My [30F] spouse [32M] of 10 years doesn't consider a relationship he has as an affair. I do and am at a loss.

I have been with my husband for 10 years. Quarantine life has more or less brought all our issues to a head and I'm not sure how I feel or even if what I do feel is valid.

Back in March when companies were starting to do work from home around here, my husband decided he would set up a temp work space in his friend's living room. We have a 2 year old so he wanted to make sure he could actually get work done and aforementioned friend has an entire house to himself. I am a stay at home parent so I'm pretty used to just hanging out and I know on days that he has worked from home, the 2 year old just doesn't get that he needs to work.

About 2 weeks in, he mentions that his friend, who does not date whatsoever, has a girlfriend that's moving in with him. We are both super surprised because she's 19 and friend is 30 and they have been romantically involved for all of maybe a month. (Known each other much longer which is another gross and icky and blech can of worms.) We all more or less meet each other and alls fine and good. She is trying to get jobs out here which of course, with the lockdown goes horribly. One of her friends suggested starting an OnlyFans account because she had one and made pretty decent money. Her boyfriend is ok with it and she goes ahead with it. The three of them discuss stuff like social media advertising and checking analytics and stuff because husband and friend have tried starting a few businesses together in the past. My husband fucking hates his job so he was happy to have a new project more or less. He started spending a lot of his day checking out other successful OF models and giving her ideas for stuff to try on things like Insta/Twitter to see if they could get to a certain number of followers.

I myself am very pro-sex work and thought it was cool that she could make her own money and didn't think too much of it.

After about a month in, my husband was spending a good 8 hours a day either at home or at work talking to her about different stuff related to her work or being the inbetween of she and her bf's relationship. Boyfriend, being a 30 year old guy who does not date and has moved in a 19 year old, is being predictably shitty like getting butthurt she doesn't want to go out and do dates. (We're in a pandemic dude.) At this same time, she is in a bad place with her family after they found out she had an OF account. My husband was trying to be a good friend to both but I was not a fan of being involved at all. The girl has diagnosed but untreated borderline personality disorder and my husband has very well managed (with years of hard work) bipolar disorder. His friend the shitty boyfriend, is the kind of person who just doesn't get mental illness so he tried to again be the inbetween for the 2.

Again another month, the girl is obviously really done with being shitty friend's girlfriend and says they need a break. My husband and I are on eggshells because I am really concerned with how much they text and talk. I felt super insecure because she is just a naive 19 year old and it's not like my husband is hiding anything. When I try to bring up how weird it is and not healthy for her, he says it's just business and he wants to be a good friend because she has no one else since moving here. This kind of made me clam up because I felt really dumb about being jealous. He's not ever accused me of being jealous or anything, it's just what I felt. We move to a new apartment so he's home all the time now (2 year old has adjusted just fine which is some shit huh) and he goes down there for a few hours on a couple Saturdays.

One such saturday he came home one day and said, "Hey, she has a big crush on you. She asked if we could have a threesome." I rolled my eyes and said, "Uhh no thanks." To which he replied, "Well what if it's just me then?" I feel completely crushed. We had a big argument about how it's not fair because it was "just sex" and I don't even want to have sex with him anyway and why do I think that it's more than that. I am so disgusted and hurt I again clam up and just say, "I can't fucking believe this. Just do whatever you want, I can't deal with this." I regret saying this because what I wanted to say was, "Could you have a little fucking empathy for how this might make me feel?"

The next day we've both cooled down a little and I've thought about what he said. I tried initiating sex and he was really freaked out and then angry. He said it was weird and he felt really hurt that it took another girl propositioning him for me to to address the issue of us having a mismatched libido. I told him I always have felt that I was never going to be enough for his sex drive which he said made his really sad. He asked why I don't talk to him about feelings like that and didn't feel the answer that I just feel really stupid about it was ok. We had gone to counseling about 4 years ago and me not telling him how I was feeling was one of the things the counselor said we needed to work on. (Me actually doing it and him not arguing with me about it and just accepting it as something I feel.) Later we had a fight about money because we have more stuff to pay (like medical stuff) and I wasn't truthful about how much money I was spending on credit cards. He said it was the same thing about talking to him along with the just all around bad thing of lying. We go to bed angry and don't really talk for a few days.

A week later he asked how I would feel about him making content with this girl. I was again pretty hurt because it felt like he was completely oblivious to the fact that I was in a vulnerable state. I didn't know why I was so bothered by the idea either because porn is just porn and even though I know it wouldn't be for the girl (she sends him dumb 19 year old texts every so often saying stuff like "hey what do you think of me as" or "do you ever think about me when we're not hanging out" to which he has said they are just friends and would never be anything more.) I truly believe my husband isn't going to leave me for her or anything like that. I told him I didn't like it and he asked why if it was just porn and I didn't have an answer. I said I don't think it's just porn for her and he said, "Well it is for me?" And so they made "content" for her onlyfans of which he got paid a cut for all the profits.

I had more or less a breakdown and called my mom and cried in her car telling the whole story. She was very nice and told me I need to see someone because of how depressed I am and how terrible my self image is. She also said maybe my husband is really just naive and wants so badly to make sure we have enough money that he's making justifications for what he's doing. That she thinks we should give counseling a chance again because neither of us really want to break up. I come home and talk to him about what she said and he says the justification part is fair and that when he thinks about it, it was definitely that he was getting some needs met in their friendship that he doesn't with ours. That is was nice to have someone who just laid out how they felt in the open and that it was also nice to have someone who found him attractive and actually enjoyed having sex. Hearing him say it hurt a lot but it's not like it wasn't what I was thinking the whole time anyway.

We laid in bed for a while and then he said, "What do you think?" so I said, "It hurts because I thought at the beginning that this had the real potential to turn into an emotional affair and that it actually did is just a bummer." He didn't say anything for a bit and then said, "Huh. Well I don't think I agree with that," and I cut him off and said, "I didn't ask you to agree with me, I'm just telling you how I feel so maybe just let me do that." Then I was just really angry because maybe I just haven't been standing my ground when he tries to argue with things that make him feel bad.

So as of today, I'm still trying to get a callback from a therapist's office because everyone needs one right now haha. He's still friends with her and working with her and she's still down living with shitty ex-boyfriend. I still hate that they hang out and talk but it's like I'm too tired and sad to give a fuck anymore. I don't know what I want. I love him and I don't want to get divorced but maybe it would just be easier for me mentally and emotionally to be alone than deal with this. I don't know if that's just avoiding my problems or what the hell I'm supposed to do. I know my value is inherent no matter what he decides to do with his life but I sure do still feel like a fucking idiot.

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tl;dr: Husband has intimate relationship and makes porn with a friend, doesn't understand why I feel so hurt about it which is probably own fault.

Submitted July 01, 2020 at 03:49PM by KixBall https://ift.tt/3dQ5RC6