Is he having an affair?

[matana]

Firstly i should explain that my DH and I spend all of our spare time together and although it's cliched we really are best friends. We've had ups and downs like any normal couple, but he's a great father to our 20 mo DS and has always been loving and affectionate with me. He doesn't go out drinking and leave me holding the baby, we go out together and take our DS with us. What i'm saying is we're very close. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it's always worked for us. I have always trusted him implicitly (and he has me) on the odd occasion we have been apart in our 10 year relationship. But for maybe the past month we've had an argument every weekend about silly things.

On Thursday he went up north to see a customer and he travelled with a female colleague. They travelled up and came home the same day, so no overnight stop or anything. She recently moved to his department. He never used to like her when they worked together before, but he has spoken about her and said she's grown on him and they actually get on fine now. I wasn't suspicious at all. But on Thursday evening i waled into the bedroom and he was texting. As soon as he saw me her was like a rabbit in the headlights and it initially looked like he was going to hide his phone. I asked who he was texting and he replied 'Sara' so i made a comment about him all of a sudden being best mates with her. He told me he was texting her to say sorry for being moody earlier that evening when they has spoken (he wanted her help with some IT to get online from home), his text was to explain that he was pissed off about the fact he'd just got home and the car tyre was punctured. He showed me the text which said "Fucking car has a fucking puncture, sorry for sounding moody earlier".

Since then he's kept his phone very close to him. I managed to look at it the other day and all his messages had been wiped. Then yesterday evening i caught him on it again because he'd left the room and had been gone for some time. Again, the same rabbit in the headlights look. He slept with his phone under his pillow last night which i thought was pretty odd. I knew he had, but feigned ignorance this morning and casually asked him where his phone was because i wanted to play a game on it. He said he didn't know. When i left the room and came back in he said "oh here it is, it must have fallen down the side of the bed last night.

Please tell me i'm being paranoid.

He may be a "good dad" but what do you yourself feel about your H now?. Women also seem to come out with that sort of comment when they themselves no longer have anything at all positive to say about their man.

What do you get out of this relationship now?

Your son would still have, and is indeed entitled to, a relationship with his father even if you were to split up. Never stay within a poor marriage purely for the childrens sake as they will see through their parents slowly disintegrating marriage and will not thank you for doing so. They could well go on to ask their mother why she put him before them.

Your man is seriously messing up here by acting as the white knight to some damsel in distress and I do not believe his protestations that he does not find her attractive; he finds this whole situation attractive and wants it to continue. What he has said to you does not fully stack up and he has not been able to fully explain away his actions. He is a master of deflection indeed. He has unlocked a box that should have remained firmly closed.

He did make a good point though, that until now our relationship has been based entirely on trust and it seems like that has now gone - whether i'm right, or wrong.

That sounds like a fancy "don't you trust me!"

He said if he was going to have an affair (which he says he wouldn't) he wouldn't choose this woman as he's not attracted to her. Apparently she 'a mixed up individual' with a lot of 'issues' and a lifestyle he doesn't appreciate. In short, he doesn't fancy her, but he does feel quite sorry for her and has become a 'confidante' for her.

That doesn't sound great. Being her knight in shining armer is dangerous. There is another thread at the moment that it reminds me of, the one where the husband is a teacher.

Alarm bells rang slightly for me when I read your first post about how you do everything together.In no way am I minimising your concerns.And I think you are probably right to feel he's developing a closer friendship that you might like.But I feel Offred is right, counselling or really talking about wether you are both really as happy with this intense closeness as you both seem.You are.Is he?
I don't mean to sound harsh and as you say if it works for you great.But it seems it may not be working at the mo.If you feel you can't even go to your friends for one night, if he dashes home so dutifully every night and there's no space for either of you to be individuals in a strong relationship then how healthy will it be long term?It doesn't mean with some honest talking,and not just about this other woman or he will feel defensive and withdraw further,that things can't be tweaked and fixed.

It's not easy,especially when your DC is so young and you've been very close/ dependant on each other .I suspect this woman really isn't his ' type' You are.He sound a good, responsible and hands on DH and Dad and I'm not making excuses for him.Lord knows I've nearly nearly ended mymarriage over an inappropriate friendship DH had.But you're ally need to TALK to him in the wider sense.

The reason he tried to hide it was because he was concerned at how i would react and how i would feel about it.

What reason does he have for thinking you wouldn't like him being friendly (innocently) with another woman?

Sorry that sounded a bit harsh.I do feel very much for you and it's an awful situation to be in ,especially when you love and have trusted someone so much.But even the good guys make mistakes .Even the best couples can lose their way at timesHope you can get to the bottom of it soon for both your sakes and find a happy and healthy way of being a strong family.Wiser posters will be along soon x

Yes it does sound like 'you don't trust me', but supposing he hasn't cheated and the boot was on the other foot, how would i feel? Supposing he accused me of an affair when i remained as committed to him as ever. I think my reaction would be the same "You don't trust me!" I'd be mortified.

Ok, how i feel about our relationship: until last Thursday i was aware that it needed work based on recent events. I went through some kind of depression/ mini breakdown a couple on months ago and shut him out completely. I was having a terrible time at work, my boss was pressuring me and i was finding it difficult not seeing as much of my DS as i'd like to. I felt torn in two and went to speak to occupational health about - the first time i've ever sought help. I got over the worst of it, but part of me was still a bit 'detached' and not quite 100%. Not the happy, positive person i usually am. So many of the niggles and arguments were instigated by me - hence me flouncing out the door a lot and him left dumb founded at the doorway unable to comprehend what was happening. I could simply not have got through the past few months without him - he has been totally understanding and has never, for one second, wavered in his support. On the whole we were doing a lot better than many couples again recently - we talk when there are problems, try to learn from 'mistakes' and are open and, ahem, honest with each other. In short, i love him and love the life and home we have created together. He's always been an amazing husband - loving, supportive, loyal etc. We went to hell and back to conceive our DS and throughout it all he was the perfect husband. He is never neglectful, remembers special dates, shows his feelings openly. My friends have said they wish they could clone him.

As i've said, he's my best friend in life and i couldn't love him any more than i do. But if he has been cheating i don't think i could forgive him.

I would say he's heading for an affair, he probably hasn't done anything YET.

It's only something people learn with hindsight - and usually after the discovery of an affair when they cross-match diaries - but I'm curious about this mini-breakdown and depression you describe. When there seems to be a valid reason for it (and most people have worries and niggles in their lives most of the time) it seems 'normal'. As I mentioned upthread, I've known people who've looked back after discovery and have realised that their 'depression' or even sense of disorientation with the world actually coincided with when their partners started to develop interests elsewhere. It was their minds and their bodies sending them a message that all was not well, but because the trust in their partners was so great, an affair didn't cross their minds.

I don't think you can live like this either, because it's a horrible atmosphere in which to conduct a relationship. I'm wondering about how much honesty there is between you as a couple? For example, do you think your husband would be honest enough with himself and then you that he has felt flattered by being sought out by this woman? And could you communicate that such an admission was safe to make?

The way you describe your marriage and the way you communicate with eachother doesn't sound very realistic, intimate or honest. It sounds like you've both got a script running that this is the perfect marriage and he is the perfect man and that's a vulnerability in itself, as it is to have a marriage that is very insular. Men especially who have no close male friends with whom to share their feelings are especially vulnerable to inappropriate friendships with female colleagues, because it feels so refreshing and novel to talk about feelings and emotions with someone other than a partner.

I also get the impression that you still believe that people who cheat are different from your husband and that this only happens when marriages are in bad shape, but that's really not the case. Your husband can have all the marvellous qualities you list and still have poor boundaries and slip almost imperceptibly towards an affair. People having that type of affair are never described as the 'cheating type' - they are just normal everyday people who aren't very self-aware and trust themselves more than they should.

I really do suggest that you have a more honest conversation about this, giving him permission to be honest with you about how this woman has made him feel and allowing you to discuss sensible boundaries. On a positive note, this whole experience might get you both talking about some changes you want to make to your lives and relationship.

I understand why you might see it that way sternface, but that's the way it is - no script - our marriage has had ups and downs like any other but essentially i believe he's a good man - which is why i'm with him. I don't pretend that good men don't stray, i was asked how i feel about him rather than how i feel about what this could do to my DS. So what i've said is honest. I think what i'm trying, not very well, to articulate, is that there is no proof and i rely very heavily on proper evidence as i think it's right to. We are talking and continue to talk, opening the door bit by bit.

I have looked back in detail at the past few months and remember things vividly. It might suit me better to support my suspicions by saying "he started the arguments, things weren't right between us" but i am very, very certain that my breakdown was the result of an overly demanding boss, working full time with a 20 month old and feeling guilty for working full time and not seeing him as much as i wanted it. I work in policing communications - an extremely stressful environment - and my boss operates with a 'scatter gun' approach. I was stressed, and missing my DS, juggling too much.

At no point have i said out marriage is perfect, or that i think 'perfect' marriages do not have vulnerabilities. I am simply trying to articulate it as it is. And yes, on the whole, we have enjoyed a very happy, healthy, intimate and honest relationship. I would not have done so for 10 years had it not been.

I appreciate you are looking from the outside in and offering advice. Really, i am not naive, i know how it looks and sounds and i am not deluded. I just don't have 'proof' and will not end my marriage on the basis of a hunch.

I don't think anyone's suggesting you end your marriage, but right now you've said you don't trust him and because he lied to you and tried to deflect the blame for that (and your mistrust) on to you, you've got good reason to be mistrustful. And if the boot was on the other foot as you've suggested, I imagine that if you'd tried to cover something up and then counter-attacked that the only reason you'd done that was because he would be angry, you'd understand why the trust had been dented, wouldn't you?

I think that mistrust and an atmosphere of surveillance is going to do far more damage than an honest conversation where he feels able to admit that his head was turned. But I can see that if he's still maintaining this stance that what he tried to cover up and lie about was entirely innocent, some self-protection has kicked in because you now know that he won't be honest with either himself or you.

Why did his first marriage break up and why doesn't he have a good relationship with his older children?