Hi all,
Sorry, but this is going to be a long post. I hope you can all read it and give objective thoughts and advice. So, I’ve never done anything like this before but I need to reach out to someone.
I’ve been with my wife for 12 years now, 9 of those years married. We have two kids under 8. A few months ago I found messages on my wifes phone to a male work colleague of hers. These messages contained rants about her work day (fair enough), jokes about how one creepy guy fancies her (I took that as office joking) but there was also messages of a very sexual nature from my wife and personal messages about our marriage and my health. These weren’t the occasional messages, they were almost every day.
The messages of a sexual nature mostly started from my wife, she talked about her sexual preferences, when we’d last had sex, her past sexual experiences, how good she was with her tongue, about fantasies I may have…. I’m sure you get the picture. There were messages from him asking questions about them and he’d push for info on whether she’d had a threesome and whether she’s been with another woman.
The messages about me were mostly putting me down, things like, oh he’s in a mood again (when actually I wasn’t), she told him I was on antidepressants and called me broken! Yeah, seriously!
Now, hands up, I’m not a talker and find it difficult to talk about me, I never told her I went on antidepressants but I’m a private person and the normal solution of just dealing with my issues myself wasn’t working, so I reached out to my doctor and they put me on the meds. I was never suicidal or anything, just, life got a bit crap. So I know it wasn’t nice to not tell my wife, but I told nobody (except the doc).
My wife had been on her phone a lot and to make a point of this I casually started asking her “who’s that?” and she’d tell me a name but she never mentioned this guy.
When I mentioned that I’d seen some of the messages from this guy she just brushed it off as he’s a friend and it was just banter. I asked her what she thought constituted banter and she handed over her phone for me to read all the messages. As I read more and more out to her, I could see the look on her face of “oh crap” and she went, that’s enough and took the phone back. I said I was uncomfortable with the messages she’s sending and asked her to stop. She said she would.
Roll on a month, guess what, she was still sending those kind of messages, so she lied to me (she didn’t know I knew at this point I’d seen the recent messages). We had a chat, I asked her why she’s spending so much time messaging and did she still message that guy, she said she did. I asked her what the content of the text were and she said just rants about work. I asked her to show me and she flat out refused. I asked her how often they messaged, she said occasionally, I said every day isn’t occasionally. So I felt she lied and was hiding something.
When I walked behind her at one time, she minimised the screen on her phone and she saw I saw, couldn’t help myself, so I maximised the screen and she was messaging him. Again, if there is nothing to hide, why the lies and secrecy?
At this point, I asked her to stop messaging him completely, I was uncomfortable with it and how close she was getting. She was not happy but told me she had. Two days later, she admitted she’d been messaging him again! I said, again, she needs to stop and the next day she said she’s told him that I’d said she couldn’t message him anymore and they’d only speak at work about work. She told me she’d deleted him.
What would you know, she hadn’t deleted him, she’d only deleted the previous messages, she’d kept his number. I know this because when I walked over to see her, her phone was unlocked and there in front of me were messages to him! She said she never though she had to delete his number and yeah, she’d started messaging him again because I was in the wrong to ask her to stop.
Now, I feel lied to, I feel betrayed, I feel hurt and I feel I can’t trust her. I’ve never had an issue with her going out, doing what she wanted when she wanted, never had an issue with her speaking to work colleagues until this.
She says I’m controlling her, but again, I’ve never stopped her doing anything and I’m asking her to stop messaging one person because I’m uncomfortable with it and how close she got. That to me isn’t controlling. For me, it’s now more of an issue for her because she’s not getting her own way for once.
I know she wants me to talk more and I’m trying, I’ve apologised for being closed off but she always seems to put work first and if I ever did want to talk she’d always want to finish off her work first.
So I guess, does it sound like I’m being unreasonable in asking her to stop texting this work colleague?
For me she was either in or on the very border of an emotional affair, at the very minimum she didn’t just cross the line, she went well beyond it.
Am I justified in feeling lied to?
Justified in feeling hurt?
Justified in being mistrustful and asking her to stop messaging him?
She says she understands that she shared too much information but on the other hand, she doesn’t see what she’s done wrong! She feels it’s ok to share information, it’s ok to slag me off to her friends and discuss our marriage problems and my health. I say it’s not.
Any thoughts or questions?