The week of silence had been unbearable. When I finally confronted my wife again, I asked the question I’d been turning over in my head for days. “Did you cheat on me? ”
She laughed, like the idea was absurd.
She seemed convinced that everything she had done was perfectly normal and fine. I doubled down, laid out how suspicious the whole thing was, and asked to see her messages with him. She didn’t object. That was a relief.
The messages themselves were mostly reassuring. But reading them, I felt something cold settle in my chest. They had been texting a lot, mostly after drinks, talking about the big argument he had gotten into with her friend. What hurt more than anything was seeing all those texts while realizing she had barely texted me during the same period.
There was nothing flirty on her side. But they were both talking about how glad they were that they had met and how much fun it was. And he was starting messages with “baby. ”
I freaked out.
She kept insisting that was just how friends talk. “Obviously not. I would never call a female friend ‘baby. ’”
She was adamant.
When talking about her friend, he said she was probably just jealous of her. That alone told me everything. There were a lot of messages where he told her how amazing she was. She wasn’t giving the same back.
But the final message was him messaging her a few days ago: “Hey, sexy lady. How are you? ”
I lost it. She said that was exactly why she had stopped texting him.
It grossed her out. To be fair, she had stopped texting him and archived the chat. Whether it was because she was creeped out or because she was hiding it from me, I didn’t know. But she didn’t try to hide it when I asked to see.
She could have deleted things before showing me, but I doubted she had—she had already archived it and didn’t seem to expect me to see it. On one hand, I was glad she finally stopped when it got too obvious to ignore. On the other hand, I was furious that she had spent the whole time acting like I was insane for saying he was interested in her. Even after all of this, she was still annoyed that I called her naive.
She was naive enough to think he wasn’t a creep in the first place, but aware enough to know exactly how I’d react and hide it from me. I also saw his profile picture. He wasn’t attractive, which helped, not going to lie. But I still feel sick.
Not because I think anything actually happened, but because of the way she handled it. The way she dismissed my feelings as jealousy, the way she made me feel like the bad guy for being hurt. That was the worst part. It all started a few weeks ago.
We had planned to visit a mutual friend in a different country. I booked time off work to match my wife’s schedule. But right before we left, she found out her work had booked additional days and couldn’t undo it. I tried to get that time off too, but I couldn’t swing it.
Then, conveniently, her work told her they could revert it. But she wanted to spend the extra two days on holiday with our friend. I thought that was hurtful on its own. We were supposed to do this together.
Now I’d have to travel back by myself while she stayed on. But whatever, that’s what we did. When she texted over those two days, she said she was with our friend, at dinner. The pictures she sent were only of our friend or the dinner table.
Then when she got home, she casually mentioned that some guy had approached her in the street. They talked about life for an hour. He was a landlord. Since our friend wanted to move out of her place, my wife gave him her number.
Then they all met for dinner. Our mutual friend and him apparently did not get along. My reaction was immediate. “WTF?
Some stranger comes up to hit on you, and your reaction is to talk for an hour, give him your number, and then have dinner with him? ”
She got annoyed. “I knew you’d be like this. This is why I didn’t tell you until now.
”
That made it worse. She knew it would upset me, but she did it anyway and hid it by mentioning other things she was doing, not telling me about him until it was too late for me to say anything. She said it was all innocent. He wasn’t like that at all.
He just talked to her because she had the same tattoo as his sister. She told him she was married. I don’t know. She’s always been loyal, but super naive with this stuff.
But the fact that she knew I wouldn’t like it and did all of this anyway felt calculated. Apparently, she and my friend had talked about me. Our friend said she didn’t think my wife would tell me because I’m the type to get jealous over that. For context, my wife and I are about the same level of jealousy.
I know she would not be happy if I did this. But I would forgive her if she apologized. She won’t. The most she’ll say is that she’s sorry she didn’t tell me until she got back.
But when I said the whole thing was messed up, not just that, she got annoyed and started defending her decision not to tell me. We haven’t talked in days. She seems more annoyed at me for being upset than I am. I don’t know where to go from here.
I don’t want to just accept that she did this and doesn’t feel bad about it and may do it again. But she doesn’t feel like she did anything wrong, so she won’t apologize. And now she’s mad at me for being annoyed at her. When I brought it up again after the week of silence, she kept saying she told him she was married, so why would I be annoyed?
I pointed out that obviously he didn’t care, since you could see him trying to hit on her right there in the messages. Somehow, I was still crazy. Another commenter asked about the physical abuse I mentioned. About a year ago, she got annoyed at me coming home late and hit me over the head and scratched the crap out of my arms.
I told her that was messed up. She just said she could because I woke her up. I tried to suggest couples therapy. She said she’d rather just leave than deal with me being insecure.
I thought I was over this after being pretty sure she didn’t cheat. But I just can’t reconcile the notion that she had no idea about his intentions. She said she thought it was fine because he had gay vibes. When showing me his profile picture, she said, “See, doesn’t he look gay?
”
If I’m being charitable, I can see a gay guy saying that without a girl thinking deeply about it. But I’m still not happy about it, and I’m definitely not going to be as trusting going forward. I’m also not going to talk to the mutual friend again. The fact that she told my wife not to tell me since I’m insecure, and then finding messages saying “sexy” and “baby,” is just insane to me.
We patched things up, kind of. But that night, we got into another fight because I mentioned I wouldn’t speak to that friend again. She said it was ridiculous and launched into the whole thing about me. It’s hard.
Because 99% of the time she’s perfect. So I’m questioning if it’s worth blowing that up for this. But the way she just shut me down once she decided she was right and I was wrong scared me. It was scary to see how quickly her affection seemed to evaporate once I accused her of doing something wrong.
She’s not usually like this. But she does get like this when she thinks she’s right. And now I’m weighing on my mind. Not even that it was cheating, but just her ability to do all of that scares me.
And the fact that she sees it as completely normal. I don’t even know if I can bring it up again. She’s just going to act like I’m insane and walk out.
