Am I having an extra marital affair? Did I cheat on my husband?
Am I having an extra marital affair? And if I am what should I do now?
I am a 42 year old woman, married for 14 years, to the love of my life. We love each other from our college days. Let us call my husband X. We have two young daughters. I particularly have no problem with my husband. I do a lot of work at home, especially with the two kids around, plus I work as well, with X and we run our own business. At home, I get stressed with all the work and the kids and I feel I get no help from X there. I have some health issues as well. I also feel X has no time or interest in listening to my personal problems or emphasizing.
About a year back, I reconnected with an old friend from college (where I and my husband also studied). Let us call this friend Y. He too is married with two kids. Once I had mentioned to X that Y had made friendly advances to me in college but nothing beyond that had happened. Now there was a project that I and X were working together on, where I felt that Y could help. So I asked if he would mind if we worked with Y on this project, as he could probably contribute. X said we should work with Y if he can contribute. So Y helped with the project and the project got over. During the duration of the project I ended up discussing other things with Y, like gossiping about some of our common friends, other personal issues like my health, his money problems, and others. Soon, we were exchanging multiple messages during the day, and at times I would be making 4-5 calls a day to him. These calls and messages were without much agenda, we would generally chit chat, and I realized this made me feel good. It was a stress reliever. Y would listen to my problems and I thought I had someone who would at least listen to me. There was no sex involved, but it was just that I felt good chatting or talking to him. Along the way, I felt that if X found out about the frequency of the messages and calls, he will get upset; and so I began deleting all traces of messages from my phone.
One day recently, my husband caught me deleting a picture of him from my phone, by accident. I blurted out that I was deleting that picture as it would have upset him if he saw it on my phone; I anyway had no intent of keeping the picture which Y had sent me. And then he grew suspicious. So he checked my phone. He saw evidence of text conversations with Y which were deleted. He also saw that some messages were not deleted and yet I had the highest number of messages with him. He also saw that I was making multiple calls to him during the day.
X knows that I have been working on Phase 2 of the project with Y. However I did confess that all these calls and messages were not on account of work.
Now I have tried my best to explain to X that it is not what he thinks it is. But I am unable to convince him. He says he is very very hurt about the fact that I cheated on him. He feels cheated because I was deleting the evidence as I felt that it would upset him. He asks me that if I knew it would upset him, why was I continuing with it? He is disturbed and says that he has lost me, as I have found someone else to share my personal things with; that to him is a bigger loss than mindless sex with a stranger.
Now I am at a loss. I definitely do not want to destroy my family or break off with my husband whom I love; nor does Y want to do that with his family. Am I having an extra marital affair? Have I really cheated on my husband? What should I do now?
What i think is that X is upset that you have been talking to Y more and when you hid it from him it just contributed to what he felt. I dont think you are cheating on your husband there is nothing involved that i believe would lead to that. I believe X should let you to continue to talk to Y. You said you finally had someone that would listen to you and everyone needs a person like that. But i feel like you should talk to him about it tell him that he's been helping with work and listening to what you need to say, say that you need him as a friend vecause you need someone who takes their time to listen to you.
If you would have asked me 5 years ago is this cheating i would have said no...you did nothing wrong. But after ruining my last serious relationship over a conversation like this yes it is a form of cheating however it's forgivable not always forgettable. Its considered cheating because your husband is your go to person hes your other half...you have a marriage together even though sometimes there's a rough patch and it doesn't seem like he's there for you, I'm sure if you would have said to him "honey I need to talk to you" he would have tryed to be there for you. if you love him then you should respect him and tell him the truth and say "i am sorry, i did this can we please start over" and work gain his trust back. Deleting evidence was not the brightest idea its just made you look guilty. You have to think about it like this ....how would you like it if it where done too you? Do you think you would ok with him texting with some else like that? I think maybe couples therapy would be helpful. Just always admit the fault he can move forward. Best wishes and good luck I hope he finds it in his heart to forgive you and you both work it out.
Put yourself in your husband's shoes - evidence of deleted pictures and messages will be taken as evidence you had something to hide. Which makes it hard, as I wouldn't call this "cheating." I think the ideal of marriage many of us adhere to is unrealistic, as few of us can meet every emotional need a spouse may have. My wife has been angry with me about chatting with others online, but at the same time she, for example, does not understand my depression and doesn't want to hear me talk about it. In your case, what got you in trouble was bending to your husband's very real tendency to become jealous. If you're not cheating, don't let someone else's possible misunderstanding blossom into a genuine misunderstanding by acting as if you are guilty! Too late now, of course.
Treason - it's very creepy if you trust a man and do not expect such from him. At one point my husband became different, I could not understand why he behaves differently. I thought he had problems at work or something. Then I saw that his phone was empty (no photos, sms, calls) and I realized that he was hiding something from me that was not good. I secretly from my husband and others turn to cheating partner private investigator I found out that he was cheating me a very long time, and I could not forgive him ...
Sometimes the notions created around us regarding cheating make us unconsciously feel guilty and then we act like it as well. The way you deleted the photos and the text messages suggests you did feel guilty. You didn't feel guilty because you did anything wrong, you felt guilty because you thought your husband would be hurt if he found out about this because he wouldn't understand.
There is no right and wrong in this. You cannot label yourself as a cheater and drown yourself in guilt. The situation you're in is very blurry. To deny to your husband that there was nothing going on, is wrong. It would be sensible if you would rather accept that yes, you looked for emotional support somewhere else and it shouldn't be compared with cheating. Cheating means to break someone's trust. You didn't do that. You looked after your needs. You need to come clean to your husband and accept that you did look for emotional support from someone else other than him as he wasn't able to provide the same to you. Make him comfortable. Always in your conversation make sure you don't blame him, but blame the communication gap that the two of you allowed to come in between your marriage. Encourage him and yourself for a fresh start.
The key lies in accepting,not denying, embracing and not blaming.
