Hi all, I am new here. Three weeks ago I found out that my husband had been having some sort of emotional affair with a woman he used to work with. We've been together 20 years, married for 14, early 40s, 2 children.
After many months of increasing disengagement and constantly being on his phone I checked his phone and found messages between him and a woman he had never mentioned. The messages were honestly strange - there was reams and reams of technical work discussion, with her contacting him all the time for his input and then suddenly the conversation would take a sharp turn and they'd be discussing her (wild) sex life and he would be lamenting his lack thereof. So they weren't discussing doing sexual things together and there was no evidence that they wanted a relationship of that sort with eachother, but the content of the messages was EXPLICIT to say the least and he would push her for details. He even asked for video calls a couple of times (in a "jokey" pushing the boundaries way, but the intent was v clear), which she rebuffed.
The message thread was full of individual message deletions and appeared to have been fully deleted at some point a few months back, so I knew I wasn't looking at everything. I gave it a day then went back to double check I had seen what I thought I had and, lo and behold, everything was gone, just a single innocuous message between them both and nothing else.
I confronted him that night as I knew then that it was as bad as I thought, and he knew it too. He confessed fully. She was an ex work colleague (from about 3 years prior), they'd stayed in touch, she often needed help with technical queries and things built from there. About 18 months ago the conversation had turned inappropriate, he takes full responsibility for pushing her for details about her sex life (she's single) but she seemingly obliged happily. He blocked her on all platforms that night and deleted her number, sending her one last message to say what he was doing and why. I sat there whilst he did this.
So, he is absolutely abject and is desperate to try to put things right and to reconcile and rebuild properly. I believe he is completely sorry. He started therapy immediately, is answering all my questions, is reading around the issue, has given me complete access to his phone and has completely overhauled his behaviour - which is all good, but I can't stop myself thinking; it's not that hard, why could he not have put the effort in before?
In terms of why he did it, he can't really explain, but he says he was unhappy at work, felt worn down by the general grind of family life, generally felt disengaged from me and the kids, it was a bit of a thrill and also felt like I was not paying him enough attention sexually. As a side note, I work full time in a senior and demanding job, and also had been doing all the heavy lifting on the family side since he had been checked out for months.
This has totally destroyed me. I can hardly eat or sleep, I feel sick all the time. I told him I'd give it a year to see if I felt we could properly reconcile but now I'm regretting my hastiness as I don't know how to get through each day let alone a year. I suspect I've done everything wrong in handling this. I threw him out but now he's back. I messaged the other woman and she confirmed it was nothing physical, just chat that got out of hand. She apologised - I've responded since (to ask her to examine her behaviour, suggested she was minimising and to try to understand why she shared what she did) but she never got back to me. I can't think straight and yet I have to as I have to work, stay sane and keep looking after the kids (though he is doing a lot more now).
How do I do it when it all feels like too much? I've booked to start therapy myself in a couple of weeks which I think will be useful. How do I get out of the loop of wanting to know why he did it and him not being able to give an answer, when honestly I don't think there is a satisfactory one that could explain it to me. Then we both end up frustrated.
I feel like he sold me and the kids for a ridiculously low price and I don't know how to come back from that. I love him and want to believe we can rebuild and be happy but I don't know if I can or how to.
I do want to reconcile. He is not a bad person but he did a really bad thing. I know he is sorry but I cannot understand why he did this in the first place, knowing how hurtful it would be. I have up and down days, today I'm pretty buoyant, two days ago I was a total mess.
Any ideas for how I process this very gratefully received.
