PSA sorry for such a long post, there’s just lots of context!
My wife (F23) and I (M25) have been going through a rough patch lately. We have been married about a year and we have been dating for about 5 1/2 years. We also have a one year-old daughter together. We have few friends. I work a full-time third shift job and she works a part-time morning shift job.
It’s hard to find the beginning of things and I’m sure there will be lots of holes in this story, but I’m gonna try to do my best to make it understandable.
A few months ago my wife decided that she wanted to reconnect with some old friends and also make new friends to play video games with. She has done this in the past, but typically connected with guys that were major red flags, and I told her that I was uncomfortable with her talking to them and that I would like her to stop at which she agreed. This time I decided to be a bit more lenient and trusting in her to talk to these guys and allow her to have the time to play video games in hopes that it would benefit her mental health and her socializing.
It started out all right, and she was doing a pretty good job at managing the time between working, playing games, hanging out with me, and taking care of our daughter. Until it became persistent with playing games after I have woken up from my sleep. For context I get home around 7 am and usually sleep until 2-4 pm. I would come out to the living room and see that she had been in a phone call with one guy or sometimes a group call on discord for several hours sometimes up to six hours while playing video games while our daughter was playing in the playpen and watching cartoons. I bought this concern up to her and she agreed not to play video games while I was awake at home. Which wasn’t really the point I was trying to make, It was more so that she was becoming obsessive with talking to these guys and playing games. So she began playing games very late at night sometimes until three in the morning. I leave for work at 9 PM. Knowing that she was becoming obsessive with these friends and gaming, I would monitor her online status from my phone while I was at work. One morning, I came home and decided I wanted to look through her conversations on her phone. I found messages from her to another guy let’s call him Josh asking if he would be available in 15 minutes to call this text was at 8:45 PM just before I was about to leave for work. It wasn’t a typical “hey are you available to call?” It was a “please, please please I miss you. My husband leaves soon” blowing him up type thing. It seems he had fallen asleep and she told him that he made her sad by falling asleep and that she was just gonna go to bed.
I let this go and tried to keep my head on straight and basically told her that I wasn’t gonna be paranoid about her cheating on me or making flirtatious comments with other guys and that I would hope that if she was that guilt alone would eat her alive. I admittedly lied to her about this because I continued to be paranoid and overprotective and possessive of her. So yesterday morning I decided I would go through her phone again. I found messages to Josh saying that her other friends think that I am a terrible husband and that she deserves better and she told Josh that I never got her flowers, which is a lie, and that for every nice thing I did, I did three things that were not nice. Now to be fair this was following a rough weekend for us. Our air conditioner went out. It was over 90° in our apartment and we were both frustrated. I also found messages to her other friend. Let’s call him Tim. Basically saying the same thing about me. But also, I found messages where she sent him a picture of her nails, and he said “oooo I want my back scratched” and she said “I can do that for you.” Now I don’t know about you guys but for me I feel like back scratches are a rather sensual thing. I also found messages such as “you’re so mean to me” “you’re either about two things” “mean to me” “and sex”.
So at this point it’s seven in the morning I’m practically shaking from anxiety and pain and sadness. All while laying in bed next to my wife. So I decided to wake her up and tell her I wanted to talk about this. I told her that I had done something I said I wasn’t going to. I asked her why she lied to and why she wouldn’t be able to tell me he’s feelings she had about me to my face. All while im crying in her arms, of course. She knew exactly what I was talking about, and she admittedly stated that she should have told me her feelings to me before discussing them with these guys. She told me that she had only sent those things because of the bad weekend we had that she didn’t actually think I was a bad husband. I asked her about the you’re either mean to me or sex message and she said it was just a joke because he was always making stupid sexual jokes.
Just the night before I had poured my heart out about how I know that I have been frustrated and I have been mean and rude lately and that I need to treat her better as a wife and as a friend and as a mother and as a woman. We both understand that we’re both struggling.
So after we cried and talked about my findings we decided that all is well between us and that we were gonna make equal effort to rebuild our relationship and our trust for each other, putting in 100%. Now I love my wife very very much. I understand that I am overprotective and possessive of her. But to be fair the last 5 1/2 years together, she has given me all of her and all of her effort. So I guess that’s what I come to expect.
But even tonight after our cleansing conversation I still find myself looking to see if she’s active on Steam or discord or Snapchat and I find that she is active on Snapchat while ignoring my snaps. I’m not sure how or if I should overcome this overprotectiveness and possessiveness of her or if I’m just doing my due diligence as a husband by constantly checking in to see if she’s lying to me. I’m genuinely so torn between wanting to give her the space and allow her to have more socialization by playing games or if I feel like I need to put my foot down and tell her I want her to stop playing games and talking to these guys. I don’t wanna be an asshole husband. I don’t wanna be a controlling husband. But this has come so far that it is affecting me so much that I feel like I always need to check if she’s active or if she’s lying to me. Some nights I spend half my day at work just trying to hide that I’m crying. I feel like I work really hard. I feel like I’m a good husband and I feel like I’m a really good father to our daughter. I’m just very confused and very torn between the decisions I wanna make. And I don’t know if I’m the asshole so please tell me and please ask any questions. I’m more than willing to give more context. If you made it this far, thank you so much for reading it.