I (F35) have been married to my husband (M39) for over 15 years. This last year we separated, went through counseling and are now back together trying to make things work. One of the biggest issues we had was that he tends to not come home sometimes. I don’t even have a better way to say that.
For example, he could be on his way home from work and call to say he’s 10 minutes out. After five hours and many phone calls and texts, he’ll eventually show up at home. He’ll say he saw a neighbor was out and stopped to chat and lost track of time. He will act annoyed that I’m upset or just be silent, I can tell he’s waiting for me to drop it and move on. This used to happen about once a week, maybe twice a week. Not always him stopping for a neighbor but him just stopping somewhere and then not coming home until 2-3am with no warning.
Now we’re moved back in and the whole family is on Life360. I don’t really ever look at his location unless we have a kid who needs run some where and I check if he’s nearby and could swing them or if I have to travel for work and check to make sure the family is home safe for a school night. What I’ve noticed tho is that he’s not where he says he is a lot of the time. And I’m now wondering how often he was where he said before we had this app. Like there were the nights where it was very obvious he didn’t come home, but I always figured he was at least at work during the day. His work is flexible so he could be in different places, it’s not always the same office every day. Which is why I sometimes check to see if he seems close enough to help with a pick up or practice if I’m stuck in a meeting and can’t. So it’s been kind of blowing my mind to see how far off he is from where he mentioned he was working to where he actually is.
I feel so weird because I tend to overshare on my day and ask him about his. He’ll answer it was good and offer a few details. Meanwhile, I can see he must have visited his brother, hung out at a bar, stopped at a neighbors on his way home and had a beer with them. There’s a lot left out, things that I wouldn’t have a problem with and maybe wouldn’t seem weird until he just straight up doesn’t mention them at all.
One night I called him when I saw his location was at a bar to see what was up. He just said he had got the kids to bed (they’re old enough to be home alone, but would be worried to wake up without a parent in the house unexpectedly) and visited with a neighbor and had a quiet night. No mention that he was actively at a bar 30 minutes away at that moment. He ended up being out until 3am that night when I woke up and realized he had never returned home and called him to beg him to get back so the kids would wake up with an adult there.
I just don’t understand what is happening here, I honestly don’t think he is cheating. It’s making me feel like a crazy person because I constantly feel like I can’t trust him. I came back from separation being lead to believe this behavior had changed and truly thinking it had. I just feel confused and out of sorts.
I feel like the short answer would be to talk to him and use the tools we’ve developed in therapy to work through this. That hasn’t worked, bringing it up he is just silent. He listens to what I have to say, barely acknowledges it, and then that’s it. He has stated he wants me to be happy, and doesn’t like that I seem to be in a constant state of stress. I’ve tried to explain that this situation of him not coming home at a regular hour or feeling like he’s purposely hiding details on his day make me feel really insecure and like I’m not sure of the relationship… and therefore hard to pull myself out of a feeling of stress and anxiety. There’s no real resolution to it. It’s just a discussion that happens and then we end up in the same place again.
The advice I’m looking for is, is there anyone who’s experienced this and what was going on. We’re in therapy and I really do want to work constructively on things so advice on how to bring this up so we can work through it would be appreciated. Is there a behavior I’m doing that I need to take into account here? I do honestly think he wants to work on this, neither of us want a divorce but I feel really stuck on this
Tl;dr husband seems to be omitting info about his day or disappears for periods of time and it doesn’t make sense.