- sofialovesmikey
- 4 years ago
- Wedding: September 2010
Hey bees. Looking for some direction here. This is extremely(!) lengthy, so if you get through, I appreciate your advise.
In the past 3 years, Darling Husband has gotten extremely involved in two seperate emotional affairs. They were both internet based, and both evolved into explicit sexual exchanges. In both he iniates almost nonstop daily conversation via email/AIM/Facebook message. Like, “hey. just waking up, what’s for breakfast?” and went straight through until bedtime. It was the first thing he did in the morning and last thing he did before going to sleep. He discussed every detail of our life and relationship together, his life and growing up and there was also alot of sexual tension and innuendos dropped, along with explicit conversations and photos/videos from the girls. Thank god he didn’t have a webcam or a camera phone himself.
The first was some indie “suicide girl” type model he messaged saying he was a fan. Well when she responded, they began a daily exchange and it went from there. I found out when he was out of town, and using our shared laptop a messaged popped up on AIM (who still uses that?) from this girl, and it saves your message history, so it was all out in the open.
The other was with a girl he had based an internet friendship with many, many years ago. She is legitimately crazy. She would call him 20 times in a row until he answered, leaving him voicemails saying she was pregnant and naming the kid after him. Emails saying how awful I must be and he needs to move across the country to be with her. She had about 50 different emails and screen names so no matter how often he blocked her, she would find a way of communication with him. I’m really not sure why he was involved with this. Shortly after we started dating, I had asked him to leave her in the past, regardless of how friendly their relationship is, we don’t need The drama in our life.
Fast forward many years later, I find out he is speaking with her again. Daily. And developing an explicit relationship with her, just like the first one.
Both of these were huge blowups when I found out. Especially the second one, because we had just been through the situation with the model, and because he knew how I felt about this girl being in his life – physical or not. He argued that in both situations he didn’t do anything wrong. He was just talking to friends, and they felt the urge to send him photos. He didn’t reciprocate and didn’t encourage photo sending so it was ok. After hours and hours, I finally get through to him that he is extremely flirty and charming by nature. Often times he doesn’t even realize it, we’ll be out and his jokes and sarcasms and interactions with other females even his close friends, are bordering inappropriate. So, just because he didn’t actually say “send me pics of your tits” doesn’t mean he wasn’t having a suggestive conversation, and it doesn’t mean it was ok for him to be in that situation. He went to counseling after the second incident, because it seems like he feels the need to have constant attention and affection. If I’m not home, or of I’m not talking to him, he instantly starts chatting up anyone on his friends list who is free (Which is how these two relationships started).
I didn’t leave him for a number of reasons. We lived together. I moved for work and we knew no one within 200 miles, moving at this point would be extremely messy. He was incredibly apologetic and sincere. I know he has always loved me, but his judgement is incredibly flawed. I know he never did this to hurt me, but he did it purely for his own satisfaction. He agreed to the counseling, which was a step forward for him and getting us on the right track. He deleted all communication programs and apps from his electronics so he wouldn’t be tempted to start up a chat just because he was bored. Things were extremely tense and awkward for many months following. Everytime his phone buzzed, I had to know who he was talking to. Eventually things calmed down, got back to normal and we married.
So, here we are 3 months after our wedding. We should be in married bliss. He has recently been acting somewhat distant and doesn’t seem to have any input or interests in our conversations. When using our laptop I saw I had a facebook message. When I clicked, I realized Darling Husband was actually logged in, and the message was from his Ex who he has always been hung up on. This piqued my interest and frankly, terrified me because we’re married now. And so, (here comes the flaming) for the last month I’ve been randomly checking his messages. She is in a failing marriage and hates her husband. She and Darling Husband speak daily and she sends photos of her kids to him. Nothing in appropriate, but I know how crazy he has always been about her and how he had ended up before. He also will delete the conversation history multiple times a day, so there’s no proof of it. He has never deleted a message before, and his facebook message history goes back to 2008.
I don’t want to approach him and bluntly state “I’ve been reading your messages, knock it off”. So I’ve been not so subtly hinting at it. I’ve had many conversations about how his recent behavior is extremely likely to when he was talking to the other girls and makes me uneasy about what he’s up to. That his lack of conversation with me feels a lot like maybe he is talking to someone else frequently and at the end of the day, doesn’t have anything left to say to me. I’ve asked him to remember how miserable we were when we went through that period before, and asked him to make sure he never makes me feel like that again. I’ve told him I don’t feel like his priority anymore because he’s always so involved in his phone/computer- but he still won’t put it down. As his phone is actively buzzing with her messages I’ll ask who he’s speaking to, and he’ll tell me it’s one of his buddies. Today she is visiting his hometown. He asked me if I wanted to go see his parents this weekend. Even on my birthday, he spent all day talking to her.
Bee’s I don’t know what to do anymore. He is clearly already emotionally involved with this girl, and straight up lying to me about it, and trying to cover it up. If he just left her name out of a conversation to avoid upsetting me, that’s one thing. But he is going out of his way to make sure I don’t find out he is even speaking to her. So he knows what he is doing is wrong. I just don’t know how to handle this. We’re married so I feel like I can’t leave – we married for a reason. But I feel so small and worthless, that this girl (or any girl who will talk to him) means so much more to him than me.