So as the subject says really, I found out my husband was having an emotional affair with a relative and it’s agonising.
We've been together for nearly 20 years, since secondary school and have an 11 month old baby.
Since the baby has been born it hasn’t been right between us and even a few days after giving birth I could tell he was detached from me. He wasn’t really interested in the baby or at least as far as I believe he should be interested, was completely useless at Christmas and didn’t want to get involved, even though it was our first Christmas as a family and our baby’s first.
Fast forward a few months and numerous arguments later I see he’s started texting this relative far too regularly and calling them numerous times throughout the day. Nothing sexual but seeing as though he was so detached from me and rather than sit with me at night and talk, he’d be texting her.
I confronted him about this and was told to stop looking through his phone, he’s known this person years and she’s a relative so he should be able to text her as often as he likes and he sees no problem with it.
I did check his phone again a couple of weeks later and saw these text messages were getting more and more ‘friendly’ telling each other how much of a great time they had while they were out drinking, they were with her husband that night too but the text very much insinuated it was each other’s company they enjoyed.
Again I confronted him about this and he blew up at me, saying how dare I say who he can and can’t say who he tells he has a good time with and then changed the password on his phone.
I worked out his password and checked his phone again after about a week and to be on the extra safe side he was deleting the messages between them both daily, but what I did see was a days worth of messages between them when her child was ill (with a 24 hour sickness bug) where from 6am in the morning until the last one at 9:30pm at night checking in on them both with more than 20 messages exchanged between them in 1 day plus phone calls. Yet when our child as ill (really quite poorly may I add) for over a week the only time he’d ask about them was when I’d rang him and that really broke my heart.
Anyway fast forward a couple of weeks I’d really had enough and decided to tap into a couple of phone calls between them. I’ll be honest from the way they were talking to each other it really sounded like they were sleeping together, very sexual talk, planning to meet when her husband wasn’t there etc.
I confronted him about it and the first thing he said was that they had kissed and admitted he was having an emotional affair.
he was quite cold in telling me that “nice to feel wanted” and “him and her make each other happy because they’re both miserable in their relationships” I was dumbfounded.
I flew into a rage and said that he was basically saying this is all my fault then to which he said no, it’s all his fault but he hasn’t been happy with all the arguments we’ve had lately and he was seeking happiness elsewhere. - Well thank f**k for a bit of honesty there then.
He did say for about a year, he has been a mess mentally and didn’t want to talk to me about it, having just had the baby and he was trying to deal with it in his own head and talking to her the way he did was a bit of escapism, but vowed he never slept with her.
He was utterly apologetic, telling me he is going to change and try for me and our baby. He’s sorry for what he’s put me through and begged me to give him another chance.
Rewind to the messages saying about how much fun they had together drinking, that was the night they kissed.
He reckons since they kissed he has felt bad about it and it has been playing on his mind, but I just don’t see it, why would you text her the next day saying you’ve had a great time if you knew what you had done was wrong?
Why would you carry on not just talking sexually but also about your respective sex lives if you felt so bad about ‘The kiss’.
I wanted to go and tell the woman’s husband but I was begged not to so as not to ruin her relationship and the one between him and my husband. There’s also financial implications involved which would effect us if they were to part ways.
So it’s been about 2 months since I found all this out and it feels things aren’t going too well. Firstly I overheard a joke my husband said to her over the phone where he said she’s secretly filming for an only fans account and she’s got webcams in her house of which they both found hilarious, I asked about it and he just said he was trying to act normal and have a joke and it wasn’t a sexual joke that was ‘about them’ if you get my drift, he did also try to tell me she didn’t laugh very much and hasn’t done at any jokes like this since she found out I knew about them but I heard her myself. So it appears the lewd jokes are not off the cards.
Then on top of that it was my birthday a few days ago I said not to worry about getting me anything as I’d like to go out for the day to this certain place but this won’t be until the end of October before we can go. He then told me the day before my birthday he hadn’t got me a card or anything, not even one from my daughter as my first birthday being a mum, to which I said I was disappointed about. He then disappeared off for over an hour and then on the morning of my birthday I wake to a card and a present, along with a complete lie about how he’d gone out with her and picked my present, I lie I substantiated by finding the receipt for the gift he’d bought when my daughter was at home with me.
I understand this sounds petty, but before our baby was born he was always thoughtful and went out of his way to make birthdays etc feel really special, so for this type of attitude to now appear hurts quite a bit.
He also comes across as really smug he managed to essentially “pull” this relatives wife as some of the things he’s told me she’s told him about their relationship is truly shocking, and all it’s done is seem to inflate his ego even more, which in my mind makes me feel he’s not remorseful at all.
I can leave, financially I am independent and would easily afford to live alone so that’s not an issue for me, which is good as then I know I’m not staying for the wrong reasons, but I’m just utterly confused by it all. I never suspected anything like this of him before in our relationship and now it seems he’s showing his true colours and I don’t like them.
I have brought up on different occasions questions about their “affair” to which he has calmly answered everything I have requested to know, admitted he was wrong and hasn’t gone mad an me for bringing it up again as he understands I need clarity. His words were the last time I asked about it was “I don’t want you to keep torturing yourself over it, I know you’ll never trust me again and I understand, I don’t expect to be trusted, I wouldn’t be happy if I were in your shoes and I’m just thankful you’ve given me another chance, I was f**led in the head for a long time but realising I might lose you has made me wake up”
I don’t understand how you can go from that extreme to the other of coming across as completely smug, I know he doesn’t particularly like this woman’s husband but it just seems he has no respect for the situation he put his family member in at all?!
How should I be looking at all this?