Emotional affair
My story is somewhat old and I am going to a therapist but I wanted to seek whether advice or maybe even a reality check that I’m being too extreme. I caught my husband about 2 years ago having a secretive “relationship/friendship” with a female colleague. My husband works in a profession with mainly women so it’s not uncommon for him to be texting other women nor have I had any reason to worry about relationships he has with his coworkers over our 20 year marriage. But I kept seeing somewhat flirtatious texts from his colleague to him pop up and I asked him about it and he denied it saying they weren’t texting, she was weird and that any text was purely work related. Fast forward I kept feeling like something was going on and asked him again a few months later if he and this other woman was texting and he said no, to my face lied to me yet again. This happened a few times where he lied to my face. Where he could have just said yeah she texts me it’s strange and I would have moved on. I found out these secretive texts were going on after 10 months when I had a nagging feeling and checked his phone and there were no texts between them. I then checked his deleted messages and he had over 300 texts between the two of them in one month alone. I read through the texts in disgust and yes while he wasn’t outwardly flirting with her she was clearly emotionally attached to him. And who knows how much longer it would have gone on if I didn’t find out about it on my own. Fast forward, he was very remorseful, filled with guilt and shame. Kept telling me he wasn’t attracted to her at all but wouldn’t admit why he allowed this to happen. I kept saying he obviously enjoyed the attention but he never even to this day can answer why this happened. He cut off all communication with her immediately but it’s been very difficult because he still works with her. I got triggered again by this because my husband will be getting a new AP he will be working with and training who is this young, pretty girl and I just feel sick. I was never a remotely jealous person. I never had any reason to not trust him before everything happened but this triggered me bc his last secretive fling was with his former AP and now I get to experience it all over again hoping he will have boundaries with this new woman. I’m not sure what I’m even asking. I’ve just been an emotional wreck these last few days since I found out and I feel like this isn’t a normal response? How do I finally move on and rebuild trust.