I realize this is long but once I started writing it all started coming out.
I (M31) married my high school sweetheart (F30) ten years ago. I dated around in high school and I had many one serious girlfriend before her. She never dated around and has only ever been with me. Before we got married, we had a lengthy discussion about how she would feel knowing that she never got to experience another relationship. It was a non issue for her. We were madly in love.
Throughout our marriage, she has made many girl friends and made a point to make sure she could maintain the relationships. Two years ago we moved to a new city so I could pursue graduate school and as always she was able to make friends. We have two daughters so these friends are usually other mothers with kids the same age and they have play dates together. Since the start of the school year she has made friends with a stay at home dad that has a son that is in the class with our youngest daughter. This man is also married and has a brand new baby. I have never met him in person before. I didn’t think anything of it and just assumed that she did what she always does and makes friends. However this is the first time in our 10 year marriage that it has been with a man.
About a month ago, my oldest daughter was having some anxiety about going to school and it was really making the mornings difficult for us. My wife generally brings her to the bus stop and sees her off but one day she refused to get on and just bursted our crying giving all sorts of reasons why she didn’t want to go. My wife ended up having to drive my daughter to the school and it was a very emotional thing for both of them. Right after she took my other daughter to her school (the one with the male friend) and when my wife got home you could tell it had hit her pretty hard.
I was consoling her when her phone gets a text from this male friend. He was asking her if she was okay. I don’t know what it was about the text but it just came at the worst time and really gave me this terrible feeling. I was filled with this jealously that this other man was close enough to my wife that he would reach out to her about this topic. It honestly sounds stupid that I would get jealous over it but it just felt like that that issue with my daughter was a family matter. Not something that belongs to a friend of a few months.
This is where it started. I started wondering how often they text, what we’re texting about, was she making an emotional connection with another man, was I going to be replaced emotionally by this man? Nothing in our past has ever given me reason to have these questions but they constantly flooded my mind.
A couple days later I talked to her. I honestly felt so embarrassed to bring it up but I wanted to let her know that I felt uncomfortable that she was texting this man. I explained that I didn’t want her to end her friendship but that it was on my mind. I thought maybe she would reassure me or maybe even limit the friendship. She responded with “I’m sorry that you feel that way but I am not going to stop being friends with someone”. I totally get that and I definitely wasn’t saying end the friendship.
Over the the next few weeks, I started really getting insecure about the whole thing. To the point where it woke me up at night fantasizing all of these terrible scenarios and, to my shame, crying over the fear of losing my wife. I reiterate, nothing at this point has indicated that anything more than friendship has happened. But in those weeks, we would talk about it and she would tell me that nothing was happening, I would be okay for a few days and then something would trigger the fear again. Sometimes not even my wife, it could be something as dumb as a funny video on reddit that happened to be about affairs. It felt like it was popping up everywhere and I just couldn’t get it off of my mind.
At this point, I feel like my wife is tired of reassuring me and I feel like I am smothering her with the need for attention because it makes me feel like better.
This past weekend, I was feeling down and my wife talked to me. She said that she is sorry that she doesn’t know how to make me feel better about this. Somehow this conversation led to our premarriage discussion and she said that she wanted to be honest that she has been thinking about talking to me about an open marriage. She said that it has nothing to do with this friend and that she has been having the feeling since the beginning of the year. She started a job and now interacts with a lot of people childfree. I basically told her that based on how I felt with the fact that she was friends with a guy that there is no way that I could be comfortable with her having sex with someone else.
I don’t know if I was just being fearful about the possibility of an affair but I started a conversation about it with her last night. Basically asking questions on how it would work, would it be a one time thing, would it be someone she knows? Part of me understand the interest in sex with someone else because she never got to experience a relationship with anyone but me. However her answers were that she would want it to be with someone she was comfortable with, not a stranger. And she doesn’t know if it would need to be a one time thing. These were all red flags for me because it just seems like she wanted to see other people. Wanting to have an emotional and sexual connection with someone else. She then told me that she would never do anything to jeopardize our marriage and she wants to be with me forever.
And then I made a mistake. I was feeling fine today and it seemed like everything was going to work out but out of curiosity I was on our cell phone account and I couldn’t help myself to look at the text logs. It doesn’t show the text but just when they happen and to who. I was horrified to find that she texts this male friend a lot throughout the day. It’s always initiated by him but some of the texts are as early as 7:30 am. They text a lot during the day between the hours that our youngest is in school (half days). Then the texts stop. Occasionally they happens in the evening but not as much. I am so ashamed of what I have done looking at the log but now I can’t unsee it. What makes it worse is that surrounding our talk about an open marriage she had a full text conversation. Today they texted back and forth for nearly 3 hours.
I don’t know what to do. Should I bring up that I saw the logs? I feel that bringing it up would make everything worse and that I invaded her privacy. I don’t want to keep being this person who is a burden on their wife with made up insecurities. I feel like an asshole but I am falling apart here. Please help me.
TLDR: wife makes first male friend in ten years of marriage. I get extremely insecure about the friendship. We have lots of talks but she will remain friends with him. Had a last talk about open marriage but definitely not with the guy. I looked at text logs and see they talk all the time
Submitted November 04, 2019 at 08:20PM by Terribletritan https://ift.tt/34BrmlX
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