My husband is heavy into online gaming. Whenever he is not at work, he is playing games and chatting with his online friends on Discord.
There’s a girl that has joined their group of friends that he has recently started to play with alone. He claims it’s because no one else is around, but it’s getting to the point that they are now talking on voice chat alone for hours and texting outside of the game.
I went on his computer today and found some messages between them that I found inappropriate. Nothing sexual or outright cheating, but saying they miss each other/making plans to travel to meet IRL(???)/talking about how much they enjoy spending time together. They made plans to watch Netflix on a party together and he has even downloaded games just to play with her.
My husband has been very down lately about work/life in general but he will never talk to me about it, instead he will just hole up in the computer room and play video games, but in this conversation I saw he’s been opening up to her about some very personal things. He also quite often will neglect plans with me in order to talk to her.
To top it all off, I was reading through his other Discord messages and saw a chat with a random person where he was pretending to be me and even told this person details about my life while acting as me.
The whole situation is incredibly fucked up and I know I need to say something, but I don’t know how to do that and justify me snooping on his computer. I’m at a loss and I don’t know how to handle this.
TLDR; I snooped and found out my husband has been weird and inappropriate/possibly emotional cheating on Discord, unsure how to bring it up or what to do.
12 comments
I dont think you really need to justify it. He’s been neglecting life with you for an alternate reality with some rando chick online and refuses to have a real conversation with you. You knew in your gut that something was off and no surprise, you were right.
I think before you talk to him, you should come up with a rough idea of how you’d like to react depending on how he reacts. i.e. if he’s immediately, sincerely repentant and willing to go to therapy, are you willing to work on the marriage and give him another chance? If he tries to lie his way out of it, deflect blame, or is otherwise recalcitrant, are you done and willing to leave? Obviously though you can change your mind, it can be helpful to enter such difficult conversations with some internal boundaries already in place.
Confront him and deal with the backlash. It’ll save you time in the long run, life’s too short
He’s having an emotional affair, he does not get the high ground because you snooped. If he wasn’t being a shit husband, you wouldn’t be in this position. Just confront him. He needs to cut her off and go to therapy.
I had a similar situation with an ex boyfriend. He was a gamer and would stream his games on twitch. He once gave me his username and I would occasionally watch his videos when I could. He’d only stream after midnight but by then I’d already be really tired from work. This is going to sound super childish but one night we were messaging on snapchat and I realized that his snap score was increasing really fast. He was taking a long time to reply but his score kept rising which implied he was messaging someone but not me. It left a bad feeling. The next couple of days I decided to stay up late to watch his streams and in the live stream there was a girl that had her mic on and was talking to him while he played. I felt like I had invaded a private moment because it was only her watching his games. This girl all of a sudden says “yikes there is another person on this stream” and proceeds to act cute and giggle. Then I hear her call my ex , babe. I was so furious. I automatically text my ex and call him out on it. He becomes defensive and calls me a stalker and says I’m delusional. He instantly broke up with me. Sometimes you have to listen to your gut. I suggest you call him out on it. Even though he’s not cheating physically I feel like emotional cheating is more painful because it means it wasn’t an impulse on lust but rather he’s replaced you .
why don’t you join the discord and hang out?
Quite sincerely, no right or wrong answer. Knowing what you know, what would you *like* to happen now? What does a good resolution look like to you?
Been through something very similar myself. I didn’t have to snoop because she was doing it in the open. She saw no problem whatsoever. When she ditched me on my birthday to go play games with him, that was my hurdle too far. I checked out. The pain after, watching her invest into him while actively neglecting us…was heartbreaking. Don’t wait until it’s too late. It’s already an emotional affair. Get it in the open that you find it unacceptable. If he defends it have your plan to leave in place. Make it known that this is a choice, and he has been making it. Don’t settle for being his last priority while someone else is his first. You deserve so much more from a relationship, let alone a marriage.
Maybe print the messages off and highlight each section and ask him What did you mean by this? Also ask why he was pretending to be you. That is weird.
That’s so sad he would rather be on Discord chatting and making plans with this woman, spending so much time doing this while neglecting you ,his Wife I would be so hurt and disrespected by this .He needs to stop this if he really loves you he will or if he gets angry and won’t I think that will answer your question on what to do .Good luck with everything and he is so in the wrong for what he is doing it’s very shady
My ex husband chatted a lot to some female coworkers. I would read their messages on FB Messanger. My ex husband would also end up deleting messages with them so I wouldn’t see. So know that once he knows you check his Discord, he will delete messages he might not want you to see.
He did cheat on me with one one coworker and I think they are married now. Trust your gut.
The neglecting part is the more serious thing, but opening up to an online friend, even of the other sex, is natural when you don’t have a friend network IRL.
There will always be things you can’t tell a spouse, and sometimes all you need is someone to vent to without having it pay hundreds and thousands for a therapist. If there’s no inappropriate talking, only good friend things… It might feel weird, but no one would blame him if it was in person with a guy. Platonic, close friendships do exist, and don’t imply that he will or might cheat.
So if/when you talk to him, focus more on the fact he might be choosing the computer more often than you. Neglecting plans with you is probably symptomatic of something deeper. Even then, based on the little you’ve shared, it’s obvious that he’s in a not great head space, and Discord and gaming and this friend are his coping space – acknowledge that, but be firm that it can’t mean he always puts you last. Work on some time frame, like couple time for X hours each not before he can touch his gaming.
The question of course remains: can you live with not being the only one he confides in? That he has a place to vent all the frustrations he feels he can’t tell you either because they concern you or he doesn’t want to burden you with them?
Ive been him. Emotional affair is just the beggining phase of an affair. Sadly it seems innocent, but like any drug, it will tell the brain to want more. Make no mistake it is like heroin. Does she live in the vicinity? Just be honest, and let him know this is a slipery slope, but be calm. Let him know you arent cool with this.