I've been married to my husband for 2 and a bit years - it's my first marriage, his second. I love him to bits. Around a year ago, I had some issues with trusting him - I found some excessively flirty/sexual messages with some of his longstanding female friends on his phone. He was open about the fact that he is very flirty with some of his old female friends because it helps his self esteem (which is painfully low - he has often questioned whether he's good enough for me and expressed feelings of disgust about himself). He let me have full access to his phone and changed the way he interacted with these friends, but I felt betrayed that even after we'd married he still needed that validation from other females. I can be honest and say I went from a confident, independent woman to a bit of an emotional mess. Initially I managed to deal with this quite well and we were very honest with each other. At the same time (earlier this year), he started a new job and a member of his team who is very young and pretty has been texting him a lot. And he responded - again, whilst not crossing the line officially (messages were mostly about work) there was a very flirty overtone and when I saw the messages I flipped out. Whilst he has, once again, amended the nature of his messages with her (and he shows me them when I ask), I've met this girl and it's obvious she's besotted with him and gives his ego a massive boost. He claims he feels just friendship towards her and I've accepted that and we've carried on as normal. I haven't asked to see any of his messages for 6 months.
A few weeks ago he told me he wasn't sure about our future, he feels unhappy and has been feeling like he's going through the motions. This was a shock to me. Particularly as he said he'd actually been feeling this way for well over a year (long before I saw the first bunch of flirty messages). I'm aware that my paranoia and trust issues affected him but I felt I'd resolved them and we were getting on an even keel. We've been talking about buying a house and starting a family. I asked him today if he has feelings for that girl and he said "I don't know. Possibly. I don't know what I feel or why I feel." He said he loves me. I asked him what's wrong with the marriage and he said he doesn't know. Despite everything, I've shown him total trust, even after what we went through. I am confused. We are hopefully going to start counselling but any pearls of wisdom would be appreciated. Apologies that this is so long.