Is this emotional infidelity, and should I consider ending the marriage?

[Calpurnia1]

DH of 20 years has met a woman at work who has become a very good friend over the last year or so. In a small group they occasionally went out for meals and drinking. There was lots of non work messaging late into the night and at weekends and I began to be concerned. Some of the messages were of the nudge-nudge-wink-wink type. It was painful and frankly heartbreaking to read them.
It really upset me and I asked if he could keep it to work where they spend time together anyway.
He has other woman friends and always has. Not a problem. But with this one…it’s different. They are clearly very close and share a lot of private jokes. It reminds me of we used to be when we first met. That easy friendship, knowing how we make each other laugh. Seeing something and wanting to tell them. Now he is like this with her.
Eventually after I let her know that I was aware, they did stop messaging but I worry it continues.
I don’t know what to do. When together, he spends most evenings with his phone in his hand, which makes me feel increasingly worried, in my own home, that it’s going on again.
It’s not physical between them but it’s so hurtful and their connection is slowly destroying how I feel about him and it makes me very sad.
I love him and our family and our home very much but it makes me feel lonelier each day.
Is it time I just face reality and leave or ask him to? I don’t know where to go with all this.

Found a load of songs and poems stuffed in a drawer in his office when I was looking for something to do with our business , plus the CDs were he had recorded himself singing and playing these songs - he was away tour managing at the time- I said nothing either for 6 weeks whilst I mentally assessed how i felt !! I should have got an Oscar as it was all in the month before Xmas- I confronted him 2 days before Xmas basically to make sure he had a very shitty Xmas -( no kids at home) nasty I know- !!

I’m so, so sorry, I can’t believe he’s done that to you. After two years of working to save your marriage then he comes up with crap like that, I think that’s bloody awful.
He’s entitled to change his mind, as were you, but to paint himself as the hero who selflessly did all he could to fix it, after he had selfishly did all he could to ruin it, is bloody staggering. ‘Neglecting his own happiness and boundaries’ - I’ve heard it all now. Poor lamb who ‘needed comfort’ by shagging OW and ‘neglected himself’ allegedly pulling out all the stops to fix what he broke.

To me he sounds like he’s still got those magic ingredients which all cheats seem to posess until they really, really deal with them:

an ability to lie, primarily to themselves, then to others to justify the self-lies they’ve told and conceal the secret behaviour that generated the self-lies in the first place.

avoidance

denial

entitlement

selfishness

always looking outwards rather than inwards for someone or something to blame, when the responsibility and blame is theirs, but they can’t cope with the guilt and shame.

Olympic standard DARVO tactics.

I’m just really, really sorry, that’s the worst thing I’ve read in a while. Infidelity stories on here are always horrific, but either a false reconciliation where they are still cheating, or an abrupt about-turn when you generously gave a second chance, are beyond the pale double-whammies.

You haven’t said but I’m going to guess she’s younger and attractive. Men are pretty predictable. Keep an eye on how he is with his phone, if he carries it everywhere and never leaves it lying around then yes something is going on.

Thank you. It's pretty rubbish! But I've cried my tears and time to go and live my life xx

Yes, this rings a bell with me only it's less than 75% feelings for him now. I'm 78 and I know if push came to shove I wouldn't look after him if he became incapacitated.

Sending love and hugs OP. Yes it is absolutely emotional infidelity .Ive recently been through this and still am after trying to reconcile. He dosent give a shit and now going on socials when ow is there. Shes a work colleague.

In fed up of trying its 8 months since discovery day for me. I posted on here last year.
Im feeling like such a fool at the moment. Exactly the same has gone on with me/us as you have posted and others. Sending love to you all going through this crap 🫂🫂These men just do not care once their head is turned. Its just absolutely awful how it makes you feel. Thewookiemustgo is spot on with her post. Try to keep strong op 🫂

@Allthegoodonesareg0ne I’m glad you’re feeling better and looking forwards. Leave the past where it is now, regret nothing, you tried and were generous and he doesn’t deserve you anyway. You did all you could.
I hope you find peace, healing and happiness after all you went through. X

You might find the book Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass helpful.

He is breaking his marriage vows isn't he - forsaking all others. And you're not actually asking him to forsake all of his female friends, just this one. This one, with whom he has exchanged inappropriate messages. This one, about whom he has lied to you which you discovered only by chance when he thought you were out.

Cheaters are motivated by loss. So whether or not you want to stay with him, the best move is to ask him to move out. It's possible this will force his hand and make him make an actual decision. It's OK for you to tell him he has to choose between the two of you. That if he wants to remain friends with a woman with whom he has behaved inappropriately then he doesn't get to be married to you. He may give her up, though by that point you may have realised that actually you don't want to be married to him any more.

Have you been on the Chump Lady website? People also recommend Baggage Reclaim.

As a minimum I'd start individual therapy for yourself, to help you focus on what you are thinking and feeling. You could ask him to go to couples therapy. You could say it's therapy or divorce, if you don't want to say it's move jobs or divorce. But basically he won't either shit or get off the pot unless you force him.

You deserve to be treated with respect. Don't undervalue yourself, especially not when he does.

I’m sorry OP that you are going through this.
Im coming from a similar scenario but slightly different angle… I have a severely disabled child so often/always feel I have to endure my husband whom I now hate.
But before I had a child, just after we married and when I still loved him so much.. we moved (his idea), he met a woman and blatantly chased her in front of me. I made it clear he was free to do so but his plan of throwing me out of “his” (as he described it) house wasn’t going to work.
Fast forward to very recently, he’s been very non-stop talking about a mutual female friend (she was my friend first) and constantly trying to meet her at ours, or somewhere else.Things came to a head a few weeks ago when he wanted to go to her house alone with her. Now, I’ve been open and said if you want to f@ck her go ahead. He denied any interest. (She’s a year older than me and I’m 6 years older than him so it’s not the “hot young woman” trope).
anyway, she suddenly messaged me to ask if I was ok with it.
and in our 14 years of friendship I thought - you know what, I was, but now I’m not. And I told her that.
but I told him him if he didn’t stop fawning over her to get the fuck out. He can be friends with her but over my dead body am I watching him fawn over her in front of me.
Lost a friend immediately and he “shaped up”. But you know I’d rather he’d just gone to her.
like what’s the point?
We have one life and if they want to run off let them. I know I’m bitter because my husband is a prick, but it just doesn’t feel the same after that first realisation.
If I could turn back time ..on woman 1 - I would have just left. Argued about the house later.

I don’t mean this disrespectful to anyone who knows that they have definitely been physically cheated on as that must be awful but in some ways I think emotional is worse as it’s so much easier for them to deny it and as pp said I have found it so messes with your head as you know they are lying about how they feel about the ow but they have an answer for everything and can try passing it off as just “friends”. Then I start to question if I am overreacting and being paranoid like he said, even though hundreds of people on here and elsewhere have said that it is wrong so I understand op questioning it, am I being over sensitive to some messages and his reaction.

@Mingspingpongball that’s exactly it isn’t it - they can suddenly step up to the plate and be as sorry as they like, but something inside just dies as I said - that feeling of ‘specialness/team’ it’s hard to explain unless it’s happened to you

@Hhhwgroadk I don’t honestly think they get how much it can change your feelings , and if they are sorry and it’s not happening they expect you to rebound back and still feel 100% the same.

Mingspingpongball your friend of 14 years asked if you were OK with her fucking your husband? And dropped you when you said no. Jesus. I hope you have other actual friends. I'm sorry about your bastard of a husband. That sounds difficult to live in.

If my partner came to me and told me that something I was doing was causing them this much pain I would be doing everything under the sun to show them that I had stopped that behaviour and that I wanted them to feel secure again.

It doesn’t sound like you’re getting any of that from him.

This 100% :( its absolutely awful

@Crikeyalmighty that’s a great description of what infidelity destroys.
I do think you can become a team again, (highly dependent on a huge amount though) but you can never, ever get the specialness of being in a marriage unaffected by infidelity again.

I constantly feel paranoid now every time he is on WhatsApp, especially when I see that she is on at around the same time, even though it seems like they aren’t messaging much now. Plus they still speak at work and obviously having conversations I don’t know about, like the one the other day where he apologised to HER. That’s the thing I’m never going to know what’s being said when I’m not around and all the old messages keep going around in my head, thinking what was happening with us at the time. Can you ever get past this?

@Thewookiemustgo I agree with that - you see your husband/partner with a fresh perspective and in my experience it certainly kicked him off the pedestal and yes sadly did make me more aware of spotting any signs of shitty behaviour -

This is how my ExH’s affair began

It might be better if you start your own thread, as we might derail OP’s thread here.
For what it’s worth as briefly as possible, only non contact would have ever worked for me, if they’d worked together I’d not have put up with that.

My ex husband did this with a member of his team, messaging arranging to go to lunch together, to be in the office on the same days, to pick her up even though she lived out of his way. It was how he used to message me. He was always on his phone. It killed the marriage. I never found any evidence of any physical relationship but he emotionally invested himself outside of his marriage and left me alone in it, carrying the household. When I confronted him, it was all in my head, they were just great friends. And I worried he was then smart enough to cover it properly. I never wanted to go to dinner with him or away with him as it just felt like a sham, given the times he took his colleague out vs me. It felt like it would kill my dignity. I think when they lie to you to continue contact then you know exactly where you stand.

Ironically when my marriage ended I had a fling with a colleague and we went to lunch much less than he ever did with his ‘friend’.

have you told him it’s making you so unhappy you are now wanting to end the marriage? If you have and he hasn’t stopped then ending it is all you have left. If he’s not physically cheated and you still love him then I’d advocate trying one last time to save the marriage. If you tell him what you have said in your OP and say to save the marriage he has to change jobs and not speak to her again then you will have your answer. Unless you don’t feel you can ever get over him prioritising her feelings over yours then you will have to end it.

im so sorry he’s made you feel this way.

Sorry yes I shouldn’t have made it about my situation, just wanted to say how it had made me feel.

LTB.

In fact there's no relationship to leave. You are already the satellite.

I'm older than you and have ben married twice. I didn't trust my gut with exH#1. I so wish I had, it was right all along. ExH#2 didn't cheat but was upsetting me in other ways by being horrendously emotionally abusive. I wish I had had the courage of my gut feelings and ended both relationships/kept some pride and dignity on the first bad bit feeling ai had, but I could never have broken up my family with #1 - my kids were just babies when he decided to have a mid life crisis and an affair, and I would have probably laid down and died before giving up my family unit. Moving on many years, both my DC survived the divorce we ultimately went through - and are high achievers academically and in stable emotional young adult partnerships. Looking back, I can't believe I actually let another human being talk to me and treat me so badly and with such venom. I'm still friends with #2 - we split amicably and albeit he was abusive in the relationship, he handled the split well and with respect towards me. I'm sorry you have been through this, OP-it's absolutely awful when you don't know what's going on. Emotional cheating and chemistry for me would be a big no.