Looking for advice and others experiences
I (31F) have been with my husband (30M) for 11 years, married for 3. We have an 18 month old son and I’m currently 6 months pregnant with our second child. Until now I would have described our relationship as very stable and loving. We rarely had any disagreements.
Last week I flew interstate with our toddler after my grandmother passed away. My husband stayed home working because he’s a contractor. A few days into the trip I got notifications that around $300 in gift cards had been purchased on our credit card. When I questioned him, he later admitted he’d been targeted by a scammer who threatened to post explicit images of him online unless he paid.
At first I believed his explanation that he randomly answered a WhatsApp video call in the middle of the night and got scammed. But the more I thought about it, the less it made sense. I eventually checked his phone when I returned home and found evidence (in his deleted photos and text thread) that he had actually taken the photos himself in various locations in our house. He broke down and said he was so sorry and had been dealing with a porn addiction and was actually glad that I’d caught him out so that he could stop and get the kick up the backside he needed.
From what I can tell, he sent selfies and explicit photos to someone on a nsfw thread, then got threatened and panicked. He insists there was no emotional affair or ongoing relationship, just stupidity and bad decisions (only photos exchanged no sexting just each person asking for a different picture next).
I guess I’m glad it turned out to just be a scammer/bot because it makes it feel a bit less personal and he got the scare he needed in them threatening him with sharing the pictures.
But at the end of the day for me, this feels like cheating as well as a huge breach of trust because he lied repeatedly until confronted with evidence. I’m devastated, pregnant, grieving my grandmother, and trying to hold it together for our toddler.
Has anyone gone through something similar and successfully rebuilt trust? Would I be naive to believe this was a one-time thing and try to move forward?