About a week ago, my husband and I were sitting in our computer room. My husband was playing a computer game that he said was a lot of fun. I asked him who sent it to him and he said, ‘a guy at work’. He asked if I wanted to try it – and I told him to send it to me at my work email address and I would try it the next day.
The next morning I get a call from my husband. He tells me that he has to confess something. That the game he received didn’t actually come from a guy at work. It actually came from a girl that we used to be friends with. And, he even went on to say that after he looked at the email, he realized that I would be able to see who it had come from – and know that he lied to me. So, it seemed like he was coming clean more because he was ‘caught’ than because he felt guilty for lying. He also said that he knew that I didn’t really like the girl – which was why he didn’t tell me that the email came from her in the first place.
Well, at first, I didn’t know what to think. And to tell you the truth, I didn’t think much of it. One upon a time, we were friends with this girl. But… and this is a big but… she began acting very inappropriately with my husband. She was always touching him. She was always near him. She was always telling him how great he is. I trusted my husband 100% and didn’t get too worked up about it. I used to feel bad for this girl. Here I was with a great husband. And she had no one. I knew that she had a crush on him. I knew that in a different time/different place, she might have gotten him. But, I also thought I knew that he loved me and only me. So, the fact that she would send him a joke email here or there… really wouldn’t have bothered me. But, the fact that my husband felt that he needed to lie to me about it, brought thoughts to my mind.
That night, I told my husband that it was very upsetting that he lied to me. I told him that I trusted him 100% and I didn’t think that I had given him any reason to feel that he needed to lie. He told me that he screwed up and that he was sorry. He also said that he didn’t want to hurt me by telling me that the email came from her. (Huh?) I told him that I didn’t care if she sent him emails – or if he replied to them. At this point, he volunteered the information that she does send him joke emails, but that he NEVER replies to them. I said that it didn’t matter, but that I needed him to be honest with me.
After this conversation, the situation just kept creeping back into my head. Why did he lie in the first place? And… it has been two years since we have been friends with her. Why has this email relationship lasted so long… especially if he never replied to her. I even went back and looked at the “joke” email. It was just from her – just to him. This may sound odd, but how many times to people send out jokes just to ONE person? I don’t. If something’s funny, I send it to a bunch of people. Anyway, my brain was plagued.
The other night – again in our office – I hopped on my computer. I went to log into my account – by entering my password – and his account popped up. My husband has his own computer, but had been using mine the night before. We shared the same password – which I was not aware of… I immediately shut down his account and logged into my own. But… later on, after we went to bed, the curiosity got the best of me. I am not proud of this and I know it was wrong, but I logged back into his account. At first, I found an innocent reply to one of her ‘joke’ emails. It was only from a few weeks before. I was upset that my husband had lied to me about not responding to her, but like I mentioned, it seemed innocent.
And then… the age old truth… don’t go looking for something you don’t want to find. I found an email that he sent to her in December. In the email, he said that he was upset that he didn’t find her under his Christmas tree. He also said, “I know – I’m bad”. And then at the end of the email, he said that in order to discuss her question (I didn’t see the email from her to him) he would need to meet her in person. And he ended it with a wink. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
My heart pretty much jumped into my throat. I did not know what to do with myself. I walked the halls. I looked up cheating on the internet. I wanted someone to tell me what to do. Should I confront him? Should I wait – and try to keep looking at his emails? I just wanted to know what to do.
I tried to go back to bed, but I couldn’t. My heart literally hurt. I sat up in our bed and I woke up my husband. I asked if he was still seeing her. His first response, granted he was just woken from sleep was, ‘no’. Then, ‘who?’ And I said her name. And he said, ‘no’. And then he sat up and asked me what I was talking about. I told him that I found an email. We had a long discussion. He says that he never met with her, never talked to her on the phone. He says that it was flirtation that went too far.
Now I really don’t know what to do. I cry all of the time. My heart hurts. That is the only way that I can describe this feeling. It is deep down in my chest. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to feel. I know that I feel all alone. I know that I feel like I have no one to talk to. The person who I trusted most has been lying to me. Over and over and over again. And I didn’t know it. I didn’t sense it. I didn’t feel it. Now I feel like I can’t even trust myself.
The killer – the absolute killer – is that the email that I found was sent the week that we were trying to “make a baby”. Now I have this baby in my belly.
How can I erase the memory of that? Of a week that I thought was great and happy and whole – only to visualize him getting out of our bed to reply to her email.
I asked him if he had feelings for her. He said no. He keeps saying that he was stupid, that he was wrong, that he was thinking with the wrong head. He said that it I were cheating on him, he would want to know what the other guy had… So, I asked him what she had. He didn’t know. He said that she wasn’t prettier than me. He said that it might have been her fascination with him.
How do I know what’s the truth? How do I trust him again?
I want the hurt to go away. I want to stop crying. But I feel bad talking to my husband. He has apologized and said that it won’t happen again. And I want to believe him. I don’t want him to feel pushed away by my need to talk about this. To talk about her. To find out what it was that brought him to that point.
I know that there is not much for anyone to say. But I needed to get it out…
