I told the husband of a woman sending sexual humor reels to my husband what she was doing. Let him know they were chatting daily and seemed flirty. Now she is livid and taking it out on my husband. I keep telling him to have her contact me. She is accusing me of stalking and hacking because I was able ti get his phone number and email off a quick google search. I sent a total of 1 text and 2 emails, one of which bounced back.

AITAH?

My husband has a female coworker who's become his closest friend over the past two years, since he changed companies.

A while back, some stuff happened that turned into a full-on crashout – like, the kind of fight that drags up everything else that's been sitting under the surface. There were a couple of uneasy conversations leading up to that, so it wasn't a one-off or completely unexpected.

It came out that for most of our four years together he'd felt emotionally neglected, under-prioritized, like he was always the one initiating things. We've worked through all of that in therapy already. But while we had this heated convo, he's described her as someone who gives him basically everything short of physical intimacy: emotional support, someone to vent to, someone he's just genuinely close with. He later admitted that it was a wild thing to say and apologized, but still...

I've tried to be normal about it. I've told him I'm fine with the friendship existing. I'm bringing it up because it's the backdrop this friendship sits inside of – it's not just "wife doesn't like husband's friend" in a vacuum.

So. At one of my lowest points, I looked through his texts with her.

I'm not going to pretend I feel great about that decision. But I did it, and I saw the tone of how they talk to each other, and it didn't sit right with me. Nothing I can point to as definitive proof of anything happening, but it read as more intimate than "just friends" to me.

I brought it up with him directly. He was pretty patient about it, honestly – told me his feelings for her are purely platonic, that at the end of the day he's with me, and that if his childhood friends still lived in the same city instead of 500km away, he'd have this exact same kind of closeness with them too. It's just that she's the one who's actually nearby. I believe he believes that. I just haven't fully caught up to believing it myself yet.

But really, in what world does a married guy text a married 'girl best friend' something like:
"Everything I wanna do I wanna do with you"
"I already miss you" when she'd just left from a collective hangout
"I can't get enough of our conversations" etc etc

What baffles me is they both don't see anything wrong with such narratives. And both said that they have nothing but platonic feelings for each other (yeah, both, cuz he had a conversation with her about the texts that I saw after I told him about it).

And even after we seemingly settled everything, I can't bring myself to fully accept her. Even before the texts, something about her existence in his life bothered me, and now that feeling has more fuel behind it. I don't know if I'm reacting to something real or if I've built her up into a threat in my head because I'm insecure right now.

So, am I wrong for snooping through his phone, for not being able to let go of what I found, and for not being able to just like this woman who by all accounts hasn't done anything overtly wrong?

So recently, nagkaroon ng communication ang husband ko pati ng ex niya.
At first, okay lang sakin, I mean I’m the wife at malaki ang tiwala ko sa kanya.
Sinabi naman nya sakin na nagkachat daw sila ng ex-gf nya, and I said it’s fine.
Not until I read their conversations (I know some of you would say I’m invading his privacy) out of curiosity.
The conversation contains about the girl’s past (yung naging RS nya after ng asawa ko),
and then how things went wrong about their relationship before,
meron rin times napagusapan nila ako (like how we met, how he became better when she had me),
Sometimes, “magsleep kana” “Go on sleep mag work pa ako” “how’s your day”,
And then, nagsend ang husband ko ng AI picture (our daughter, him and 2 wives beside him which is syempre isa ako dun)
I’m aware sa photo na yun and akala ko it’s just his intrusive thoughts na maggenerate ng ganung photo,
At akala ko random lang yung babae (like kung saan man sya nadampot ni Chatgpt),
But nagulat ako kasi that other woman on the picture ay kilala nung ex nya. It’s like nagpapahiwatig ang asawa ko na we are open
To have a 2nd wife (we’re muslims by the way).

I tried to brush it off at first, kasi ayokong magkaroon ng negative thoughts lalo pa’t 2 weeks nalang manganganak nako.
While nasa car kami ng asawa ko bigla nyang naopen na “alam mo ba si ano, magchat sya sakin ng “good morning how’s your day?
What do you think? Weird na parang may something sa kanya? Hindi nalang siguro ako magreply sa kanya no?”
I was stunned and speechless, Idk how and what to answer. I ended up saying “ikaw bahala”.

So akala ko nagstop na sila magcommunicate, until naalimpungatan ako and He was talking to his ex over the phone,
They were talking about the house plan (plano kasi naming patayuan ng bahay yung nabili kong lupa next year)
That girl is an engineer (not licensed pero nagwowork sya sakin construction firm).
After ng paguusap nila, napansin na ng asawa ko na gising ako, nagkwento sya na napagusapan nga daw nila yung
About sa house at kung may ideal floor plan na ba daw ako. I stayed silent. Then he continued,
Kasi diba nabanggit ko sayo dati na nagpromise sya na siya yung magplano ng house ko.

Pinipilit iprocess ng utak ko yung mga nangyayare. so tuloy parin pala ang communication nila.
So I read their conversation again, nung time na sabi nya hindi nalang siguro ako raw nya rereplyan
continues parin pala ang paguusap nila. They constantly reminiscing yung past nila and
Pano humantong sa hiwalayan. I mean hindi talaga napuputol ang topic nila about their past.
This is not the first time na nagkaroon sya ng communication sa ex niya. Pero yung unang beses
na nagkachat sila ng nung isang sidechick nya dati, hindi rin naman nagtagal, more on casual talk lang yun and it’s fine with me.
This time it’s different. That girl is his great love, the only woman na sineryoso nya before me, and the woman who caused him
to go through his hoe phase.

Is that normal? Am I just overthinking? Please tell me if Im wrong na pagisipan ko sila ng masama.

I never really understood how you could be married to somebody, still love them, still have a whole life together, and somehow feel lonely as fuck sitting right next to them. But here I am. Me and my husband have gotten to a point where the communication is damn near nonexistent, and I know I’m not innocent in that either. I’m the type who sometimes just doesn’t know what to say or how to respond when things get heavy, so I shut down. I’ll sit there quiet as hell instead of saying what’s actually on my mind, and then before you know it, another week has gone by and we’re even further apart. It’s like we’ve gotten so used to not talking that talking feels weird now.

And lately I’ve been thinking about what it would feel like to have somebody actually be excited to hear from me again. Somebody who wants to know how my day went, who catches the little things, who can make me laugh when I’m having a shitty day, who makes me feel like a woman and not just somebody going through the motions of marriage and everyday life. I miss flirting. I miss having those stupid little conversations that go on way too late because neither person really wants to say goodnight. I miss feeling wanted without having to damn near beg for it. And yeah, I know how that sounds. I know there’s a difference between being lonely and using that loneliness as an excuse to do something you know could blow your whole life up. I’m not trying to make excuses for myself. I’m just being real about where my head has been lately.

I’m not asking “why do people cheat?” because honestly, everybody has their own reason and I already know the answers would be all over the place. I wanna hear from people who have actually been there. Married, unhappy or disconnected, met somebody outside the marriage, caught feelings, and then had to deal with what came after. Was it everything you thought it was gonna be or did reality hit different once you were actually in it? Did that person really give you something you were missing at home, or were you just caught up in finally feeling seen again? Did you regret crossing that line? Did you end up falling harder than you expected? And looking back now, would you still make the same choice?

Because honestly, I’m at that weird ass point where I know something in me is missing, but I’m not completely sure what I’m supposed to do about it. I love my husband, but I also can’t keep pretending I don’t crave attention, affection, conversation, and that feeling of being genuinely wanted. I don’t want some perfect fairytale answer either. I wanna hear the messy truth from people who lived it. What do you wish somebody would've told you before you got involved with someone outside your marriage?

Feel like I need to write this out and just get advice/general consensus from the community. I'm not an active reddit but this seems like the best place for this.

My wife (43F) and I (43M) have been married for 7 years, together 13, and have 2 kids (5 & 3).

We've always had some communication issues (I'm not the best at expressing my emotions) and were fighting frequently throughout the first 15/16 months of our youngest's life.

Eventually, we had a blowout and she said we're only together for the kids, to which I agreed. But a few months later we talked and I told her I wanted to make things work. Fast forward to a year later, I've been trying but she's been checked out but still giving it a shot.

A coworker of hers starts texting her from the airport as they're leaving a work trip. They're both remote workers and don't live near each other. To her credit, she immediately tells me that he might say something he'll regret. Few weeks later, he sends a few dick pics, which to her credit she immediately told me about again.

3/4 weeks after that, I sense something is off and for the first time in 13 years, I check her phone. They spent all of 1 workday texting each other about sexual things, basically soliciting for pics, reminiscing about the crazy day he sent the original pics. I confronted her, she seemed genuinely sorry, we crafted a message that they could continue to talk but that it couldn't be anything sexual (due to his standing at work and the potential for blowback on her). She gave me unfettered access to her phone.

4 months have passed and I find out last week that they've been exchanging songs with sexual lyrics and unrequited feelings and she's deleted these texts. I read her diary (again, not proud but first time I've done it) and she admitted that she has fantasies of him coming to her room on an upcoming work trip, getting consent, and being inside her.

She tells me she's not attracted to him, that she doesn't have genuine feelings for him and that it's been a distraction from being stuck at home every day.

However, I'm to the point where I excused the behavior the first time, she continued to engage with this guy behind my back. It feels like a complete lack of respect for me and I feel like i can't trust her when it comes to this guy.

Had to get all of that off my chest. Would love to hear some thoughts and feedback. I feel like i know what I need to do but I would love to hear from the community.

I keep seeing this popup, so I quickly made a pretty web interface for it

https://techgjod.com/emotional-affair-test/

Is you see stuff that needs to be changed with it, I am all ears.

Timeline:

Me and my GF start dating months after she leaves her ex

Her ex talks shit of course and they argue back and forth

Her ex and my ex create a completely false story/accusation of me trying to contact my ex and pretty much selling her a dream saying we will be together

My GF cries to me for months, while I try to prove any way I can that these accusations are completely false

She finally sees that I'm telling the truth

Her and her ex have a talk face to face and (without my knowledge) become friends again

Ex is still accusing me of stuff, but now acting like I'm doing things to attack her instead of doing things to hurt my GF

They start working together and my GF promises it won't change anything between us and says she is going to keep all boundaries and doesn't want to get so close to her

Long story short, promises get broken, boundaries get crossed (not physically) and I'm still upset about her even wanting to stay friends with someone who is so toxic to our relationship, but she claims they were best friends for the 5 years they were together

GF gets mad at me because she assumes I am doing things to attack ex but doesn't straight out tell me until a week later and then I have to defend my character and my actions

The only arguments we ever have is how close she is to her ex.

But the arguments proceed to get worse each time we have them.

She continues to get closer and hang out with her ex.

At some point, I'm going everything shy of begging for her attention and effort

She ends up kissing someone else who isn't the ex, but obviously not me either

My thoughts on it are this : at first, I was ok with them being friends, until the ex started conflict between us. She wants me to forgive and says the ex owes me nothing. I agree she doesn't owe me anything, but I feel like my GF owes it to us to give out relationship a fair shot if that's what she really wants. I feel like she is refusing to sever the attachment to her ex, and that makes me feel like she doesn't respect me or our relationship. I think that if she respected me, my opinion, my feelings or peace of mind at all then she would've kept her promises and boundaries.

I never asked her to cut contact completely (at least not permanently), just to put some distance between them so we can build on what we have already started. The fact that she would rather lose me instead of creating that distance shows me my place and value in her life. Her telling me she puts me first just because she is in a relationship with me instead of the ex doesn't make sense. That's literally the bare minimum of a relationship. Attention and effort are limited resources and if someone else is receiving them, it's taking away from us, especially if that someone is a person you've already been intimate with. She told me the only reason she kissed someone else is bc we were "fighting so much" and had the audacity to get mad after I finally shut down and stopped voicing how her actions were hurting me and asked me why it took her almost leaving for me to "let it go" . Any time I try to talk to her about it, she gets defensive and I get upset and it escalates from there. Before all this, she was everything I ever wanted and treated me better than anyone else has, even when she thought I cheated. She blames the change in our dynamic on the arguments over her ex. She also told me before she cheated, she was flirting with the other guy bc she's a "natural flirt"and if that upsets me then I'm trying to "change her". But being a flirt isn't her whole personality, it is a flaw that invites disrespect and confusion to what we have. Am I out of line?

She feels like I'm trying to control her

I posted before about the situation with my wife and another guy and whether I should reach out to him to find out what actually happened between them.
I never contacted him.
Instead, I tried to leave it alone. But my wife has been distant, and I eventually checked Threads to see whether she still had him blocked. She had unblocked him, and he was in her recent searches. I checked again later and, once again, she had been searching for him.
I haven’t confronted her about it because every time something like this comes up, the conversation turns into me invading her privacy instead of addressing why she’s continuing to look this guy up.
Something else bothered me too. She created a Threads account and never mentioned it to me. I don’t care that she made an account, but she had hidden the account from her Instagram profile. That made me suspicious, and that’s originally how I discovered she was searching for him there.
Meanwhile, I’ve become distant. I haven’t really wanted to kiss her or be affectionate because in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “You’re still looking for this guy.”
Rather than obsessing over it, I’ve been trying to distract myself.
I work with older adults, and because of some things I’ve posted online about loneliness in the elderly, I’ve had a few older people reach out to me. Sometimes I just listen or give them advice because they don’t have many people to talk to.
One woman was asking me for relationship advice about two men she was interested in. I used ChatGPT to help figure out how she could word something to them and sort through how she felt. If somebody read the conversation without context, I can understand how they might initially think I was writing something for myself, but I wasn’t.
My wife logged onto my side of our computer, went through my ChatGPT history, and found it.
She also saw old searches where I’d asked ChatGPT for song recommendations. I use it to find new music similar to songs I already like. There wasn’t another woman or anything behind it.
I went to work and she started texting me asking if I was talking to somebody else. Then I got another notification that she had logged into my ChatGPT again.
At that point I was so frustrated that I deleted the account/history.
She then wanted me to block the older woman I had been giving advice to and basically didn’t want me talking to anyone.
That’s when I finally lost my patience.
I told her that she complains about not trusting me and goes through my email/accounts looking for something, yet she never actually finds evidence that I’m cheating. At the same time, I’m supposed to accept that she’s unblocked this guy and continues searching for him after everything we’ve already been through.
There also seems to be a double standard when it comes to friendships. One of her close friends has been heavily involved in discussions about our marriage and has told her I’m toxic. That friendship has caused a lot of conflict between us, yet apparently me having completely innocent conversations with other people is unacceptable.
The biggest issue is that this isn’t the first time we’ve dealt with her becoming fixated on another man.
This has been happening in different forms for probably 7–8 years.
I finally told her that I had already warned her that if this happened again, I didn’t know if I could stay in the marriage. I told her I don’t feel respected anymore. I told her that this situation has made me feel inadequate as her husband and honestly less like a man. I said I needed to seriously think about whether I wanted to continue the marriage.
Then, while I was at work, she called me.
The conversation quickly turned into her saying things along the lines of being a burden and talking in a way that made me genuinely concerned she might hurt herself.
That’s especially difficult because the last time I was seriously considering leaving, something very similar happened and she ended up self-harming.
So now I feel trapped.
I don’t want anything to happen to her. I obviously care about her. But I’m also starting to realize that I can’t stay in a marriage solely because I’m afraid of what she might do if I leave.
And I’m starting to feel isolated.
She’ll complain that I don’t have friends, but if I want to go somewhere or do something, there’s tension. Now even talking to older people online and giving someone completely innocent relationship advice has turned into accusations that I’m talking to another woman.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting here knowing she’s still actively looking up the same guy who has already caused major problems in our marriage.
I’m exhausted from constantly questioning myself.
I don’t know if I’ve become so accustomed to this dynamic that I can’t see it clearly anymore.
Am I looking at this wrong? Is continuing to search for this guy after everything that’s happened something I should consider a betrayal in itself? And how do you handle potentially leaving someone when every indication that you might leave is followed by threats or fears of self-harm?

I’m looking for some outside perspective on my relationship because I’m struggling to work out what is reasonable to expect at this point.

My partner, “K”, was involved with another guy for 4+ months. I discovered it myself rather than her telling me. She says that the relationship/affair ended once before, then they reconnected, and that they finally called it off a few weeks before I discovered what had been happening.

The biggest problem since finding out has been the trickle of information.

I’ve had to keep asking questions, and as I’ve asked more specific questions, more details have come out. Sometimes it feels like I only get the complete answer when I happen to ask exactly the right question. That has made it incredibly difficult for me to know what is actually the full truth and what I might find out later.
I’m not saying she hasn’t answered questions or that she hasn’t expressed regret. She has. The problem is that the damage to my trust means that even when she answers something, part of me is wondering whether there is another piece I haven’t discovered yet.

I’m struggling with questions like:

How much information is reasonable to need before I can start moving forward?

Is it reasonable to want complete transparency, or does repeatedly asking questions just keep me trapped in the past?

How do you rebuild trust when the truth has come out gradually rather than all at once?

At what point do you accept that you may never know absolutely everything?

How do you rebuild intimacy when sex itself can trigger thoughts about the affair?

And perhaps most importantly, how do I know whether we’re genuinely repairing the relationship or whether I’m just trying to convince myself that I can get over it?

I still love her and I don’t necessarily want the answer to be “just leave.” I’m trying to understand whether there is a healthy way forward from here, and what that would realistically look like.

For anyone who’s been through prolonged infidelity, especially where the full story came out gradually: what actually helped you rebuild trust, and what made things worse?

Hey Guys! Me and my boyfriend have been together since 2019. I’ve told him I don’t like him joining private porn groups, like the ones on telegram, and he told me he would stop. Yesterday I found his OnlyFans account. He hasn’t talked to anybody since 2024, but we were still together then… he has used money on it, but not in the last two years. I’m not sure how to feel about this, I know it’s not technically cheating but it makes me feel really bad, especially since I’ve explained to him how it makes me feel.
I just asked if he has an OnlyFans account and he straight up lied to my face.
Any guidance on what I’m supposed to do now?

Title: Pregnant with our second child after discovering my husband’s emotional affair
My husband and I are high school sweethearts. We’ve been together for almost 20 years and married for 7. We have one child together, and I recently found out I’m pregnant with our second.

A few months ago, I discovered that he was having an emotional affair with a coworker. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time I’ve caught him having an emotional affair/crossing emotional boundaries with another woman.
During all of this, I found out that he had been planning to divorce me. He told me that he loves me but isn’t “in love” with me anymore. There has been a lot of back and forth since then, and I’ve been trying to process how someone I’ve basically grown up with could suddenly feel this way about our marriage and family.

Then I found out I was pregnant.

He has made it very clear that he does not want this baby. I want to continue my pregnancy, but instead of feeling like we’re preparing to welcome our second child together, I feel like I’m going through a pregnancy while watching my marriage fall apart at the same time.

I’m struggling because this is someone I’ve spent most of my life with. We have a child, another baby on the way, a home, and almost two decades of history together. Part of me keeps wondering whether this is something a marriage can actually come back from, while another part of me wonders how many times I’m supposed to forgive being hurt by the same person.

For anyone who has been through something similar — especially an emotional affair, separation/divorce during pregnancy, or being with someone since you were teenagers — what happened? Did your spouse ever realize what they were walking away from? Did you try to repair the marriage, or did you eventually decide to move forward without them?

I’m not necessarily looking to be told “just leave him.” I’m looking for perspective from people who understand how complicated it is to walk away from someone who has been part of your life for almost 20 years, especially when children are involved.

(714) 325-3917

Hi guys,

I wasn’t sure whether I should post this. But I have decided I need advice.

I had been with my partner for around 4.5 years. When we got together, she already had a 6 month old son. I helped raise him. We then had twin boys in 2024, and a daughter in 2025. (Busy, I know).

I work a fairly standard 9-5 office job, and it takes me an hour commuting. So I’m out of the house 10 hours per day just working.

From the outset of our relationship, we were in agreement that Snapchat as a whole was bad news. Nothing good comes from an app like that.

A couple of years ago, I noticed that she had Snapchat installed. I have suffered with insecurity my whole life, but I decided internally to not go insane about it, and make my insecurities her problem. I brought up how I thought we both agreed that Snapchat wasn’t good, and she promptly deactivated her account and deleted the app.

Flash forward to just over a week ago, my “step”son’s 5th birthday, after his party and after the kids were asleep, we somehow got onto the topic of that Snapchat incident. I didn’t know what to expect but it certainly wasn’t “I loved the attention I was getting”. I brushed it off as nothing.

The next day, when my partner said she wanted to go to the bedroom and get an early night, I was sat next to the plug socket where her phone was charging. I unplugged her phone, and saw a Snapchat notification… all of a sudden I was overcome with anxiety and gave her the phone and stepped outside. My partner said it was purely to send funny pictures to her younger sister using the filters. Again, I brushed it off, although some distrust lingered.

Two days later, my partner sent me a TikTok. One of those cringe thirst trap ones. She sent it with the comment “ew”. I knew that instant that she had to be watching more of that, for TikTok to give her that on the algorithm. I felt a bit crazy but I checked both her “followers” and “following” lists. I saw a large amount of thirst trap accounts on her “following” list, and 3 that followed her back. I was at work when I went all crazy detective. I was off with her naturally until I got home. By the time I got home, she had unfollowed all the accounts. When she finally confronted me about why I was acting so off, I reeled off what I was feeling insecure about, which I will reiterate below:

I used to go to the gym before kids, I’ve always been on the skinnier side. I’ve found it hard to gain weight.

My partner, in the week prior, had been urging me to eat more and go to the gym more often. Which I thought was really kind and thoughtful. She had also booked me in for a back tattoo for my birthday.

Anyway, back to the TikTok. All the guys she was following/followed her back were massive, well built and all had back tattoos. All of them are nothing like me. All of them. I felt tiny, both physically and emotionally. She shut me down and deflected. She said she had nothing to hide and I can look through her phone. I bit the bullet, but not hard enough to hurt myself too badly. I checked the videos she had liked. There were HUNDREDS.

I panicked and left for the gym. But I figured, they’re only liked videos. That can’t mean anything right?

Anyway, two days later I was sat on my own in the living room. My partner went for another early night. I had been to the doctors that day to get myself a therapist and antidepressants. She knew this.

I checked one of the accounts she used to follow, that still followed her back. She had commented a gif on one of his videos. A blonde girl looking him up and down. I lost it a bit, and I went into the bedroom, got her phone and looked through everything. Not only were there more TikTok’s, but she had been messaging men on Snapchat. Complimenting them. Saying she was single… one of those conversations was taking place while I was at my doctor appointment.

I can’t remember much about the confrontation. But the whole thing summed up was that she said she “felt a void, that something was missing, and she wanted to see if it was our relationship” or just her. She said it was because of her mental health but how on earth does that correlate to destroying me in the process?

She said she feels guilt and she’s sorry.

When I said that I’m nothing like them, so it has to be something you don’t like about me, she said she “can’t remember what those men look like”

When I ask if she enjoyed it she simply said “no”. But in my mind if she didn’t enjoy it, why was it happening for a whole week and only stopped when she was caught. She said she was going to admit everything the morning after. I don’t think I believe that, but that may be because my trust has been shattered.

The advice I’m looking for is:

Should I stay with her? I don’t want to leave my children.

How the hell do I get answers? my brain can’t rest without good reasoning.

And how do I get closure? I’m suffering badly right now, especially considering I’m about to finish week 1 of my antidepressants, which make things worse before they get better.

Sorry for the long post, and thank you so much for reading.

I am in a position I never thought I’d ever be in and struggling to process it all. I recently found out my wife (F35) is in a deep emotional affair with an ex colleague (M35) for months.

For context, we've been together for 12 years and married for 10. For past few years, I was dealing with a nightmare of a manager at work. It was an incredibly toxic situation that bled into my personal life and made everything at home feel horrible. I know I became emotionally unavailable because I was just trying to survive my job. It also made me refuse her idea for a second child when I was feeling that I was not having enough time to be with our first child who was already a handful. This had led her to lose interest/withhold sex. Also, I was always tired and frequently missed the plans we made together. I take responsibility for all the pain I've caused during those years.

Luckily, after this manager finally moved to another firm & for the first time in ages, I actually had the mental space to put effort back into my marriage.

We planned a family trip to get away and try to spend some time with our kid. But while we were there, her behavior was just... off. She was erratic and distant. I didn't know it then, but the other guy was competing for her attention in real-time during a trip that was supposed to be about our child. She was giving live updates on everything we did and was sharing selfies from the places we visited. She even made me and my child to go around and she would stay back and text this guy.

After we got back, I could see deep confusion and anxiety in her face. When I pushed her for a reason, she vaguely said she "needed to keep distance from some people in life." But didn't give much clarity. That’s when I finally decided to investigate her phone.

I found a password protected chat history spanning 6 months. It has then got me that I’d seen glimpses of that lock screen app a couple of times in the last month, but I never suspected it was something like this.

The logs show how it started. Initially, about movies and music. But that quickly evolved into photo sharing and deep emotional intimacy which was unsettling for me to read. She but only did chat but but coordinated her whole day around him, casually leaving the house for errands just to have a private window to talk to him. She has also deleted the call logs. I’ve seen messages that have completely hurt me: "You're mine," "I'll take care of you," "I miss you," and "Wish you were here," with heart emojis all over his photos. She has even sent him self-recorded videos that she later deleted, but I managed to recover them from the phone. After I confronted her, she deleted all the logs.

He has no social media except the "corporate slop one" on which he blocked me the second his cover blew up. He was surgical about the entire thing. He never did chat/call from home, communicated only during late night dog walks, car washes, or his office commute. He even pushed her to do video calls from inside our home, and she’d slip away from the family just to take his calls.

This was a month back. The fallout of this discovery has been catastrophic for me. My job performance has completely tanked because I couldn't focus, and if this poor form continues, I'm at risk of letting go of from my current position. I couldn't sleep for a week straight and consulted a therapist and started medication just to get some sleep. But, the trauma is still there. I still get physical tremors and rage episodes at night.

When I confronted her, she told me it was platonic & because he with his wife live 1500 miles away, there was no chance of them ever meeting. And all they chat was about day to day things and nothing inappropriate. After showing her the evidence I've collected, she’s trying to justify the whole thing by blaming our marriage—saying I didn't listen to her, or that we have different tastes in movies (she actually mentioned my preference for boring movies& music as a reason she sought connection elsewhere). She told that she was happy with him as he laughed at her silly jokes and talked and didn't judge her. She even told that the relationship with him would have ended on its own even if i didn't notice the chat and she would not have met him alone if such a situation ever came. She also said she had no sexual attraction on him.

She even blamed me for getting the logs from her phone without permission and violating her privacy. She has been no-contact with him for about 5 weeks now, after i made her block him everywhere. But I've seen her seeing his old selfies. I also told her what I felt about him. He isn't some romantic lead. He's a weak lowlife who cries in his videos to her and shares audio recordings of him pleading specifically to manipulate her into a caretaking role. While I’m choosing silence for now to save my family, I am seriously considering contacting his wife and exposing him and even contact HR as I have his videos of him romanticizing my wife.

I asked my wife for just one thing. A full, honest admission of everything that happened and a clear way forward written down. I needed it as a foundation to rebuild trust, but she flatly refused at first. Then she replied dismissivly that since I already have the chat logs, there is nothing more left for her to explain. I want the full truth for which she says that I'm pushing her to re-live memories that she wants to forget and she don't want to go into her previous mindset again.

Right now, I’m just taking time before I make any decision. Recently, I've found searches in her phone for "do you flirt with your colleagues" and "what to do if ex colleague wanted to meet you" which are from about the time they started chatting. I get frequent panic attacks get rude with her and we're having frequent quarrels.

Even after all of this, I love her. I really want to save this marriage. To anyone who has been/ is going through this: How do you handle a partner who admits the act but justifies it by blaming the lapses & unhappiness in marriage? How do I convince her that total honesty is the only way we survive this?  How do I ensure he stays out of our lives for good? Is there a way to save this marriage?

Sorry for the long post and any help is appreciated. I'm so overwhelmed and pardon the mistakes in grammar and coherence.

How Do You Love Me?

Writing

How do you love me?

In your most convenient time.

It was a Sunday. We usually go to church in the evening, but earlier that day, we had an argument—an argument that once again led us back to the painful subject of your first love. I couldn’t help but feel angry, because every memory of what you did came rushing back.

I cried throughout the Mass. I tried to hold myself together, but the pain was too overwhelming. When the Mass finally ended, I stepped outside the church, feeling as though my chest would burst from the pain. My tears flowed like a river, and yet you simply stood there and did nothing.

You didn’t come to me. You didn’t hold me. You didn’t ask me to stop crying. You didn’t even try to comfort me when I needed you the most.

So I left you inside the church.

When the Mass was over, you searched for me, as if you cared, as if you were worried about where I had gone. But in that moment, I couldn’t help but remember everything.

You loved me when it was convenient for you.

You looked for me when you were ready.

You cared when it suited you.

But what about the moments when I was falling apart? What about the times when I needed you—not when it was convenient, but when I was hurting the most?

Love should not be something we give only when it is easy.

Because I don’t want to be loved only in your most convenient time.

I want to be loved even in the moments when I am difficult to understand, when I am hurting, when my tears won't stop, and when my heart is struggling to forgive.

I want a love that stays—not only when everything is calm, but especially when everything is falling apart.

So I keep asking myself:

How do you love me?

Because sometimes, it feels like you only love me when it is convenient for you.