Hi,
I got engaged last year just before we got put into lockdown. My OH was working in a small office as a freelancer before we both started working from home. One of the girls in his office was working for a separate company at the time (the two companies were merging but due to a fall out between both managers, the companies parted).
I was friendly with this girl and we occasionally spoke over Instagram. I noticed she had an awful lot of common with my OH; same music styles, sense of humour etc, and some of the things she would post about I realised my OH had taken an interest in.
I would talk to my OH about our conversations to which he wouldn't have much to say in response. I then asked if he was in contact with her to which he said he was and a couple of times a month. This surprised me a little given that she is 23 and he is 47, they no longer work together and he isn't the greatest at getting in touch with his closest of friends.
This girl and myself haven't got the greatest of mental health unfortunately. I confided in her about my low self-esteem and that I was finding myself comparing me to everyone else. She said she understood and does the same thing. Within 5 minutes of this conversation, she had found a picture of a guy being kissed on both cheeks by two girls and uploaded to her stories – was this some sort of hint? (not sure). The next three days she starts uploading pictures of herself, the previous time being 2 weeks prior, again I don't know if this was some dig at me.
After this happened, I spoke to my OH and said I found it a little weird they were catching up every few weeks given their big age gap and knowing that he doesn't speak to other friends for months at a time (he always comments that he needs to catch up with such-and-such as it's been so long). So I asked if he could show me the messages. He starts by saying 'I'll read them to you', so I say 'please can I see them?'. He shows me his phone but I'm distracted by the amount of texts. I scroll back 6 weeks worth and there's more texts than I thought given by what he'd said, some every week, some every day. He gets defensive and walks out saying he needs some fresh air.
A week passes and so I contact her, very politely saying what the situation was and how my OH had not been open at all about their friendship. She also gets defensive and blocks me. I had an art account on IG which was also following her. Later she posts a story which has a Steven Rhodes poster (my OH took a real interest in SR) which said 'Sick of your s*', along with the words 'very apt X' as though she was addressing it to me specifically.
She completely ghosts my OH after that, he deletes all the messages but not her number. He says he'll speak to her to explain it but he's not going to message her at the weekend. My birthday happened to be that weekend so I spent it feeling anxious about what was going on. He tries to call her at work but she won't respond. Her boss (who is also my ex boss) calls her and asks what has happened as she's very upset and didn't turn up for work that day. He explains but boss says he needs the two of them to sort it out (boss wants OH to do some freelance work for him). She still refuses to speak to him so I message her again through my art account and tell her that I'm not happy she has just decided to blank him when he's trying to sort things out.
Boss then rings OH again! OH blames my physical and mental health on my reason for being upset. Uh no, I'm upset because you were deceptive for months.
It's been a while since this happened. I've not heard from him. OH says he hasn't either but I view him in this different light now. I feel anxious around him and paranoid when he's on his phone. All these messages that he sent were never in my presence so he did he wait until I was asleep, or sometimes he would take his phone to the loo to look at news.
I feel so annoyed at both of them. I thought she was a friend but she couldn't get why I was upset that I'd found all this out. The way she acted so defensively is odd to me. This is also a girl who casually leaves her anti-depressants on her desk at work as if to say 'notice me', and constantly posts on Twitter about how suicidal she's feeling. Urgh, so fed up of feeling this way about us. I need to hear other perspectives on this.