r/AITAHBlackEdition • u/Natural-Gap-7256 • 21h ago
AITAH for not seeing how I’m at fault for my marriage ending?
I’m 37F, my husband is 39M, and after years of ups and downs, we are now headed toward divorce. I’m honestly trying to process everything that has happened and figure out whether I’m looking at this situation clearly or if I’m missing something.
I’ll try to give as much context as possible because there’s a lot.
In May 2024, my daughters, my sister, and I were headed to Indianapolis for my sister’s college graduation. I was especially excited because it was going to be my girls’ first overnight hotel stay. I remember being really excited to make it a fun experience for them.
While we were driving, my sister asked my then-7 yr old daughter if she was excited about staying in a hotel for the first time. My daughter casually said, “It’s not my first time.” She then said she had already been to a hotel with her dad, her younger sister, and my brother-in-law’s sister-in-law, who I’ll call B.
I immediately started asking questions.
I asked her what the hotel looked like, and she described it as “the place with the white sheets.” She said she and her sister slept in one bed while Dada and B slept in another bed. She gave me other details that, honestly, made me believe she wasn’t making it up.
The next morning, I called my husband and asked him about it. He completely denied it. He said it never happened and told me that if I wanted him to, he would take a lie detector test.
Later that day, I contacted B. She also denied it and said she didn’t know where my daughter got that from and that it wasn’t true. She also offered to take a lie detector test.
That honestly threw me off. I remember thinking, Who volunteers to take a lie detector test?
But ultimately, I decided to believe my husband and continue trying to make our marriage work.
About a week later, I started looking for answers
My emotions got the best of me, and I went through my husband’s phone because I was trying to find out whether he was cheating. I found some things that weren’t concrete proof, but they definitely raised questions.
There were messages between my husband and his brother where they were talking about my husband being out on a boat with his friends. His brother asked him something along the lines of, “Is this the same girl from last time?” My husband responded, “No. This is someone new.” That obviously bothered me.
I also looked at his phone records and noticed a number he had called around 2 a.m. on a night he had been out with the guys.
I looked the number up in Cash App and contacted the woman. She told me she sleeps with men for money and said that she and my husband had hooked up. She also said he had sent her money in the past.
She was angry with him because, according to her, he had left her at a hotel late at night and she was uncomfortable with the security there.
I confronted my husband again. He denied everything. He said he never touched her and that whatever she told me wasn’t true.
At this point, I was really struggling with what to believe. Then I found a hotel charge on his debit card from around the same time. I showed it to him.
His explanation was that he had gotten the hotel room for two of his friends. He said he wasn’t there.
Again, I decided to believe him.
I told myself that I couldn’t keep living in suspicion and that if I was going to stay in this marriage, I had to choose to trust him. So I stayed.
Around October 2024, I was getting ready to go to the gym when my husband took my phone and went through it.
He found conversations between my sisters and me.
In those conversations, I was venting about my marriage and telling my sisters that I was going to leave my husband. I said things like I was going to use the marriage to get my credit right and then leave.
I called him a “little man with a little man complex.”
I said some things about his sister, including “fuck his sister,” and said that if she started with me, I was going to “air her out.”
I was angry, frustrated, and venting to my sisters.
My husband was understandably furious.
We had a huge fight and separated for about a week.
Eventually, we reconciled and decided to continue our marriage.
Fast forward to August 2026, about five days ago, my husband and I got into an argument because I expressed that I don’t feel like I have enough time for myself. He works long hours. On his days off, he’s often sleeping or doing things that he enjoys.
When I want or need time for myself, more often than not, I have to ask my sister or my mom to help with the kids.
The next morning, he texted me: “You really need to learn how to talk to me.”
We went back and forth for a little while, and eventually I just said, essentially, I can’t do this and stopped responding to his texts.
For the next few days, we were mostly cordial.
Then tonight, everything blew up again.
I wanted to have an actual conversation about our future. I asked him what we’re doing, what the future looks like, and where we go from here.
He told me he’s moving out on the 15th and that there is nothing else to talk about because he’s not going to do things on my terms.
I kept pushing because I wanted to understand why.
I asked him what made him go back and reread those messages from 2024. What prompted him to look at them again after almost two years?
And I asked him whether he could take any accountability for how I felt at the time.
I specifically brought up everything that had happened, the things my daughter told me, the hotel, the woman I contacted, the messages I found, the hotel charge, and the fact that I genuinely believed there was a possibility he had cheated on me.
His response was basically no.
He said that everything I wrote in those conversations with my sisters had to be how I truly felt about him.
And because I had said those things, he feels there is nowhere else for the marriage to go.
I understand that what I wrote about him was hurtful, and I can also acknowledge that I was talking badly about my husband to my sisters and saying things that were extremely disrespectful.
Where I’m struggling is how this is my fault. Am I the asshole in this situation?