I (29F) am having a hard time deciding whether or not to leave my husband (30M) after and incident that makes me question his commitment

My husband and I have been dating since college (12 years) and have been married almost 3 years.

Recently I found out that he has been flirting with a coworker. She joined his team about a month ago and they've only been chatting for a couple weeks. He's fully remote so nothing physical has happened. They added each other on Facebook and have been messaging there too. Nothing openly sexual or complementing each other, but it's definitely flirty, playful banter (which is how he flirts).

Things like "oh that meeting was so boring, I was just looking at everyone's zoom backgrounds trying to find something interesting" "omg me too 😂😈" "haha you're such a creep" "we can be creeps together!! 😜". And yes they used a heinous amount of punctuation and emojis.

I only found out because he had screenshotted a photo of her. It's not a racy photo, it was a picture of her doing some event that he was asking her about. Honestly it's an innocent picture. We have images shared through Google so it popped up on my phone. When I asked him about it he was kind of weird about it, so I teased him and was like "omg who is this other woman haha". At this point I really didn't think anything of it.

Later that day I asked to borrow his phone to use in the bathroom (TMI sorry) because I couldn't find mine in the moment. I lose my phone in the house all the time and we have always had an interchangeable phone policy (he uses mine to watch tiktoks all the time). He said yes, but then asked me through the bathroom door if I was snooping on his phone. This SUPER caught me off guard because it was so random. I was confused and then instantly suspicious of this girl now. I felt weird about snooping though so I put the phone down, finished my business, then came out and gave it back to him.

Then I asked him what possessed him to ask me if I was snooping, he immediately went "Listen her name is blahblah and I'll just tell you about her. She joined my team a little while ago, and she's the person I'm closest to on my team. We're just friends" At this point I'm asked him what the hell is he talking about and now I'm definitely suspicious. And unprompted he tells me "I'm not going to cheat on you." Which definitely makes me think he was going to cheat on me, why else would he try to reassure me about cheating when I've literally never accused him of it??

Then he went for a hour+ long walk (also super unlike him). When he got back I asked him ok really what's happening because you're acting SO strange. He confessed he had an office crush and was too nervous and embarrassed to tell me about it earlier.

His team has a team building retreat coming up. There are only events planned for one day, but he had a hotel booked for the night before and the night of. I understood because it's a bit of a drive and there was going to be a team happy hour/dinner that went pretty late. After I found out about this coworker, he cancelled the hotel and is just driving in early the day of and driving home late at night. He says it's just because now that we're fighting about this, it doesn't feel right to be away from me.

I just can't help but feel that the only reason he didn't physically cheat on me is because he accidentally busted himself before he went. I'm just so confused because I've loved him and trusted him for 12 years and nothing like this has ever happened. I don't even know if what he did counts as cheating because nothing really happened. I honestly wish he had just gone on that trip without me knowing and cheated, then I would at least know for sure. Now I'm in this weird gray area where I don't know if he's capable of cheating on me in the future. I'm also so hurt by his trickle truthing. First she's just a friend, then she's a crush. First he says absolutely I was never going to do anything on the retreat, then he admits he had a silly fantasy that they'd find some time alone together. First he says their messages are innocent and just like he'd message a friend, then he confesses that maybe yeah they were a little flirtier than he originally said they were. I did see some of their messages, but it was honestly too painful to read so I only saw a handful of them.

tldr: My husband got caught flirting with a coworker but not technically cheating(?). He trickle truths me and changes his work plans and it makes me question his commitment in the long run.

Submitted May 19, 2022 at 02:42AM by EducationalDaikon233 https://ift.tt/dhYlCIU