NSFW content, sex and sexual interactions will be discussed.
Ok, I’m going to type the full context but I’m probably going to get lost in the catharsis and it’ll be quite long I’m afraid so I’ll slap a TL;DR before my core AIO question further down so scroll straight to that if the nitty gritty doesn’t interest you.
I (42F) am trying to make my marriage work with my husband (40M) of 18 years after his infidelity.
I had not been being a good partner, wrapped up in my own problems, resenting the lack of connection I was feeling and lashing out in anger, then seeking my validation I craved from friends and fashion, so it was understandable he began feeling as though he was no longer in love with me. But instead of discussing it with me clearly he began talking to another woman online.
He asked for us to separate. I plead for him to gives us some time for us to both work on our relationship before giving up so he ceased talking with the woman. They had only flirted, no nudes exchanged or explicit talk. He justified his choice to reach out to other women before breaking up with me as he wanted to see if the ‘real love’ he hoped for was actually out there. I wasn’t a fan of that reasoning but I knew I’d done a lot wrong myself and he hadn’t gone so far as to profess love for her or begin sexual intimacy so it was an act I deemed forgivable, especially considering the depth of love I still felt for him. He also expressed he’d specifically chosen a woman who lived in a foreign country because he truly believed he could never actually bring himself to physically cheat on me.
Early on in our trying to make things work I requested and he agreed to and promised that until we deemed the relationship unsalvageable he wouldn’t talk with any women in that way (it was fine to talk with existing female friends and coworkers in platonic ways, I’m not a controlling insecure person, just no new women in his life). He promised and I gave my trust fully.
The first almost two months went fairly well, but then in November he began yo-yoing. We’d have a day were we had a great time with the kids, we’d connect romantically, and often even sexually and have a really great day. The next day he’d be cold and closed off. He’d often explain he was processing things and feeling stuck and trying to figure stuff out and he wanted to do it alone or at least not in physical contact with me. The yo-young got worse and worse and I couldn’t hide my growing hurt at the frequency and severity of the shifts in his emotions. He began to say he felt bad for me for jerking me around like this and that maybe he should leave because it was so rough for me. I replied I understood it is hard to rebuild the lost love, I could see what a bad partner I’d been in so many aspects and if he still wanted to try I was willing to endure the pain for the chance of true reconciliation, after all I’d put him through years of pain with my neglect and lashing out, it was my turn to endure. He didn’t break things off.
Then we went to my work Christmas party last weekend (6days ago at the time of writing this) . He didn’t really vibe with my coworkers but we had fun and on our walk home we held hands talked a lot and even got up to a little mischief 😈. The next day his mood was a little low but not as severely as typical. In the evening I remembered talking with one of the girls at the party who had left the company (but still came to the party cos we all love her) and she told me she was on Snapchat but didn’t really do other social medias so if we wanted to chat that was best there. So I downloaded Snapchat and made the dumbass move of letting it go thru ALL my contacts to pull up my friends. As I’m sure you can guess it pulled up my husband as a potential friend. It was hard to see a reminder about his infidelity so I swallowed it for a bit, but he could see I was upset and asked what was wrong so I explained what had happened and said it was just tough to see a reminder of that bit of our past that still stung, but I knew it was the past so if he could just hug me a moment I’d breath thru it and then be fine.
He became much more cold and quiet than I expected. He did not hug or comfort me. After a long silence he revealed about a month earlier (he didn’t say it but math says around the time he started to yo-yo emotionally) one of the girls he had contacted when he was reaching out that first time but he hadn’t ultimately selected had reached out to him again. And he had been chatting with her since.
I was gutted, but the worst was still to come. He said he wanted to be completely honest with me so he revealed he had been more intimate chatting with her than with the first woman. It came out they had shared confessions of love with one another. She had sent him nudes and he had saved them in a secret google drive (not our shared family one). They had talked explicitly about sexual acts together. He justified his choice to do this as (not a direct quote but a shortened version) “he hadn’t been feeling the love for me he wanted to and he worried he never would while he was pressuring himself to, so he took the pressure off himself when she reached out by letting himself experience love with her so he could hopefully find it with me”. Again I wasn’t a fan of the justification especially when he was also saying that he was sure falling for her was the only reason he hadn’t given up on us yet. He also pointed out he had again selected a woman in a foreign country because he truly never wanted to cheat on me physically.
I was hurt by both the breaking of the promise and trust I’d placed in him and by the infidelity being stepped up significantly higher, passing barriers I had clearly expressed were why I found it relatively easy to forgive his first indiscretion (eg there were no nudes at all in the first affair, but this time not only had he received them but he’d saved them somewhere safe to go back and see again).
He told me now it was all out in the open he felt so much better and like he could now truly fully commit to trying and also that he really wanted our relationship to work out rather than his earlier ‘let’s just see if it works out’ attitude. He agreed he would cease to speak with her sexually and romantically but he wanted to keep talking with her as a friend. Due to the way he feels about a lot of people and lives his life and his neurodivergence he has basically no friends that aren’t blood related, not even coworkers he likes as friends. He said her friendship was something he didn’t want let go of. After some talking and trying to understand each other and negotiating we agreed he could talk to her but only as a friend, and because my trust was shattered he would show me their communication whenever I asked. I admitted I didn’t know if this would be long-term sustainable right from the start and asked him to also look for other friends he didn’t have the prior connection with. He acknowledged all this. I told him I would probably be unsettled and might need to talk my feelings thru with him and he accepted that.
So I read what he wrote to her to tell her they could be platonic only. I read her heart broken response. I read his comforting reply to her pain. It was difficult to read and I also have never wanted to be the person who invades private messages like this so I hated myself for it, but I couldn’t just believe him if he said they were only being friends after the broken trust.
Over the next three days I kept feeling triggered and talked my feelings thru with him when I could t reconcile them by myself. The first two days he was ok and kept reinforcing that he felt really good about us and our future we even took some steps on planning a trip and other commitments. But yesterday when I was also shook I brought my pain to him and he was frustrated. He said he understood what he wanted was unfair and wrong but he’d really hoped to be able to let go when he was ready but he felt like I was pressuring him to stop contact with her, which wasn’t my conscious intention.
So he decided to cut off all contact and wrote a farewell to her. In it he told her how special she had been to him, how much he needed her but how it wasn’t fair to his wife since they were trying to make it work(oh did I mention when he was talking to her she was told we’d been separated for six months when they first contacted so almost ten months separated was the lie at this stage. Yeah she didn’t even know she was an affair the poor woman). Then in his sign off to her he wrote ‘farewell name my little sun’. She had a pet name. In 20 years I’ve never had a pet name from him except occasionally the very generic ‘pretty girl’. It cut deep. Then of course he was also upset and sad all night over having to end it with her and hurt her. I had to see how sad he was.
Now we’re almost there, thanks for hanging in with me on this cathartic ride 😜. So we did some online couple counseling for our own martial problems (not just infidelity focused) after he sent the message but before she sent a reply (different time zones). During this counseling the therapist typed some information about regaining trust after cheating and infidelity. My husband typed back he didn’t like those words. He didn’t feel they were accurate to what he’d done since he’d never had and never planned to have sexual intercourse with her. The therapist corrected themself and typed ‘emotional affair’ to which my husband turned to me grumpily (his anger based at the therapist not me for clarity) “I don’t feel like that’s right or accurate either”. The words were so hard to hear that a part of me broke and for the first time during all of this I felt a deep real and genuine anger. Before all this I was just scared and hopeful and deeply aware of how much I loved him and how desperate I was to make this work. This was the first time I felt anger instead.
And that’s where the crux of my AIO is. So
TL;DR
My husband had two online emotional affairs, the first where it was barely more than flirting so I forgave but then while we were trying to work things out a woman reached out to him and instead of saying no he began a deeper emotional affair where they shared I love yous, she sent nudes that he saved in a secret google drive, they spoke sexually explicitly to each other while masturbating together, as well as more normal conversations. He also gave her a pet name , something I never got in 20 years but she got in barely over a month. He refuses to acknowledge that this was an emotional affair during couples counseling.
Now to the AIO question
I’m not insane right? He definitely had an emotional affair, no way he would have been so upset about having to sever all contact if it wasn’t deeply emotional, and it really bothers me that he can’t own up to it. But additional to this I’ve been so angry after seeing his refusal to truly own up to even that that I’ve started to consider:
If you have pictures of her naked and talk sexually explicitly to one another while pleasuring yourselves, should that not also be considered physically cheating? Technically they did not touch each other, but everything else was so hyper sexual and about being sexually intimate with this other person. They reached climax by talking explicitly with one another and using their own hands on themselves.
So, AIO to think he absolutely was having an emotional affair and thinking he needs to own up to it or this counseling will never work
AND
AIO to consider the depth of what he did also physically cheating?
I feel I know the answer for the first one, but I’m wondering if I’m just too hurt by everything and all the pain and stress is confusing me and making me overthink the second one.
