanation and move on. Another part of me thinks that the fact that he deleted the messages, became more secretive with his phone and then dismissed my feelings is exactly why I have never been able to move on.
I also can't help wondering whether being told I was unattractive at the same time has affected how I see myself and how secure I feel in the marriage.
So, Mumsnet, what would you do?
Would you try couples counselling and genuinely try to rebuild the marriage, even after five years?
Or does the fact that I still feel this way after all this time tell me that the relationship has already run its course?
I don't want people to tell me categorically that he definitely cheated, because none of us know that. I think what I'm struggling with is whether a marriage can survive when trust has been broken but you never actually find out what happened — and the other person isn't willing to really talk about it.

it’s absolutely not too much to ask. I would be feeling the same as you are 100%z

I asked because you hadn’t mentioned any positives so was wondering if counselling was even worth the effort. However if the positives outweighs the negatives then I think that’s an avenue you should suggest. However before embarking on couples therapy, would it be beneficial for individual therapy for just yourself? You mention you’re confident and outgoing. However those comments to you 5 years ago are rightly still incredibly hurtful and even if not obvious, will be undermining your confidence on a certain level even now. To be happy with someone you must be happy fully in yourself. Therefore ensuring you are truly the best version of you, before embarking on couples therapy, could be worth while. Also you need to consider what happens if he says no and refuses? You can’t stay in this perpetual state for your life because of his actions. You haven’t had closure and he rightfully should be giving that to you.

I think you owe it to yourself to change your situation and positively and not just settle. You very much deserve that.

Also from what you said, if she took a photo of him at work - presumably she’s a colleague? Did they stop message? Would they be engaging on other platforms? If he’s still secretive with the phone that’s red flags to me. Maybe he didn’t have a physical affair but sounded like he had an emotional one. You can recover from it but him burying his head now is not fair long term.

If your daughter grew up in the same circumstances and confided in you - what advice would you give her? I suspect not to settle and back herself.

Good luck OP. Really hard situation for you.

Five years is a long time to have this hanging over you.

There are really only two options now.

If you feel so strongly about it and there is now zero trust, then end it. You cannot live forever like this.

The other option is to start to deal with it. Open communication and counseling. If the marriage is to continue, then communication has to change.

Unfortunately you are in the situation of he has seemingly acted inappropriately, but you have to make the decision of how to move forward.

You have to do something though. This is eating at you.

Respect goes both ways though. Snooping through your husband’s messages and policing his social media use isn’t respectful. I wouldn’t have any time for a partner telling me who I could and couldn’t message or have as a friend.

On the fence with this one . You found messages 5 years ago and a photo of him in work you think could be an office in joke ? They were not sexual in any way .
So they were work colleague chat then ? Work mates .
What's wrong in that ?

I worked in a mainly male dominated environment way back in 2010 , left because we were moving away . Work mate was male , we got on well spent most lunchtime together etc as you would a workmates . He was married with kids , likewise me . We never met outside work or socialised outside work . Totally innocent , didn't fancy each other , just mates .
Even though that was years ago . We still send each other Christmas cards , the odd message , the odd phone call ( which I will take quite happily and put on hands free if I can't hear him ) in the presence of my dh .

What I'm saying is , it could be innocent and you have built up your suspicions over the years .

On the pictures and messages, I would certainly mention it, but if they were not sexual I am not sure I would be overly concerned. Certainly nowhere near enough to stay with me for five years as a major issue. I also really find it slightly troubling that he should never speak to a woman. If DH told me I could not speak to a man ever, I would see this as quite controlling.

It must have hurt when he said he did not find you attractive, but how did he say this? Putting on more than five would have an impact on your health, could he have been concerned about this?

YADNBU because he hasn't properly addressed it. It may be relatively innocent, or a mindless stupid deviation in his mind that was never meant to go anywhere and he's matured since, but he hasn't recognised the potential damage and repaired it. Or it may have been something more concrete and a pattern that could repeat.
This will eat away at your marriage unless he does repair it, so you do need to discuss it and he needs to recognise that a marriage doesn't survive with that level of mistrust.
If he won't address it, the ball's in your court - is a marriage with so little care from his side worth it for you? Or are you prepared to make the break and look for something better? Given your history and lack of firm evidence you at least need to know you've given him a fair chance.

Get yourself some solo therapy @Poomonster You obviously have some insecurities and trust issues to address and over come and you should get some clarity as to whether you want to still be in this marriage or not once you’ve self confidence is improved.

1. get your ducks in a row (ie his p60 or screenshots of any policies he has, bank accounts in his name etc. as you will need these in the event of a split and he may start to hide info so he doesn’t have to split his secret savings and pensions etc on separation.
2. speak to him about getting couples counselling together. Youve had five years to work on your relationship and tell each other how you feel and it’s not happened so it wont now either unless you have professional help.
3. get counselling or split up. what you cannot do is just leave it for now and deal with it later. youve done that. it didn’t work. it’s eating you up. you both only have one life. get out and do what makes you happy. staying together for the children doesnt work.

Deleting her as a contact after you found messages between them with no nefarious content isn't respect, it's being controlled.

You admit you have trust issues, so I'm assuming you were snooping when you found the messages. Is that respectful?

You have found this to latch on to and won't let go. And the truth is, if he had given you a 'suitable' explanation (and I say 'suitable' because I don't think anything would ever have been enough - they were messages between collegaues/friends) you would have just moved on to the next thing.

You have said yourself in one of your posts that you don't think he should be messaging women at all outside of the marriage - that's unreasonable and controlling. I had a partner like you - outgoing, friendly, successful and the most insecure person I have ever met. I pandered to it for a while and the goalposts kept moving - nothing was ever enough and wouldn't have been until I was completely isolated and he was my only focus.

If you want this marriage to continue, you need to address the trust issues within yourself otherwise relationship counselling will be pointless.

And if you want to leave the marriage then do but stop trying to make it a reason that's his fault.

@Poomonster it sounds like you could benefit from counselling, both as a couple and on your own. I wouldn’t automatically give up on this marriage as it stands, unless there’s much more negative stuff you’ve not written about your relationship. You need to communicate with your husband as to why this hurt you, how it undermined your trust in him and how his words were cruel, it sounds like doing this through counselling would be more productive than attempting direct discussion. You also need to understand whether your fixation on this is proportionate or whether passive experience is causing you to exaggerate what happened in your mind (and I’m not saying you are).

Ultimately if you don’t trust him it’s going to be very difficult to move forward. If you do decide this is the end please make that decision sooner rather than later, it’ll be harder on your daughter to deal with at the same time as puberty.

OP, your marriage is dead. Your DH had a chat with someone else online. You made a huge deal of it and it he then removed the messages and you’ve been going on about it for 5 years.
I suspect his version of the story will include suggestions that you’re controlling and went through his phone.
all of that is irrelevant. You’ve spent 5 years on this and it’s deeply unhealthy for you both.

I'm sorry I've upset you - it wasn't meant personally (I don't know you).

But I have done moderation work on a somewhat similar site in the past (as a volunteer) and one of the key things we learned to look out for was inconsistencies in the poster's core "storyline". I am not talking about little details like changing the gender or age of a child - lots of people do things like that for privacy reasons, which is totally understandable, but the changes to the crux of what the entire post is about.

A lot of your initial post talks about the fact that you can't now read the messages as one of your main concerns - you refer to this more than once.

Then in your next post you say you have read them. I don't understand how this could be a mistake?

A huge number of people make fake posts for all kinds of reasons - attention, boredom etc. And what worries me is that lots of women then devote a lot of time and emotional energy to trying to support that person, often making themselves vulnerable by sharing their own story..... For that reason I will always report where I think there is real cause to question a post.

But I also trust the moderators here, so it would seem your post was genuine. And I just have to accept that the discrepancy I mentioned is something I will never understand.

Genuinely sorry I caused offence, and I wish you the best of luck with your situation.

I think working this through with a therapist would help. It may lead you to ending the relationship or it may lead to couples counselling.
Ultimately it’s a decision you have to feel comfortable about. Either you accept that he may have had an affair but you’ll never know for sure and your relationship is too important to leave based on a maybe. Or the trust has gone and that’s the most important factor as you are now too unhappy to stay. It’s not fair to anyone to keep as you are and constantly bringing it up and being suspicious

Stopping your partner from having friends is absolutely controlling. People messaging coworkers is completely normal and it’s quite telling that you dropped hints rather than spoke up directly after you’d been snooping. Having “trust issues” is something you really should work on yourself, not something your partner should be expected to work around.

That’s very naive of you I’m afraid. He’s been having an affair for 5 years I’d guess. Always trust your gut!

In her first post she makes it sound like she should have read them before he deleted them. Something a bit odd.

So why say “once the messages were deleted, I could never know what had actually been said.”

What I meant was; once the messages were deleted and he knew I knew about them, the messages stopped. Therefore, I will never know if there would have been further more incriminating messages.
To be clear, I saw the messages, read them, dropped hints about said messages in a broad context, those messages were then deleted leading me to think that something must have picked his conscious for him to have deleted the messages. I then challenged him when I saw the messages had been deleted. That's when he essentially made it appear like I was crazy and there was nothing innit. If this was the case, why delete the messages?

Do you see how far you're going with this? The messages stopped (and I am assuming you have checked) but you're not happy. You're now wishing you had left it so that you could see what happened. So you would have continued checking up on him? Reading his messages? Do you not see that there is something wrong there?

No, the messages stopped because they were deleted. He then locked his phone and became very protected of it, so I wasn't able to see any messages.
I feel that as the victim here.....I'm being blamed for someone doing me dirty 🤷🏼

you're not being blamed for 'someone doing you dirty'
you're just not getting off with snooping on his phone

If I found out my DH had been snooping on my phone then I'd be putting a passcode on there and becoming protective of it too - not because I have anything to hide, but because I wouldn't want him snooping on my phone.

I would go to individual counselling and unpick this from your side first and see where that takes you.

Ah, shame you didn’t take photos of them to back yourself up. I definitely think affair from what you say. How would your husband react if you were exchanging messages outside work in such a secretive manner not on normal text.

I message my male co-workers relatively frequently and we have in jokes. But you don’t sound like you have the sort of relationship whereby this isn’t a big deal. And equally if he told you you looked unattractive there are other issues at play. If you suspect something inappropriate, you need to address this somehow eg at marriage counselling or it will eat you up.

You went through his personal instagram messages. Why? Your post doesn’t suggest he’d given you any reason to suspect he was cheating so it sounds like you just take his phone and go through all his messages. This is not ok. Even though I have nothing to hide I would be furious if my OH did this.
I feel sorry for your husband. It must be so hard living with someone so paranoid.

‘I don't necessarily think he had an affair. I don't even know what was in the messages.’

But you describe in your next post what was in the messages? So you did see them?

It doesn’t sound like a happy relationship. It’s not good that you felt you had to hint about not exchanging messages. You’ve been together that long but can’t have a confronting conversation?