Last summer my (41F) husband (44M) befriended a woman (33F) on IG who he recognized from the gym. They started chatting and eventually working out together. He mentioned her casually in passing one day said something along the lines of there's a woman at the gym who's been chatting with me. I think you'd like her, you have a lot in common. I'm going to try to set something up with her and her husband. He's an introvert and I thought okay.. I'll believe it when I see it. I didn't hear anything else about her for several months. He works remotely and I work in the office several days a week. One day I had a doc app or something and mentioned that I'd be working from home the next day. He says at dinner, oh remember that woman I mentioned a while back? She and I are going out to lunch tomorrow and but we have a couples date planned in a 2 weeks. 🚩
I obviously told him I was not okay with this. He agreed not to go out to lunch with her. But now I have a bunch of questions. He tells me they have all these weird things in common, like so much so that its feels like more than coincidence, and says she looked it up and thinks they're Twin Flames. 🚩🚩🚩 That her husband had expressed concerns with their "friendship" and putting in the context of twin flames made him okay with it so he thought it would help me too since I also have guy friends and maybe one of them is a twin flame to me. He said when he looked it up it didn't mean soul mate but just someone who is a catalyst for growth and change in life. 😑 I asked a lot of questions like if he had her number he said no. If they talk outside the gym, he said yes, via social media. Why I hadn't heard anything about this woman for the 4 months he was building this twin flame connection? He didn't realize I needed to know. 🤬 Is he attracted to her? No, he doesnt find her attractive. I had a lot of concerns but he doesn't have a lot of friends, is very introverted and a little socially awkward, so I was willing to give him some grace here. So I told him he needed boundaries with her and to be open and honest with me.
Over the next 2 weeks I learn a lot of things about this relationship that concern me. Lots of lies of omission, she's VERY much his type physically. And says neither of them are srupid enough to act on anything. 🚩🚩🚩They work out together at different gyms, she's bringing Hygge (deep conversation card games) to the gym to better get to know him, texting him "Good Morning" at 4am. They work out together at 430. The messages aren't confirming he's still going to the gym or anything. Just "Good Morning Sensei" or something similar, giving him random gifts. Nothing major just first aid kits and stuff. Allegedly he's helping her with nutrition and workouts because she wants to do body building competitions. At this point we are fighting every day about this relationship.
We go on the double date. One the way she texts him because were running late and thats how i learn he does in fact have her numberI meet her and her husband and learn that shes 33, doesn't work and they dont have kids. They seem cool, but I still don't like the situation and the lies.
We continue fighting everyday because I feel her behavior is "girlfriend-ish" and he's not shutting it down or putting up boundaries. After 6 weeks of fighting everyday and me crying everyday, I check his email and find an email he wrote to himself the day before he told me about the lunch date. It's a list of questions/comments. Asking if she's dreamed about him and whether the dreams were good or bad? Asking to know about her childhood, her siblings, her clothing and shoe sizes. Apologizes/explains trying to screenshot a messenge she had sent him on vanishing messenger. Says he missed her immensely but didn't feel like he could say it over the phone, etc. At this point I decided it was an emotional affair and I was done. I didn't even argue with him, but he cried told me he had recognized the relationship was becoming a problem and had planned to end it but she beat him to it. Her husband told her he was uncomfortable with some of the obsessive behaviors he was seeing and told her he wasnt comfortable with their "friendship", never would be issued an ultimatum. So she ended it. We have young children, so I decided to forgive him since it was over. I made him block her nunber and social media, and he promised to go completely no contact with her amd switch gyms. I compromised when he suggested just going to a different location in the gym's feanchise. (I was dumb here because I knew this was a location rhey had previously gone to together, but I figured her spouse would keep her in check) We started Marriage Counseling the week after Thanksgiving. We were supposed to be working on rebuilding the trust and fixing whatever issues made him feel like he needed this woman in his life no matter how much it hurt me.
Fast forward to January, he tells me he went to the old location a couple of times between Xmas and New years, and he ran into them. He mentioned that he was working out at the other location when they asked where he'd been. I was pissed that he told me about this interaction 3 weeks after it happened, but pleased he was being honest with me. A week or so, later he tells me she showed up at the other location. I told him, they weren't to speak or rekindle their "friendship" he promised me it would be done and it needed to stay that way. He said okay and he wouldn't talk to her. At some point in January he started refusing to go to marriage counseling, and started putting off all the things we were doing to work on our marriage, he kept saying he was tired because our youngest wasn't sleeping well, and can we do it next week. Around late Feb or March he starts sleeping in the bed with out youngest to help us all get more sleep. I didn't agree with the approach but we were tired. I'm still suspicious and searching his phone, emails, etc. Every chance I get. I'm not finding much aside from a few weird web searches which he deleted from his browser history a few days later. Things like synonyms for a beautiful woman. Different ways to say good morning beautiful. Etc. He had started leaving me little notes in my car and I hoped it was related to that but I also thought it might be a crossword puzzle he was stuck on. Since he swore up and down he wasn't talking to her and wouldn't do that to me. "He'd learned his lesson."
At this point my bestie convinces me he had been a socially awkward idiot, and since my snooping hadn't turned up anything. I either needed to forgive him and stop snooping or leave. So I stop snooping. Then a week later my youngest comes down the hall to me after bedtime. I walk him back to his room, and notice my husband snoring. I also notice his phone is lit up with a video or movie playing and isn't on the charger. So I pick up his phone and go to put it on the charger when I see the video is playing on half the screen and under the video is a conversation hes having conversation with her. What's left of the conversation starts with him saying I smell you. Which she responded with either a 😍or ❤️. He then sent her a IG post about how his zodiac sign likes to go down on women, and highlighted a comment about wanting to do it for his own pleasure. We've been together 14 years and I count on 1 hand with fingers to spare the number of times that's happened in our relationship. So i pull out my phone and take a video of the conversation before it vanishes. I take a video of the conversation and send it to her husband on IG. I text my husband that he's a lying piece of shit and we're DONE. He responds "can you not. Or at least wait until the kids are out of the house" our kids are YOUNG. That ask means I'm stuck miserable and married to him for at least 14 more years. I tell him he's an asshole.
He and I talk the next day and I learn that after seeing him in the gym in December. She reached out to him on MyFitnessPal (MFP) after discovering she was blocked everywhere else, and started going to the gym he was at 2 days a week EVERY week. They would meet in the parking lot, hug each other talk about their workouts and stuff, and then go into the gym workout and not talk. Which my husband felt made him comments about not talking to her in the gym not a lie. 🤬🤬
After she reached out on MFP, he inially ignored her message, she followed up claiming she was depressed and losong the will to livr or something without him. He then told her to talk to her husband and see if he could help her. She persisted and eventually he agreed that he missed her and it was unfair that their spouses were dictating their friendships. So they resumed chatting on IG vanishing messenger. He would unblock her chat with her then reblock her so when I checked his phone she'd appeared blocked and like they weren't talking. Her husband told me this. Let's say I found the message on Monday night. Tuesday he "hid" from me but went to lunch with her at her favorite restaurant, because "he didn't want to be found". Wednesday we talked (read: I yelled and lost my shit at him) Thursday & Friday I had a business trip. Apparent they worked out together on Thursday she cried on his shoulder and Friday they went to lunch at his favorite restaurant on Saturday they meet at Starbucks where she tells him that her husband has requested they take a break for 2 weeks to work on their marriage. At this point, I have meeting scheduled with a divorce attorney because he has shown me where his priorities are.
He comes back from that Starbucks meeting PISSED. My husband had told me he was going to meet her and in frustration I messaged her husband like Damn they just can't stay away from each other can they. Her husband interpreted that as my husband continuing to lie to me, and called her fussing. She put him on speaker and my husband was mad that her husband had called him a liar. He hadn't been mad that I called him a pathological liar, and every other term there is for a lying cheating bustard but he was livid that they thought he was a liar. He wanted me to call her husband and explain that I did know in advance and THIS time he had been honest with me. I obviously refused because I didn't give a fuck what they thought of him or us. That made him madder, I have my thoughts on why he was so mad, probably the same thing you're thinking. I learn from her husband that she's poly, which my husband knew all along, and her husband is allegedly coming to terms with being poly. That my husband had actually gone out to lunch with this woman before the outing I vetoed. They've had conversations which she initiated about favorite sexual positions, likes and dislikes in bed, etc. She allegedly tried to convince my husband to to to NYC with her to a bodybuilding show. Which he said no to (primarily IMO because it wasn't something he could easily lie about)
I retained a divorce attorney, we argue. He mostly insists I'm being controlling and I need to be more understanding and accept this "friendship". After a week he finally starts apologizing, saying he wants to fix us and can I find us a new marriage counselor. (NO, I cannot) He proceeds to keep telling me I'm being hasty, and I need to give us time to fix this because change won't happen overnight. 2 of my friend convince me that our problems are fixable we just both have to want to work on it. I'm still living in the house but we sleep in different rooms because my name isn't on the mortgage and a few months prior he stopped paying my credit card bill without telling me, and tanked my credit score from 800 to 580. Since I can't comfortably move out right now, and the state requires a few months of separation before they will even process a divorce. So I tell him he has until the ink dries to convince me he's not the callous asshole he's been showing himself to be. I'm waiting until the end of the separation period to file. We've been separated since the end of April when I saw the texts. After weeks of arguing and me telling him there's NO future for us with her in his life, he FINALLY blocked her everywhere, and switched gyms entirely. And other very small changes, we have not seen a marriage counselor, nor has he seen a therapist. I'm planning to move out as soon as I can fix my credit score and find a place to rent in our neighborhood so the kids lives aren't too disrupted. The longer thus goes on the more it feels like too little too late. Overall, I don't feel like he loves me because he chose her EVERY chance he got. It wasn't until her husband reigns her back in that suddenly he care about my pain, is sorry for the hurt he caused, and values our marriage. He went on dates with after he got caught instead of ending it with her trying to work it out with me. I have had to cry and scream for every change he's made, and he's ONLY done exactly what I argued about. It hurts, and I deserve better. I hate what this is going to do to our kids, but I can't stay where I'm not valued. Husband claims I'm blowing it out of proportion. It's an innocent friendship, it was never sexual. The sexual conversations they had were just talking. He's claiming the week of dates was a mental break where he didn't know what else to do or who else to talk to. That I was nagging, overly critical, and controlling where she wasn't she was his escape and thats why he felt the friendship was so important. He thinks we can work through this. I don't think we can. He's 💩 all over every chance I gave him to be honest and to prioritize our relationship. He ignored all my warnings and requests for guardrails on that relationship to stop us from getting here and I don't trust him AT ALL. So I guess I'm looking for different perspectives? Is this something that we can come back from or are we dead in the water?
If you made it this far, thanks for reading.
TL;DR- husband of almost 9 years had an emotional affair for 4(?) months, ended it, then rekindled it. Lied to my face about it for 4 months until I caught them sexting. He thinks he can fix this but I don't.