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My husband works a second part time job and has for over 2 years. Been working with this girl the entire time and never had any interest or unusual contact with her until recently. She started requesting they be partners on rounds together in January without him knowing. He only works maybe 5 days a month. They started talking more, getting to know each other, flirting a little. February he intentionally chooses some of his days based on her being there. After work on one of the days in February she text him something innocent but starting the texting on a personal level whole thing, they all have each others phone numbers for work reasons during the day to communicate. Nothing came of the first few text. By February 16 after working together a day they text frequently that night, he did tell her he enjoyed working with her and her company but he was married and had never had any feelings for anyone else like this and even though we were going through the toughest time we had in our marriage he was committed to us. They kept it platonic. They worked together again and would only talk on nights he was at his other just where he is gone overnight. On the 19th he stopped by where she was and told her that this couldn’t happen, he was married and he couldn’t do this to me and he was sorry for all of this but he was working on his marriage. Nothing physical happened there were children present the entire time. Well that didn’t last bc she kept texting him that night and it escalated over the next week. From the 19th to the 25th there were 3 different days they had long conversations and worked together once and lots of things were said. she sent him a picture, she was covered but it was meant to be sexy, he commented on liking it and that he did want to kiss her in the car that day. Just very intense flirting.

I had got suspicious bc we have never had any trust issues in our marriage and he was being weird so I checked his phone on the 27th and found all this. So the whole texting episode was around 2 weeks but flirting at work was longer. He was immediately sorry, and swore it was a mistake and stupid, he would never speak to her again. I immediately called her and verified details he was telling me and stories matched. He hadn’t realized how to permanently delete text so I had them all. Since then we have been really good. Things have changed, we talked about our disconnect that he was feeling, we have changed things to help it, she is blocked on everything, I have full access to all his stuff if I want it, he no longer works with her. She tried to call him once from a random number and he hung up on her and called me immediately and I called her and took care of that. My issue is I’m good when he is here with me but when he is gone my mind goes crazy, not thinking he is cheating just thinking about her and why he did this when I thought he never ever could. Was this an affair? Was it just intense flirting that made him feel good for a minute? Was it an emotional affair, he didn’t talk about deep things with her? I’m confused as to what it was or why it was worth risking is. Do we take it as a wake up call that our marriage had become stale and all about the kids and learn from it and move on?

Do we take it as a wake up call that our marriage had become stale and all about the kids and learn from it and move on?

Welcome to SI and I'm sorry that you're here. There are some pinned posts at the top of the forum that you may find helpful. The Healing Library has a ton of information and includes the list of acronyms we use.

This sounds like an EA (emotional affair) but may have come close to a PA (physical affair). It's tough to tell, but there may be more.

He should read How to Help Your Spouse Heal From Your Affair by Linda MacDonald, and Not Just Friends by Dr. Shirley Glass. Not Just Friends has a quiz he can take to help categorize the type of A (affair). One of the chapters is called Windows and Walls and discusses boundaries. You should have windows (transparency) between you two, and you have walls (boundaries) with those outside of your M (marriage).

swore it was a mistake and stupid

A mistake is forgetting to grab a gallon of milk when you're at the store. He made conscious decisions to allow his AP (affair partner) into your lives. He needs IC (individual counseling) to work on his whys and becoming a safe partner.

I'd be surprised if their stories didn't corroborate because they've had plenty of time to make sure they have all the details right.

Is she married or have a partner? They should be informed so that they can make their life decisions with the truth.

I’m confused as to what it was or why it was worth risking

As a BS (betrayed spouse), your WH's (wayward husband's) thought process isn't going to make much sense. He probably thought it wouldn't go this far, or that he'd get caught, or he liked the attention, or.... To me, it doesn't make sense to risk it.

If you can, IC with a betrayal trauma specialist can be helpful.

ETA: We don't recommend MC (marriage counseling) this early after dday. Unless you hit the jackpot, the MC can do you more harm than good. The BS heals the BS, the WS heals the WS, then you can do MC to work on your relationship. The MC will help with the relationship, but many are not equipped to deal with infidelity.

[This message edited by leafields at 10:28 PM, Monday, April 15th]

Yes, this was an EA, and I would say you are at risk for TT that it was a PA.

No you shouldn't "just get over it".

You should get the book "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass and read through it with him.

This is a big red flag about how your spouse handles difficult things in his life. He's been in a long, slippery slope and choosing to stay on it instead of getting off of it.

Since you have all of the texts, you probably know "the story" about the particulars to the EA as well as you ever will. However, he does not know the full story, he does not really know why he did what he did, he probably does not recognize the depth of his betrayal.

Going to IC, trying to understand the "why" he chose to do this instead of being more constructive.

You definitely should not ignore this. He needs to do a lot of work, or he cannot be a trustworthy partner.

WHOA!!!

You are making one big, major, WRONG assumption:
That his actions are due to the marriage.

In making that assumption you are directly accepting accountability and blame for him "having" to get involved with that woman.

It’s all on him...
ALL ON HIM.

If your marriage was stale, the intimacy gone, what limited time you had together spent on talking about money and kids, and this situation was causing him issues... Then the correct response would be to work on changes. Could have been done indirectly like arranging a weekend getaway or directly by insisting on a talk about what you two could do to rekindle and refocus the marriage.

Put it this way: If the grinding of daily chores were to limit your enthusiasm for intimacy he could do a lot to change things. He could do more housework, tend to the kids, do the shopping... whatever. He could sit you down and demand that you two have a date-night every second Friday or whatever. He could initiate, implement or demand changes. What he couldn’t do to alleviate his sexual desires is go to the local park after dark and rape someone.
In so many ways that’s what he did – only the victim is you and the marriage.

I don’t think you should get over this as in forget it happened.
But the two of you need to move on from this, taking with it lessons learned. Just make 100% certain it’s the correct lessons.

I think a very good place to start is by making it 100% clear to him that he is totally free to do whatever he wants. He can go work with this woman or any other woman he wants to, can date, flirt, have sex, whatever. But not as your husband. You don’t share your husband.
If he can’t commit to YOU and make you feel assured he is committed... he’s free to go.

Whe you both realize that the only thing keeping you together is a mutual commitment... That’s when you two can focus on fixing what is wrong. Only... no matter how much time you manage to free up from the kids, cooking and chores... it wont change whatever made him think of wandering. He needs to get to the bottom of that himself.

This ^^^^

I find Bigger to say a lot of intelligent stuff!

About this…
"She tried to call him once from a random number and he hung up on her and called me immediately and I called her and took care of that. "

Every one has different experiences and situations. I have been there trying to fix my ex WH’s cheating, and it did not work for me.

I now believe that a safe partner for me is one who manages their intimate partner relationships according to agreed upon relationship contracts and personal moral standards: it was never up to me to keep other women’s private parts off my ex WH’s private parts. My efforts to do this were exhausting and futile. It made me look like the bad guy to other people. It took a toll on my physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual health.

There will always be someone (potential ap) willing to cross emotional and/or sexual boundaries. EXWH was 100 percent responsible for what he did with his own parts as well as his attention, emotions, and time with these people.

Welcome to SI, sorry you had to find us. What your WH did is an EA, he had intimate conversations with a woman without your knowledge. I would dig deeper into it, they were in close proximity its likely more than just talk and texting.

Do we take it as a wake up call that our marriage had become stale and all about the kids and learn from it and move on?

No, he cheated, he gave his attention to someone else, that results in a stale M because his attention is on someone else. What ever you do, don't get over it and move on, he has a lot of work to do.

I should have worded this different, I didn’t mean get over it and sweep it u see the rug. I was more looking for advice or people that had gone through then and were they able to move on from it eventually.

He 100% takes responsibility for it, has not blamed it on me at all and is 100% remorseful. I know nothing physical happened based on the texts. He has no contact with her at all and doesn’t want to. He wants to work on us but I am having a hard time moving past all this. We are both going to look into some counseling and go from there.

Thanks for clarifying, if he is remorseful he will be willing to answer all your questions, repeatedly without frustration. He should write a timeline of who, what, when, where and how. He should check on you and not try to ignore that it happened. He has to give you full transparency with phone, emails, and social media.

He wants to work on us but I am having a hard time moving past all this. We are both going to look into some counseling and go from there.

You will not move past it easily, you have to process all the feelings. You should both get into IC first, you have betrayal trauma to deal with and he has to get to how he could do this to you. MC can come sometime down the line but not in the beginning. I wish you the best and we are here to help you.

We have gone through every message, compared dates so I knew where he was when he was texting and if he was talking to me too, I have broke them down on a timeline, I was broke everything down so many times and he hasn’t complained.. He know this is going to be a process and he says he is willing to do whatever it takes. I have open access to all his stuff but I honestly always have except for that 3-4 weeks, that is why is was so obvious. I know every password and code and using his phone for something has never been an issue. Thank you for your response, I just feel like I needed a little hope from people who have gone through and made it through it and came out still happily married.

This was a tiny spark that could have caused a massive fire. You were lucky to have spotted it on time and doused it with water. You now have to make sure there are no further electrical faults and fix it if you find them. Can it be fixed? Absolutely. You need to read the right manual and also get help from an expert. You also need to equip yourselves individually so you can make a good team. Good luck !

I’m so sorry that you are here, N.A., but you are very fortunate to have caught it so quickly. And yes, this was definitely an emotional affair and could easily have become a physical one. But emotional affairs are no less devastating to your sense of trust, your sense of the reality of your relationship and history together, your ability to fully give yourself, and a thousand other things.

Your WH seems repentant, and I too had the need to break everything down in time and know what was happening between us while things were happening between them. I even went through my extensive photo library and looked at dates on photos to piece together the new and sadly amended memories of our life together.

But gently, HE is the one who should be examining all of this and creating the timeline and taking a very hard look at each individual decision and action that he made along the way. Yes, you should get IC to support you, but HE really needs IC to look at how he let this happen and the steps on the road where he should have had hard boundaries that would stop him.

As others have said, it is not up to you to police and control him and other women who may behave inappropriately. It is up to him to understand that this is all HIS responsibility—both to recognize the flattering attention for what it is: destructive to his integrity and to you and your marriage. He should not enjoy such attention. That requires him to do his work in understanding himself and the true nature of what he has been doing. Most definitely the only result of you shooing away the other woman was her feeling like his mean mom caught him and now, he can’t do what he really wants. He has to deliver the message that her attentions are inappropriate and repugnant. The message can’t be: my mom says we can’t hang out anymore. Is he a people pleaser or conflict avoidant? He should not have any qualms about telling her to get lost and why now that he has been confronted with the devastation and destruction he has caused you. Did he do that?

You are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and most of what you are doing is HIS critical work to do to become a safe and reliable partner who would never allow this to happen regardless of what you know and can find out. Again, gently, you have a lot of work (as we all do/did) to recover personally from this and learn how to form a new relationship with him and others that is your own strong self, regardless of what he does, and doesn’t allow disrespectful treatment of any kind from him (dishonesty, sneakiness, hiding information, making bad decisions without your knowledge and input).

But If he is to remain your spouse, he HAS to do the work on himself, not just avoid other women and be protected from their attentions. All of the A was his bad decisions, messed up thinking, and horrible coping skills. You can’t impose or fix or give him what he needs to get—only he can. And that is a lot of very hard work ahead of him with an IC. Without that work, he will only apologize and hope to move forward on promises, but again, gently, didn’t he already make clear promises to you when you got married?

So how on earth do you expect him to understand how to recommit to those promises when he had no tools to stick to them the first time? Like my WH and many others, when they were in a tough spot, the only thing they were thinking of was feeling good through external validation and attention. Did your marriage vows include an exception for if he’s feeling bad or having a mid-life crisis or in a tough moment or feeling neglected by you or just attracted to another woman?

He really has to explore all of this and learn what it really means to keep promises and be committed to the welfare of his spouse and his marriage and his family as much as to himself and his immediate feelings and emotions. He needs to get started on this ASAP. . .and you need to give his responsibilities back to him and focus on yourself and what you need (both from yourself and him) to heal from his devastating actions.

Yes, you can recover and yes, you can rebuild your marriage, BUT you really can’t do this without him committing to some really difficult and unflattering hard review of himself and the likely MANY patterns, thoughts and behaviors that allowed him to do this. That is the work that many WH are not willing to do, and it will take time for you to really know if he is up to it. For many WH, leaving the illicit relationship is the easy part and even white-knuckling not repeated the specific behaviors, but without a fundamental change in thinking and some new coping skills and self-knowledge, sooner or later, he’s going to end up in a challenging moment again.

Wishing your strength and peace as you move forward through such a devastating and difficult experience.

I was more looking for advice or people that had gone through then and were they able to move on from it eventually.

Your trust is permanently damaged. Your relationship has crossed a Rubicon. There is before this affair and after. There is permanent damage that you will not recover from. There is an emotional scar that will not be erased even if it is healed.

So, if you are OK with that, you can work towards R. You can learn to accept the affair as part of your relationship history. There is no absolution. There is no time machine. So just think a little bit more about what exactly you mean by "moving on" eventually.

I remember early on here when I had the timeline and my W was remorseful I felt some relief that the A and the TT was over, I was still in shock. Someone said to me "that won’t age well". Wow, they were correct, my anger phase hit with vengeance.

Healing and R is a journey with no short cuts, it starts with shock / denial then the anger phase. The anger part of journey brought clarity to what really happened, the self destruction of our M and relationship. There are many peaks, valleys and deserts on this journey. You have to travel the path 2 steps forward, 1 step back and fully process everything. YOU will make it regardless if you R or D.

Our R has been successful, but it will never be the same. My W did the work and we have a better M in many ways, but it will never be same. I wish when she had seen the signs of a stale relationship, she didn’t look outside the M.

Thanks for all these great insight and replies. We read and talked through them tonight and it really helped us start figuring out a plan and also helped us dig down deeper into some certain selects and topics.

Bump per request of OP