I need some advice about these messages I found between my husband and his coworker (‘CW’). I am a very anxious person, and tend to overthink and jump to conclusions. I don’t know if I’m overreacting, sorry if this is long. New to reddit so I apologize for any mistakes in my post.
My husband and I (both 35) have been together since middle school, and married for 9 years. We’ve always been really happy, no fights or rough patches. We’ve shaped each other’s personalities and values as we’ve grown up together. I always thought we had good communication and were on the same page about everything. He is a very friendly, likeable and kind person.
He works in a predominately female field and has a lot of close female friends through work which has never been an issue, except for this one woman who I have always had a bad vibe about. They have worked together for about 7-8 years, she is also married and has 3 young children. He used to mention her a lot, I knew they were close at work and chatted a lot outside of work too. I have only met her once briefly. A few times over the years I have questioned the closeness of their relationship and he always insists they are just friends. One time years ago he was out for a work dinner, which turned into drinks with her. He got home at 4am and was surprised at how furious I was.
We know each other’s passcodes, but I have never looked at or even used his phone before. Last week we were on vacation and I wanted to send myself some of the pics he had taken for instagram. I sent the photos via WhatsApp and saw that CW was his most recent message, so I snooped. The messages went back 3 days, mostly chatting about the trip but my heart sank when I read ‘Morning gorgeous’ from him. He also said ‘Miss you, big hug when I get back.’ Also ‘goodnight lovely’ and ‘good girl.’
She was stressing about something at her kid’s school and he said ‘I suppose a photo of my bruised butt won’t help’ and she said ‘I wouldn’t say no.’ H: ‘it’s not attractive’ CW: ‘I haven’t checked your bottom out a whole lot previously so I wouldn’t know.’ I took a few quick photos of these messages.
I snooped again a few hours later when he was in the shower and the messages were all deleted. There was just them wishing goodnight to each other. I checked his texts and he has 2 numbers for her, one is ‘work phone’ and just had normal work stuff. The other had NO texts, but lots of ‘you missed a call’ messages.
We have been back home for a few days and he has not left his phone unattended at all. I don’t know if he was like that before because I never took notice of the whereabouts of his phone. I ended up looking again while he was sleeping, lots of messages in the few days since we got back but all just friendly banter and work related. He’s back at work today and I have finally broken down in tears at home.
So… nothing inherently sexual but the ‘Morning gorgeous’ is killing me, and the fact that he had deleted the messages is highly suspicious. I don’t know whether to confront him or try to keep snooping, I don’t think I have enough evidence. He is very smart and very tech savvy so I probably have no hope of finding anything myself. I have never invaded his privacy before and I feel terrible doing so. If he wakes up to me looking at his phone then it will blow everything open. It’s getting hard to pretend nothing’s wrong.
Any advice is welcome please! The thought of starting over in my late 30s with one salary, and losing all the friends and family from his side is harrowing.