In January, I learned that my husband had been chatting online with a woman who was over 20 years younger than him. He met her on a gaming app and they were chatting in the app, that somehow led to him giving her his personal email and then she sent nude photos. When I confronted him, he started to cry with me and he apologized profusely. He promised he would delete her photos off of his devices. Before he deleted her photos off of his devices, he emailed her photos to himself. We had a huge fight over it, and he was upset that I wouldn’t drop it. We were away on vacation at the time and essentially I had to find my own way home. Instead of driving home together, I flew home. He then told me he needed to work on himself and said that he needed space and told me to leave our home until March (keep in mind, this was January.)
I should mention that we lost a newborn in November shortly after his birth. When all of this happened, I was about nine weeks postpartum. I had an emergency C-section and I also had severe postpartum preeclampsia. I felt completely betrayed and abandoned during the most vulnerable time of my life.
I am currently traveling overseas to give him the space that he asked for, but to also cheer myself up and think about what I want. We do stay in contact, but we haven’t talked about the big issues that led us to this point. I don’t feel like I can trust him anymore. Even if he does work on himself, I can’t get over feeling completely abandoned at nine weeks postpartum.
Would you consider my situation emotional cheating? Has anyone been through something similar and able to work through it with their spouse?