My (30) husband (31) wants a friendship with the person he had an emotional affair with and doesn’t understand why that hurts me each time he brings it up.
My (30) husband (31) had an emotional affair a year ago with a coworker of his. They were texting late at night, discussing topics that he didn’t want me to know about, he deleted text messages. It never got physical and no inappropriate photos were sent (so he claims) but both he and the coworker acknowledged that it went too far and crossed boundaries. That’s when he told me about it. He said that they have a shared history (family trauma, early loss) that I can’t relate to and he said that it was so nice to talk to someone who “could finish my sentences”. At that time, he was so ashamed, embarrassed, apologetic, couldn’t believe that he crossed the line, and I believed him. We’d only been married 4 months.
At first, I was probably too understanding and chill? Obviously very hurt and really confused. I just asked that he stop all non-work contact with her. Two days later, I did something I’ve never done before and went through his phone, and to my genuine shock, he had been texting her, making her tea at work, making jokes and flirting during meetings. After I had asked him not to. I’d never been so hurt, angry, and confused. I confronted him about it and he said that he was just worried about her because she seemed so off in the meeting. Excuse me? Your emotional affair seemed “off” at work? What about your wife?
After that, I, in my rage, deleted all of her contact points from his phone (text, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc). When he told her at work she was furious at him because she didn’t know that I had asked for no contact.
For the year that has since followed, my husband has mentioned to me that he misses his friend, wishes for that friendship, yearns for those conversations, wants me to drop my boundary that I am not comfortable with him having a friendship with his emotional affair. He even went as far as to float the idea of opening up the marriage. Pitched it in a way that didn’t seem totally crazy, and then when I put the boundary of “no workers” because we work in very similar fields and our contacts overlap significantly and it would be so messy, he started to push back. And continued to push back. And that’s when it clicked. She was in an open marriage.
My trust has been broken time and time again, he doesn’t seem to understand why. His friends have been really crummy for the last few years and haven’t been supporting him and he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to them about this, his mental health has been swirling the drain this year, he’s so lonely and desperately wants friends who aren’t crummy, and he feels like he keeps having to say no to one who keeps reaching out. The emotional affair. And I can understand his fear of fully closing that door when it’s been the only door that been open, but it shouldn’t have been open in the first place. And he doesn’t understand why that shatters me every single time he brings it up.
I have (borderline too much) empathy for his loneliness and just want him to be okay, but I’m not budging on this boundary. It is not unreasonable. I just don’t understand why he keeps pushing it.
I don’t know what to do.