I need some advice as to whether I am being rational about this incidence. My husband (49) has wanted a tattoo for quite some time which I have been fully supportive of (I have had one for over 20 years). The reason he had not been to get one yet is because he couldn’t decide what he wanted. He had always talked about getting a sleeve so I was surprised when he told me he was getting on his chest. He told me he wasn’t going to tell me ahead of time what he was getting because he didn’t think I would like it. (Not sure why) Anyways, he did get it and it’s this really cool bird. Fast forward a few weeks and we were on vacation on a European cruise and his phone buzzed in the night. We have a few airbnbs and because of the time difference, I assumed there was an issue that needed to be taken care of so I grabbed his phone. It was a text from someone but I noticed when I looked that he had been texting one of his female coworkers. Curious about why he would be texting her, I clicked on it and found several texts back and forth between them. One of the texts read “what do you think about this tattoo I’m going to get? I’m not going to tell my wife because I don’t think she will like it.” He included a picture of what the tattoo would look like. There were several texts back and forth and nothing really scandalous in nature but he also included a picture of his bare chest after the tattoo asking her how she liked it. This female coworker is probably a decade younger than my husband and really beautiful (not that it really matters) We had talked about this several times in our marriage that it was a boundary not to text members of the opposite sex unless it’s a friend in a group chat situation that we are all included in.
I spoke with him in the morning and his explanation is that he didn’t think I would approve and he needed to show someone else before he got it. I felt and still do feel very betrayed by this. I feel like it was an intimate thing to text a coworker something that you wouldn’t even tell your own spouse. He promised he wouldn’t do it again and to my knowledge he hasn’t but I’m having trouble getting over it and it still creeps into my mind quite frequently to the point that his tattoo actually bothers me because of the way he went about it.
FYI, Just for context we have been married for 28 years