Something isn't right - emotional affair or just friends?

[FourAndFive]

Name changed for this. It's a bit of a blur, and long, apologies in advance.

I need help and/or a slap to either wake me up to an emotional affair and huge gaslighting from my DH (47), or to help me deal with a shiny new friendship my DH of 24 years has.

He's hidden a friendship from me that has been going on for nearly a year. He has never, ever done this before, and has been a completely open book in all our years together. The last five years have been so good for us emotionally, and our relationship felt solid as far as I was concerned.

He has a hobby that he is obsessed (not lightheartedly obsessed, genuinely obsessed) with, and while doing this hobby he meets people from time to time. He would usually mention these people in passing, and I'm happy he's happy, so all good. About 6-7 weeks ago, he started to mention at funny times how he was meeting 'great people', and 'so many people to chat to' and 'I know so many people now' while he's doing his hobby and I thought yeah, great, but it was out of tone, and quite odd.

Fast forward a week or so, and he keeps name dropping and then tells me that I have to meet someone (single F28), because I'd really like her, and she does the hobby a bit more than he does, and has done it all over the world and how nice she is etc. and so I found myself meeting her for a few hours across two days, alongside some of her family members, who all knew about my DH and the shared hobby and thought how sweet it was... It was so very odd, and I couldn't put my finger on why, and I was so uncomfortable.

To cut a very long story short, it turns out they've been regularly meeting up since late last year, texting multiple times a day, including gifts and planning things around their hobby... I've since seen most of their messages. I have never seen my DH speak to anyone like he speaks to her (except me). He is a man who I know has strong moral boundaries, and keeps a safe distance from other women, doesn't encourage and is completely platonic with all of his female friends - which is clearly no longer the case! There is no 'sex' chat, and he talks about us occasionally (we have 2DC) but it's overly affectionate/mutual appreciation and excitement for finding each other - and I've hated reading them. (I asked him for phone access after all the minimising he was doing, and he said he'd deleted all messages - but he forgot to remove them from his deleted items, so I restored them. I know this is a massive red flag.)

I've told him that I need him to cut all contact with her - but he had serious meltdown (talk of CS), insists it's just friends and that I should trust him. I am finding this impossible, considering the lengths he's taken to hide her until recently. He hasn't done anything to reduce contact, and has even initiated meeting her multiple times, even though I specifically asked him not to. I know they met today for the hobby, and I know they've text each other, because he is telling me - at my request. But I shouldn't worry, because he loves me blah blah. I just want a bit of respite from it so I can get my head around his utterly bizarre behaviour, and consider everything that's happened. It's so unlike him.

I feel sick. The trust isn't there. I feel anxious all the time. I know what I should be doing, but I don't want him to be unhappy at the same time - especially if it is actually platonic. Thoughts please wise MN women! How do I navigate this shit show?

I agree. Show him op.

Hi OPs husband 💁🏻‍♀️

You’re not going to commit suicide because by the sounds of it you’re not even brave enough to break contact with your little girlfriend you gaslighting, pathetic manchild of a grown-up - ‘ooooh hobby friends’ 🙄

You’re 48. The same age as my husband. My husband has hobbies, that’s all they are. Hobbies - little side interests that’s only real purpose in an adult your age are to keep your little head cogs turning and your knees from seizing up. Being that your ‘hobby’, carried on in the way you are IS going to lose you your wife and probably your children, being that they’re of an age that they don’t need to be protected and will hate you when they find out what sort of spineless wanker you are, I would suggest you give the hobby up alongside the nasty little pterodactyl you claim to be such good friends with.

Start to grow up, your frontal lobe should have developed by now (I think it’s about 43 years in a man or is yours delayed for some reason other than you just being a selfish cunt?) and man the fuck up. God, I have read thousands of threads on here about men like you fucking their families up because their midlife crisis means they believe some young spinster fancies them and they ‘have a connection’ 🤣🤣 the only connection she wants with you is your wallet you thick idiot. You have a good wife who, for some inexplicable reason at the minute loves you, don’t be another man sitting in a pokey flat wondering what went wrong when in all honesty ‘they’ are went wrong. Be a man.

OP, I know you love your husband and you want the real one back, but you are worth so much more than this. You’re in charge, you hold the cards. He either conforms or can make his hobby his reality and suffer the consequences. Which he will.

I remember her very well, such a sad thread.

I was wondering about her the other day (she had 'dusk' in her name - if you're reading, OP, I hope you're happier now).

why do you think he decided to lift the lid on this friendship now OP? If hes kept it a secret for a year.

I don't believe he would really kill himself over this, it was just a threat so you felt bad about calling out his behaviour and he could get his own way.
But I totally understand how scary it can be when someone says something like that, there would have been a bit of doubt in the back of your mind (because you're a caring person) that the threat could have been real, especially if he was "upset"
The advice usually given when someone says they want to kill themselves is to alert emergency services or a GP. Step back a minute and imagine the phonecall... "And what has triggered these feelings in him?".... "I said I didn't want him to go away overnight with his 28 year old female friend who he seems to be obsessed with and whose messages he has hidden."......"Hmmm...."

I missed there were so many pages.

When my now ex h confessed to an emotional affair, then he met her, then he kissed her, then they had sex and more than once. He also said at some point about suicide. They all do it. Ignore.

Tell him once more, very coldly and calmly that you want him to stop seeing and texting this woman. When he says no, he can't, doesn't want to, will kill himself, leave the room and come back with an overnight bag and tell him to get lost.

I also agree that he should move out. This will be make or break for your relationship, imo. Do not be cowed by any further threats of him offing himself (as someone put it earlier!): I find that absolutely manipulative and disgusting of him. Who threatens that over being asked-quite rightly-to stop this weird relationship? You say you’re still madly in love with him, OP: have you not got the major ick? Threatening suicide rather than terminating a highly inappropriate relationship (the woman is some kind of idiot to be constantly messaging a married man) is bonkers.

Does he want to be made to leave his home/family? Start again with this much younger woman (euw!) and have a re-do of life/more dc?! He’s mad.

I'm a bit late to the thread but I have been in exactly the same position. He met his "friend", then she was all he talked about. I met her once and all she did was fawn over him.
Not long after I read his messenger messages which he had freely given me access to, but had forgotten. I will never forget the stuff I read. It was horrendous and even 4 years later the thought hurts. Turns out they were having an emotional affair. The aftermath of that was dreadful and heart braking, ( I was an idiot and suffering pnd so I forgave him, and he continued to cheat for the next 2 years, but that's another story).
My advice, follow your gut instinct. He is hiding stuff, cute messages sharing a hobby. He needs ro make a choice, her or you!!! No compromise.

I’d be asking him to leave for a while. Sorry but another one to say he is not trying to prove his love to you, he is trying to bide time until you let it slide and he can carry on having his cake and eating it. He should have put a stop to this the second he knew it could end his marriage. Instead he emotionally blackmailed you into accepting it. That’s not someone who is madly in love with you, but someone who is desperate to keep his two women. His behaviour is unacceptable and if he won’t stop OP, let him go. He is an arse and you deserve so much better.

It's a good question, maybe the level of intensity has heightened and he's become frightened.

They may be on the cusp of physical, I should imagine this friend has now completed total take over of his thoughts, constant messaging can act as brainwashing.
It's amazing how influenced they can become.

So the other question is, who is leading and pushing this friendship.

My exhusband was horribly shocked when I asked him to leave, and he realised i had contacted a solicitor. He couldn't believe that I would go through with it, he imagined that I was too dependent on him, he mistook my previous love and support of him as dependence and weakness. He really thought that he could stay married and carry on with this 'friend'.
Although I was heartbroken, I was prepared, as I had known, for 4 years actually, that I could not live like that, I gave him every chance to stop, but he was totally unprepared for the safe comfortable marriage to end. And as I said in a previous post, I have never regretted it.

When is the overnight? Tell him if he goes to not bother coming back.

It basically comes down to what is his number 1 priority. If he is upset he needs to be reminded he caused this and he needs to make changes to rectify it. Why should you be the one upset and living unhappily for his actions. Similar happened to me (friends too not sexual but the volume of texts was ridiculous). Their friendship was stealing our time with him. I was hurt it was disrespectful to me and the kids. I told him I wasn’t sure I could stay in the marriage. He begged me to forgive him. I told him our marriage/family or their friendship and he cut all contact with her. I did feel bad that he ended up loosing a friendship and a hobby but I was merely reacting to his decisions. I also spoke to her (we were casual friends) and she too agreed no friendship comes before a marriage. He never once made me feel bad.

He doesn't want to be the bad guy on any side. But he's crossed the line. Friendships with the opposite sex are fine, with boundaries. Deleting messages, talking with her about your relationship, about personal things- that's an emotional affair.
You can't control what he does. With the best will in the world, even if he loves you and treasures your marriage he isn't going to pull back from this relationship just because its hurting you while he's getting something that's valuable to him from it. That value might be validation, an ego boost, or something else - only he knows.
From experience I can tell you all you can do is draw lines. While you are pulling on him she is becoming even more appealing as time with her (by text or otherwise) comes without strings and the drag of day to day life with someone.
You've shared how you feel and what you need, he has disregarded it. You need to decide now if you can live with it (it sounds like you can't - I don't think any woman would) if you can't then you take action. I know it feels drastic but I think he needs to move out and figure this out before it goes further. Spend the time making yourself happy and then he has a genuine choice. Don't pull at him, just hold your boundaries.
It'll be tough, but not as tough as living as you are.

In you 9:58 message he said immediately before the CS threat that you are taking everything away from him that I love.

This was when you asked him not to have contact with her.
He blew up (presumably dramatically never go [duck herding] again) and then this. What makes you think he doesn’t include her in the Everything That I Love group?
No one seems to have picked up on this. But it is clear to me that that statement refers to her, and not the hobby.

I would add, that I know it seems like the advice you are getting is drastic action.
You love him, you feel that you know him well, that you don't want to be overly dramatic and you want to give this person who is your closest person the benefit of the doubt.
But many of us are speaking from experience of being where you are. It's so confusing at the time, the unimaginable has happened / is happening and it will get worse if you do nothing. They don't want to be the one to jump, to be the bad guy. When my dh declared his emotional affair to me, I shared that here and got similar advice. I fought tooth and nail that weekend for my marriage. I was confident in it, and in my dh. I wish I'd listened quicker. 4 days after he told me, and ended the ea, he attended an overnight event with her. I was so completely convinced he couldn't have seen the damage he did to me and still go and be with her. I was never so certain he wouldn't do anything. He slept with her at that event.
When he got home I knew something was off despite all his loving behaviour and reassurance so I asked him to leave. I found out they'd slept together about 10 days later, after he'd begged to come home ( I said no at that time)
We are still together and working hard on our marriage but i really wish I'd take a step back and listened to the advice I'd got here at the time.
We feel like posters can't understand fully as they don't know our husbands and our marriages but the course of action these men take always follows the same pattern..

I thought that too. He doesn’t sound like an adult man.
It’s all quite weird, is he having some sort of mental breakdown or crisis ? Is he on the spectrum and prone to obsessive behaviour ?
Do your children know anything about it ?

I was the DC in this situation and the can assure you that what I learned from my mother is that you have to put on a brave face and accept being treated like shit. It fucked me up in many of my early relationships as an adult, luckily therapy helped, but it would have been great not to have needed therapy.

Please, please think really hard about what you're teaching them through showing them how you deal with this, not just what you're telling them. ESPECIALLY if you have daughters.

''..he's a very simple person, not at all shallow or emotionally incompetent. He can't get his thoughts in order easily on bigger life things (where I can), lives in the moment - but he is very sure about being a Good Man.''

Sorry, but this is could be a red flag.
Some people won't give their opinion on complex problems because they might accidentally get it wrong, and reveal themselves as not a nice person.
People who need to be perceived as nice can turn nasty if they think they are about to be exposed.

I'm sorry for what you are going through OP.

I agree with every word that @OchreRaven wrote and this is the exact approach I would take with him

It's underlying message is your attempts to gaslight me have failed, I understand exactly what is happening here, and this is my position.

Don't even entertain any nonsense about just friends etc. A married adult, when challenged on the closeness they have with another adult, does not immediately play the suicide card.

Be calm
Be clear
Be certain.

Leave him no space to wiggle, protest etc. Practical and Factual is the way to go (even if it's really hard).

And also, don't take any notice of the posts from people who are advocating for you to be a 'cool wife'. Nope.

My DH had “just a friend”, too. Like yours, he considered himself to be one of the good guys. He was lying to himself as much as to me; telling himself he was just providing emotional support to a new acquaintance who was going through a hard time - which obviously meant he was a Very Nice Person.

He also fixated on the idea that nobody should have to tell their partner about every conversation they’re having (absolutely correct)…but there’s a huge difference between not mentioning a brief conversation of a few messages that goes no further, and keeping quiet about ongoing daily messaging with a new person that’s been going on for weeks. By telling himself it would be invasive/toxic/controlling for me to know who he was messaging (I’d never asked), he maintained his self-image and justified keeping secrets, reframing his sneaky behaviour as “healthy boundaries”.

With mine, I called his “good guy” identity into question. I pointed out that even if it was all as innocent as he claimed, to an objective observer it didn’t look innocent at all. Other people had noticed and commented on his behaviour and (to anyone not hearing his excuses and justifications) he just looked like a stereotypical sleazy man looking to start an affair. He didn’t want to upset her by entirely cutting off his new ‘friend’ so I offered a choice - focus on our relationship and prioritise not upsetting me, or move out and have the freedom to prioritise not upsetting her. It hadn’t being going on for long, and he did everything he could to fix things, but it still took a good while to repair the damage caused by this (relatively short) period of utterly embarrassing nonsense.

It sounds like your DH has gone much further down this path. A long period of secret messaging, deliberately nurturing an emotional connection, deleting the messages (clear guilty conscience: nobody does this if they believe there’s nothing to hide), arranging meet ups, lying to you, exchanging gifts, and the audacity of getting you to meet her (I wondered if this was him reassuring himself that he’s doing nothing wrong). Threatening to CS if he couldn’t continue his friendship is either a sign of how deep into this he is with her, or a disgusting attempt at emotional manipulation, and I can’t believe he’s still determined to go away overnight with this woman.

Telling him to leave might be enough of a shock to bring him to his senses, but I don’t think I could come back from this. Even if it was nothing more than an ego boost for him, he’s fucked up to an epic degree and I don’t know how you’d ever trust him again.

How did you find out about the messages, meet-ups and gifts? If you discovered it, did he own up immediately when confronted, or did he drip feed for a while? I’m so sorry he’s being such a shit. You deserve so much better.

This - marriage is long and people change this does sound odd but talk about it first with a third party before you call it a day.
You say that up until fairly recently you were happy together. He sounds like he is being a fool yes. But you two have history and kids, not the same as a shared hobby.
not saying you should put up and shut up just saying you need to know more, why is he so engrossed in this?

My read of the suicide threat is that it reveals the deep denial that can be typical of emotional affairs in this kind of context (with a happy family at home and a wife who he still loves).

Specifically, on some level he is aware that his actions have the potential to blow up his life ("lose everything he loves") i.e. he can't imagine losing OW, so if OP forces his hand, he will lose his happy family life - and perhaps the hobby based on judgement from other members. However, he is also on some level aware that the situation he would be in then (free to be in a formal relationship with OW) is untenable (due to age, circumstances etc) - so he would then lose OW too.

Thus, the only way forward he sees for him is to keep things just as they are now - which is where the denial comes in, because of course on some level he understands that this isn't possible. It's for this reason that I don't see his suicide threat as deliberately manipulative OR a genuine risk, but rather as a sign of the deep emotional distress that could naturally be expected when an empathetic, emotionally intelligent person (my read based on OPs love for him, his long-term happy family life, and how out of character his behavior seems to her) experiences the ongoing emotional turmoil that a situation like this generates.

So while I don't think that 'everything he loves' represents OW, it does include her. Some cultures and lifestyles are fine with this, but this is clearly not the case here.

I'm wishing you the best OP. You will be ok, but I don't think there is anything more you can do now to change his course. The only possible way I see you staying together is if he would agree to immediate couples counselling AND the counsellor's take somehow opened his eyes (because he's refusing to hear it from you as well as from himself). All other roads lead to him blowing up his life. You can, at least, choose to step back.

Hi OP

This is interesting to read. I have had a similar-ish situation but dialled down compared to yours. Not the secrecy part as my husband's hobby is in the home, but the continuation of a friendship with a woman where I didn't like the dynamic between them from the start, said I didn't like from the start (she was a perfectly lovely person, as well as beautiful, talented and 10 years younger than him...) - but that continued for 10 years while I regularly said I hated it. We all went out for dinner more than once and she'd say he was such a genius etc.

My husband did actually recently stop seeing her, then started messaging again for a bit but all neutral eg OK in his head, then I was hospitalised with a health emergency a few weeks ago and he kinda let me down, which galavanised me, and since then he has finally actually stopped messaging her.

Anyway what was similar was this sense he has and has had with other women to a lesser extent of wanting to be helpful, not wanting to hurt them or let them down - all while hurting me, the one woman he should care about hurting. When I said he needed to stop seeing this woman, he wanted to take her for a drink to explain the whole situation of how I felt except he'd "explain it was his fault" and I had to point out he wasn't breaking up with a fucking girlfriend. Eventually he said he has realised he so sees himself as a good person that he didn't feel he could fully take on board that he was hurting me because it would almost threaten his whole identity because he wants to be a good person. I think your husband has a mad crush but has compartmentalised and justified to himself to the point he can genuinely tell you with wide eyed innocence that you're being bizarre and it's just a friend. People can convince themselves of a lot when it comes down to their sense of self being threatened. They'll do almost anything to reconcile their behaviour with their identity.

I want to say as someone who dithered for years feeling like I was being controlling, you are not being unreasonable. Your unhappiness should be enough to shift his behaviour. I'm glad you've downloaded that book, the start was really helpful for me especially the 'walls and windows' concept.

Also deleting the messages is a huge red flag. A good rule of thumb is to never message someone something you'd mind showing your spouse.

My husband was so far gone with his 'reasonableness' that he didn't delete messages to and from her that even said things like 'love you gorgeous' on new years eve because he'd convinced himself this was fine? Maybe there's hope - your husband must realise that it's crossed a line if he deleted. Could you work on that angle - why would he delete if he thinks it's fine?

If he refuses counselling because he’s afraid of what will come out - you’ve got your answer

OP if you ask him to temporarily move out I think there's a very strong chance you're going to get a "we were on a break" scenario. He's already obsessed about doing an overnight with her, I almost guarantee he will invite her round as a shoulder to cry on and maybe test the water. You'll literally give him a safe space to test out whether he can start a relationship with her as he will genuinely look seperated, whilst having you as a back up option. If she turns him down flat he can then just go back to you and say he's had time to reflect and that he's sorry, he was a fool and will cut all contact etc etc.

I think if there's any chance of your marriage surviving this he has to completely cut all contact and you need to start going to couples therapy and start the repair process. Xx