This is my first post and I’m really nervous about opening up about my relationship but I need advice and don’t feel I have anyone I can speak to in ‘real life’ about it.
I have been with my husband for 12 years, married 6. We have a son, 4 and have been trying for a second child for over a year now. We have just started getting blood tests etc.
When we were TTC my son in 2016 I found some messages on my husband’s phone to someone online indicating they had been having cyber sex. I confronted him, he claimed it had just felt like porn but appreciated I considered it cheating and promised it wouldn’t happen again.
About 3 months ago I snooped on his phone and found online sexting between him and a different girl but as “characters” (he does this, she does that etc rather than first person). He is big into online gaming and I’m sure that’s how he met this person. Again, we had a big row, I threatened to leave and kept him hanging for a few days before I told him once more and I’m gone. He said he understood. He convinced me he felt nothing for this person, they were just gaming buddies - even showed me their messages where she was saying the same - she’s married, trying to get pregnant etc, lives in another country, nothing going on. It was just building a character relationship and he “thought I wouldn’t mind” 🙄 I accepted it and said they could carry on a friendship but no more.
Last week we went on a family holiday. We came home and I checked his phone. He had called her twice while we were away, once while my son and I were swimming and another while he was supposed to be calling his mum. I found messages about how much they missed each other. I was not aware he was communicating with her at all while we were away and felt this was quite deceitful. Counting down the days until we got home etc which is sad considering I thought we were having a nice family holiday.
Over the last week I find I am constantly checking his phone in the morning when he is asleep. He stays awake until 3am most nights (gaming, chatting - mainly to her I think) so sleeps late which gives me a chance to check everything from the night before. I’ve found out from reading messages and finding a receipt that he sent her a parcel of British food/sweets a few weeks ago, costing £30 to post (!!!). He didn’t tell me about any of this.
I now find I watch him while we eat dinner or watch tv before our son goes to bed and he’s always texting. Last night I asked him “who are you texting?”. He claimed it was his friends trying to arrange a get together. When I checked his phone this morning I found a hasty text sent by him about the same time I asked to his friend group (almost like he thought he should in case I followed up with questions about when he was meeting them) but also a CONSTANT stream of texts to this girl.
I feel like half of them are just friendly and they constantly call themselves “best friends”, there are no “I love you”s or anything but the chat gets very flirty, he says things like “I don’t know what I’d do without you”, “as long as you’re happy I’m happy” etc and they have spoken about masturbation…
I guess my question is would you consider this cheating? The spark in our marriage is certainly long gone and reading these messages to her makes me realise what I’m not getting from him. I’m not saying it’s all his fault, we have a lot to work on together but I feel like I deserve better than this. Is this my opportunity to walk away and start fresh? What would you do?