My husband is currently a stay-at-home dad, watching our 1yo during the day and our 4yo when he comes home from school. He met another SAH dad (M 36) who has a 1yo as well, and they’ve been hanging out all the time. I was very grateful for their relationship because my husband seemed lost as a SAH dad at first. We ended up getting very close with the family as a family and started spending a lot of time with this guy and his wife (F 30) and kid. It’s been about 6 months since we’ve known them, and this last week I could feel something sort of shifted. My husband and SAH dad’s wife went out together for drinks one night last week, I didn’t think anything of it, they’ve both had very hard childhoods and have bonded over that. My husband doesn’t have a lot of friends and I was honestly just excited that he had someone other than me to talk to. But today I told him I felt like he was not telling me something and he said he did have something to tell me. We went on a drive and he said that he’s developed feelings for this woman. He said they sort of talked about it on Wednesday when they went out (it’s now Sunday) and that they’ve been messaging about it throughout the week. I asked him how it came up and he said it was just “very natural” but didn’t give me details more than that. I asked to read his messages between them from Wednesday to today and he declined. And that really rubbed me the wrong way. He assured me nothing more had happened they’ve just established that there’s “feelings” present and that there’s no intention attached, it just was the right thing to let me know.
Here’s where I stand; I am not naive and I know people develop feelings for people all the time. It would be unnatural not to, and I don’t think he’s wrong for having them. However, I don’t like that they discussed it before discussing it with me and the woman’s husband. Or that there was days between without us being told. We do not have an open relationship and we pride ourselves on our honesty with each other and this felt a little late. Also, I do not fully trust this woman. She has confided in me a lot about the issues between her and her husband and I worry she’s using this as a way to prove a point. She also is very traumatized and likes drama (her words) so I fear she can be a bit toxic.
Obviously this situation is very nuanced. My husband has expressed that he doesn’t want a life without me. But we’ve been in similar situations before and I just feel maybe I’m not being fair to myself anymore by staying? But he is a great father and we do have two children…so that makes things extremely complicated.
Where do I go from here?