Need Advice (LONG so feel free to skip)

munchkin513

I really need some outside, unbiased opinions on this topic. I know most of you ladies have been through a lot and I just wanted to get your point of view on whether or not this is something I should be getting this upset over or what I can do to move forward. I know counseling is an option but I am not sure it can give back trust. To me, trust is something you have until you do something to have it taken away. I do not know how to give it back now. Any advice would be great and TIA if you actually sit and read through this whole thing. This is a letter I sent to a girl my husband has been communicating with going on 2 years now behind my back.

Hi,

My name is _______ and I'm ______'s wife. He told me he e-mailed you recently and I'm not exactly sure what he said to you but I wanted to clarify a few things for you and also get your take on some things.

To begin with, I am not the jealous type. I am fine with my husband having female friends and I had always trusted him in any situation. As you already know, he traveled the entire past year for work. It was rough having him gone most of the time but I dealt with it, even being pregnant. (DH) had mentioned to me that he met you last year and that you were getting married. He asked me to forward him information about our wedding programs so that he could send them to you. I thought it was really nice of him to help you out and forwarded him the information. That was the last time I ever heard him mention you to me. Many months later, on Easter to be exact, I picked up his phone and it was open to a BBM conversation between the two of you. I had no idea you two had continued to talk for all of those months and I was shocked that your supposed "professional relationship" had now crossed over to a non-professional one as you messaged him about your Easter with your husband and the issues you had going to his family's house. Seeing this disturbed me for a variety of reasons. To begin with, you were someone that my husband met at one conference. I understand that you had to correspond with him on a professional level throughout the year but I do not understand how that correlates to messaging someone on a holiday about personal issues. Despite being a little upset at seeing that message, I continued to have trust in my husband and chalked it up to the two of you working together. I figured that once his position ended in July and he turned in his work phone that the unprofessional conversations between the two of you would stop. I honestly forgot about it and completely let it go.

Unfortunately, months later (after the work phone had been returned and he had resumed using his personal phone), I again saw a BBM between you and my husband. It had nothing to do with work (especially considering that he was no longer even in the same position) and the two of you were discussing your "day." In fact, my husband was complaining to you about his day and you were reassuring him that everything would be alright. At this point, I felt that I needed to say something to my husband and see if he could offer a valid explanation for why the two of you had been talking for over a year without him ever mentioning your name. He offered me no valid explanation and in fact, blamed you mostly by saying that he didn't realize how much you were messaging him and that he didn't pay it much attention. I explained to him that both he and you were married and that you shouldn't be having conversations on this much of a personal level with someone unless you had a solid friendship that warranted it. He agreed with me, said that you two obviously weren't friends and that he should have stopped talking to you a long time ago. He told me that now that he was aware of what he was doing that he would cut all ties with you and stop communication because he did not want to cause any problems in our marriage.

AGAIN, I trusted what he said and let it go. Not much later, I went into our office to get something and he had left his e-mail open on our computer. I saw an e-mail from you to him. At this point, I was upset. In my opinion, I had handled this situation reasonably up until this point. I had given him multiple opportunities to do the right thing and obviously it wasn't occurring. I AGAIN brought it up to him and he admitted that he had e-mailed you and that he was wrong. He promised that he would stop communicating with you. I guess I foolishly believed what he said and against my better judgment, LET IT GO.

Fast forward to our family vacation this past week. My husband's mother flew to FL to spend some of it with us. The day she was scheduled to leave, I was sitting on the couch next to my husband when he opened his e-mail account to get her flight information. Well, of course the first thing I see is an e-mail from you to him AND another one not far below it. In disbelief I asked him if he was still talking to you. He immediately denied ever talking to you. I asked him to show me his "Sent Mail" and he refused. He even went so far as to sit there and change his password (obviously he was guilty because I had never checked his e-mail previously - had I checked it, I would have known the two of you had continued talking this entire time). He embarrassed me in front of his mother by denying ever talking to you or doing anything wrong. He claimed that you were e-mailing him still and that he blatantly ignored them and never replied.

Well, after 3 days of him lying to me, he finally admitted that he had e-mailed you. However, he claims that he only e-mailed you back once. He said that you e-mailed him about your husband possibly abusing you and that he sent you a link of where you could go for help. He claims that that is the only response he has given you.

Tonight was the last straw and is what inspired me to finally write to you. He just told me that he e-mailed you and told you that he could no longer talk to you because I had gotten into a huge argument with him over you and him talking. That is just cowardly and not true. I have explained to him multiple times my feelings about this situation and thought that he would make the right decision for himself. He has obviously failed to do that. I refuse to be pinned as the reason he can no longer talk to you because he is too much of a coward to tell you himself that he does not want to speak to you or that it is not right for the two of you to continue to have an unprofessional relationship.

I understand that this e-mail is long and I appreciate you taking the time to read it. I would also appreciate any clarification you could give me about the events I mentioned as told from (DH's) perspective. I am not sure what is right anymore and I definitely do not believe what he is telling me. I would appreciate any honesty you could display and I hope that you now understand where I am coming from in this situation. I would assume that you could understand how I feel on some level considering that you are also married. I am sure that your husband would probably react in a similar manner if he had been in my situation.