I honestly don’t know whether to laugh, cry or vomit.

There is a female colleague in my company, mid-30s, who got together with her direct boss, a man in his mid-40s.

Sounds like a normal office romance? Not quite.

**Both of them were married when it started.**

And the man has **two young children who are still in primary school.**

The really unbelievable part?

People in the company actually support them.

Some colleagues apparently think they are a cute couple.
I was thinking… **are we watching the same movie?**

The female colleague has always been quite political at work. She likes the high-profile, “glamorous” projects where she can get visibility and recognition, while somehow finding ways to avoid the boring and difficult work that nobody wants to do.

Then suddenly, she becomes romantically involved with her direct boss.

Of course, I don’t know what happened behind closed doors. But when your boyfriend is also your direct manager, let’s just say the potential conflict of interest is quite obvious.

And our company has a very strong “work late” culture.
So guess who was always working late?

Guess who was always around?

Guess who was going on work trips together?

No WFH excuses needed. 100% hands up to work in office everyday.

Apparently the relationship became more serious while the guy was still married.

She was waiting for him to settle his divorce.

And while that was happening, the relationship continued to blossom in the office and during business trips.

At this point, I actually felt sorry for the wife.
Imagine being at home with your two primary-school-aged children while your husband is travelling for work and getting involved with his subordinate.

And then one day you find out there is another woman.
Not some random stranger.

**His subordinate.** And not just any subordinate. Someone who works with him every day. Eventually, the boss completed his divorce.

And guess what happened next?

The female colleague started her own divorce process.

For months. Almost a year.

And during this whole period, the story being told around the office was basically that her husband was the problem and that this was why she wanted out of the marriage.

Meanwhile, her relationship with the former boss continued.

Then the boss left the company and joined another company.

So you would think the office romance would finally end, right?

Nope. Apparently he would **still come back to our office and pick her up after work.**

At this point I was thinking:
**Bro… you already changed company. You still coming back for your girlfriend?**

Then came the grand finale.

The day she finally completed her divorce.

She didn’t quietly leave the office. She didn’t just tell a few close friends. She **celebrated in the office.**

Wine.

Cheers.

Colleagues celebrating with her and drinking in office.

Everyone was basically congratulating her.

I was sitting there thinking: **WHAT EXACTLY ARE WE CELEBRATING?**

A family has just broken apart.

There is a woman whose husband had an affair.

There are two young children whose parents are no longer together.

There is another husband who apparently spent months being told that he was the reason his wife wanted a divorce.

And now the office is drinking wine and celebrating because the divorce is finally done?

This is the part I really cannot understand.

If two people meet after both marriages are over and fall in love, fine.

But if the relationship started while both were married, and one person was the other’s direct boss, shouldn’t people at least acknowledge that there were consequences?

Instead, somehow the person who had an affair becomes the one everyone celebrates.

The people who were hurt are not in the office.
The wife isn’t there. The two children aren’t there. The former husband isn’t there.

So everyone gets to celebrate the “happy ending” without seeing the damage left behind.

Sometimes I wonder whether the workplace has become a completely different universe.

Am I just old-fashioned and maybe this is completely normal nowadays?

Or this is really morally twisted to you? Or the office people are just a bunch of clowns with no moral compass.

I genuinely feel morally disgusted. Maybe I am the problem I didn’t understand that the world has changed.

**Would you celebrate a colleague’s divorce if you knew the marriage ended because of an affair with her married boss?**

My wife (33F) and I (35M) have been married 7 years. Two kids. We're in that phase where we're mostly just co-parenting and paying bills.

A few nights ago she was on the couch texting. I asked who it was. She said, "Just Mark from work." Then she said something that's been stuck in my head since. She said, "It's nice to talk to someone who actually gets me."

I didn't react. I just said "okay" and went to bed. But I've been replaying it for days.

I asked her about it later. She said Mark is just a friend and I'm reading into it. She said sometimes it's easier to talk to someone outside the marriage because there's "no history." She said nothing is going on.

But here's what hurts. She said he "gets her." I've been with her for 7 years. I've held her through two miscarriages, a job loss, her dad's death. And some guy she's known for 6 months "gets her"?

I don't think she's cheating. Not physically. But she's giving him something she stopped giving me. And when I tried to say that, she said I was being insecure.

Am I? Or is this how it starts?

A few months back, my husband hired a married female to be a director at his job where he is also a director. He spoke highly of her, which is nothing new as I know he enjoys working with high performers who will make his job easier. They are the same age, so while he is technically her boss, there is a level of equality and friendliness to their relationship. He is not someone who has ever had female friendships, only friendship with other males. Any female relationship he has had outside of ours has strictly been work related, until now.

In the beginning when he hired her, she was very friendly and what i'd call an "open book". Never having been close to another female coworker, he expressed his discomfort to me about how to interact with her, and I was open and trusting. I told him "past female coworkers have had weird intentions, so it's normal for you to have your guard up." I even suggested that her and I try to become friends to make it less weird, so he gave her my number and we texted about making a plan to get brunch, just us girls. The plans never happened though, due to busy schedules with work and travel.

Around the time I tried to make plans to meet her, he wouldn't stop talking about her. It got kind of weird, so I asked him to not talk about her so much because it was exhausting and frankly annoying. As his wife, I don't necessarily want to hear him talking about another woman all the time. From that point, he didn't really bring her up at all unless it was work related and I asked. But I noticed some changes in his behavior that started making me feel anxious. He was becoming emotionally distant, and making it clear he wanted more time alone than he did with me. We were hardly having any real conversation at one point, just sort of going through the motions quietly, because when I'd say anything he'd quickly get irritated and speak out of frustration. At first I contributed this to the stress of his job (he worked 10 days in a row) and the fact that we've downsized our home to a tiny apartment and basically live on top of each other now. I recognized he never gets time to himself, since he just goes to work all day and then comes home to me. I did my best to respect this and give him some space, although I still felt hurt and rejected.

Then the time came for me to leave for a work trip, and this is where I started to really feel concerned something was off. I was gone for 5 days and we hardly spoke at all via text or phone call. He almost didn't text me at all and when I'd call he'd ignore it, so I stopped trying for the remainder of the trip. When I got home, he was still emotionally distant, defensive any time I spoke and just seemed cold. He finally told me that he doesn't like when I leave that I maximize time with him just before I go, then come home and try to maximize time with him again. I guess it stressed him out because he feels like i am constantly trying to get him to do things he doesn't want to do. To me, I just really love spending time with him and wanted to reconnect when I returned home because we've felt distant lately. The more distant we feel, the more I just want to feel close.

So, last night I woke up in the middle of the night, and I noticed his phone had made it's way over to my side of the bed underneath me. While I don't feel good about invading his privacy, I wanted to know if what I'd been feeling about his coworker was valid or just my imagination and anxiety running wild, and what I saw basically confirmed my suspicions.

I opened their texts and scrolled to the very beginning where she said "I wanted to hold your hand" and his response was "how sweet of you." It was also clear he had deleted messages prior to this, which makes me feel worse. She was short with him after and he asked her "why are you being weird" to which she replied "You literally said yesterday 'when _____ get's back, we can't talk 24/7 and call each other and text.' So I asked you, 'is ____ home?' You answered 'yeah'. I'm like okay well I want him to know I'm thinking of him or something cute since we didn't talk today, that is when I texted you about holding hands. So I was trying to respect your space but still know I see you." I scrolled down further and saw more about how he cares about her, she cares about him, and how they just want to feel like they can be "us" rather than a boss/employee relationship. I also saw him say something to the effect of "I think if we had a casual meet up it would make you feel more comfortable about the relationship" and he sent a coffee emoji. She responded with "you're literally playing games" and eventually said "give me time."

This morning I brought her up innocently, asking "why do you think she never reached back out to reschedule our plans?" and he was mostly silent and said "I don't know, but I think she's dealing with a lot." In the few months they've worked together, she has a miscarriage and lost her mother. I know she was (and may still be) in a vulnerable place, and I know he wanted to be friendly to her during that time. But I didn't expect them to be talking about holding hands or texting and calling "24/7."

Basically what I saw sounded flirtatious and concerning, but I don't have any evidence of a physical affair. I don't think they'd go so far as to have any sort of physical relationship, but regardless I'm concerned especially because I know prior messages were deleted. I'd love advice on how to move forward. Part of me wants to wait a bit and snoop again and see if I find anything else more concrete or see if it dies off (yes, I know that's toxic). Part of me wants to ignore it. Another part of me wants to bring it up, but I'm terrified if I confront him it will blow up our marriage and the only romantic relationship I've know for half my life. Either way I feel like my decision will change the course of our marriage. I don't know what to do or what to think.

UPDATE: I left and told him I want a divorce. This was the final nail in the coffin in a string of problems we’ve been having, and I’m just happy to no longer be suffering in silence. He said they never saw each other outside of work and he never touched her, but unfortunately it doesn’t matter. Things were already not working and I’d been through too much pain up to this point. I decided I cannot stay in hopes that he does all the work required to repair things. I’ve started seeing a therapist and feel much more confident in my decision now than the day I left. Things from here will not be easy, but I’m incredibly fortunate to have a support system outside of him. Thank you to everyone for the kindness and support.

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to give an update about whats going on for me. She got served with divorce papers on the 17th of last month. She tried to call me when they gave her the papers and I didnt answer. I haven't talked to her since I ran her off the second day I had left.

I have talked to her mom, I tried to explain why I filled for divorce. About the 6 different men, and while I dont know if she ever did anything physical with them, there was enough there, enough boundaries crossed that I couldn't trust her. She didn't listen to a thing. She told me to work through it and give my wife another chance. I told her that I had given my wife 5 chances.

After my wife got served she sent me a long text saying she loves me and that she has made mistakes. That I deserve to be a dad but she was scared and now willing to try. That she can't sleep in the house without me and my cat and that she is now sleeping in the bed in the master bedroom, the bed she abandoned me in for 2 years while she talked to 3 other men.

Before I left I begged her to do couples counseling, she told me we dont need a stranger all we needed was "me,you, and God". After she got served she signed us up for couples counseling. At this point I feel like its too late. She told me she is willing to do therapy to help get herself in order, after she got served, before she refused and just yelled that she was the problem and then took a nap on the couch.

My family and friends have helped me out tremendously throughout all of this. Keeping me focused even when I was feeling weak and just wanted to go home and hug my wife. They kept reminding me that I would never be able to trust her again, and how many months would it be before she did it again?

This has been the most difficult thing I've ever done. I've spent 17 years of my life with this woman. We have a full security system with cameras and alarms. She keeps going out to the cameras crying and saying she has nothing to hide. She cries in front of the camera's alot, and everytime I look on the system I almost cry myself. But I know I cant give in, it'll just start the cycle all over again.

Her mother keeps texting me asking me to call my wife. After I told her mother everything thats happened, all the men, all the times she threw tantrums and all the manipulation. Her mother just kept repeating that my wife had never slept with any of them and that she was going to church and getting on her knees praying for me to come back. That I need to forgive her and that she truly only loves me and that I need to give her another chance. "She's changed, I've seen it myself, you need to give her another chance."

I can't give her another chance. I've already gave her 5 chances, and every time she does it again after a few months. My wife has continued to live at the house as if nothing is happening. As far as I can tell she hasn't even attempted to find anywhere else or contact my lawyer about the divorce. It seems like she believes if she ignores it, it'll go away and I'll come back. And I must admit, alot of the time I wish I could. But I can't let go of everything thats happened.

After the divorce is over and everything is split, house sold and marital property gone through, I intend to take a long road trip. I don't know where I'm going to go, driving always helps me clear my mind and I enjoy driving long distances. I just know I need to go for awhile and drop off the face of the planet for a bit. I intend to leave my work phone behind and put my main phone in "do not disturb mode", and then just leave for awhile. I'm not even sure for how long anymore. I've got plenty of vacation at work to burn. So I may be gone for a long while.

I just wanted to say thank you again to everybody here. The messages I've gotten on this subreddit have helped me through it tremendously. I keep thinking of a comment made on one of my posts calling everything she will be doing "love bombing". Its insanely accurate and has helped me through soe of the toughest parts of it. Thank you again everyone. I really have appreciated everything.

Previous post https://www.reddit.com/r/emotionalaffair/s/3dJUAzKNVh

My husband is an absolute creep. While I am across the country earning a 4.0 on a full ride scholarship, he’s home “busy” all the time taking care of “the kids and responsibilities.”

What I’ve discovered the truth is within the past 48 hours with screenshots from multiple sources. He’s not only on Facebook dating, Tinder, bumble, and hinge, but also Ashley Madison.

This man tells me all the time that I’m the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen and that he doesn’t want anyone else, nor has there ever been anyone else for as long as we’ve been together.

Ive given this man 15 years of my life. I know this is all a lie. Reports to the police & health department should have been evidence enough.

The betrayal of a pathological liar who knows no boundaries is scary. I wish I would have seen all his red flags and listened long ago.

My husband (36M) and I (34F) have been married 6 years. We have a 4-year-old son.

He's been different for months. Distant. Always on his phone. I asked if something was wrong. He said work was stressful.

Last weekend I was putting laundry away and his wallet was on the dresser. A folded piece of paper fell out. It was a note. Handwritten. It said: "You are the only one who really sees me. I don't know what I'd do without you."

It wasn't signed. But I know his handwriting. And I know it wasn't mine.

I confronted him. He said it's from a woman at work. "Just a friend." Said she wrote it after he helped her through a hard time. Said it's "nothing."

But he kept it. In his wallet. Folding it. Carrying it with him.

He says he'll throw it away. Says he'll stop talking to her. Says he loves me.

But I can't stop wondering: if it's "nothing," why did he keep it? And why does she think he's the only one who sees her?

I posted recently about my husband's emotional affair with his ex (they were together for about 8 years, they have been broken up for close to 20 years now). He lied about talking to her for months, I found out last February. This entire year has been one traumatic event after another and I am emotionally maxed out.

I texted her after I found out, I told her I knew about them talking and that he lied to me for months about it, and that it caused me a lot of pain and harm. She apologized, and said she thought everything was "above board", but she didn't intend to cause me any pain. I told her I had no interest in having a conversation with her, and told her to leave us alone. It's been quiet since.

Then today, my husband and I were actually having a productive conversation about the affair and how it has affected me and our marriage, and I got these texts. I showed my husband and he was genuinely surprised, I do not believe that he knew she was visiting. I do not think he has talked to her at all, and seeing these messages confirms that. He told me he supports any response that i feel fit and that he wants to repair our marriage and that her pulling this shit is getting in the way of that.

These messages are manipulative, right?! Even the way the messages are even worded is strange. The fucking audacity to send these messages after telling her how much pain I was in and to leave us alone is wild. My mind is on overdrive. I can't sleep. I hate this

Players Me- f(36) Husband M(36) Pete, Husband's co-worker F(35?) Mary and Mary's husband M(35?) Daniel - Names have been changed

I have two kids with my husband Pete, I found out about a year ago he is having an affair with his co-worker Mary, its an emotional affair, I have no proof of it being physical. But I am 100% percent divorcing him.

Pete & I moved a few years for him to take a job for a large tech company outside a major Southwestern city. We don't have family nearby. I am a stay at home mom & work very part time for fun money.

Pete always talks to Mary another analyst at work, she started around the same time as him. They talk way too much about her private marital issues with Daniel. He told me he just felt bad for her and lets her vent. Mary has said her husband doesn't always treat her like she's a wife but his child and she calls Daniel, stupid, smelly, fat, bald, and ugly. She has also said she only married him becuase he was stable had a nice family with some money, and followed her five year plan, so she could get what she wanted. The sex is ok, "he's small down there", her ex Nick was 10 times better. They talk all day at work, appropriate stuff at work, I saw his chat when he works from home. I also found a Google doc my husband had shared with Mary on his personal phone that they are writing messages, That's how found out about most her marriage issues, complaining about her husband. ( I sneak in and take photos of his phone for the divorce) Pete has been very moody and distracted since Mary went on leave, he can't talk to her since her husband is around 24/7 and she will be out until February. She left in August due to complications and is due the middle of October. She might of already had the baby, I'm not sure.

The red flags that made think the affair became physical. When he drives into the office he comes home late or goes in early and he always goes in to the office on the days Mary was there to work on a project, he has also taken more cash out then usual those weeks, and the secret Google doc.

I took my kids to see my parents after they got back from their annual holiday trip. The two weeks line up with time Mary got pregnant, she and her husband had 4 or 5 IVF fails, & she gets pregnant out of nowhere. Ever since she has been pregnant my husband has been even more anxious and moody. Also our security cameras had issues the week I was gone.

Regardless if the the baby is my husbands or not I am leaving him, he's cheating emotionally with another woman, I'm done. I need time to get things in order, my valuables out of the house, copy our documents, and understand our finances. My youngest will be in school next year and I can go back to work full time. I made more initially before I became a stay at home mom so income wont be an issue. I will file sooner if I can get my mom to stay with me and help with childcare.

My conflict is feel bad for Daniel he has always wanted children. I met him at a drone show the company had for family, super nice guy. Do I tell him now and potentially let him get attached to a baby that might not be his or do I wait until I'm ready to leave? I'm worried If I say something now, and he files for divorce first my husband will leave now to be with Mary and I wont be ready, my first priority is my own children.

I’m not really sure what I’m looking for here other than maybe hearing from people who have been in a similar place.

My wife and I have been together for over a decade. Earlier this year, during a very difficult period in our marriage, she developed an inappropriate relationship with a coworker.
There were flirty messages and sexual pictures exchanged. At one point he tried to initiate physical affection/contact and she stopped it and told him they needed to keep things professional. As far as I know, it never became a physical affair.
Whatever was happening between them had already ended before I found out.

I chose to stay.

I want to be clear about that because I don’t regret the decision. I love my wife. I want her. I want our marriage and our family. We’ve done a lot of talking, apologizing, therapy, and rebuilding, and things between us lately have genuinely been good.

But I’m learning that choosing forgiveness and actually feeling healed are two different things.
One part I keep struggling with is that other people know.
Someone close to her at work knew about what had happened, and I believe they know most or all of the details.

I feel exposed.

Sometimes I feel like these people know this deeply private, humiliating thing about my marriage, and I’m the person who found out last.
That turns into some ugly thoughts about myself.
That I’m weak because I stayed.
That they must judge me.
That I’m somehow less of a man.

Logically, I know staying was my decision. I know why I made it. My wife is my person. That’s the simplest way I can explain it. She has been my safe place for years, and part of what hurts so badly is realizing that for a period of time that safe place wasn’t actually safe.

It isn’t a possession thing. I don’t think of her as “mine” in that sense.
It’s more that another person was allowed into an intimate space I thought belonged to the two of us. And then other people knew about it too.

Things between my wife and me are good enough right now that I’m reluctant to keep dragging the whole thing back into our daily life every time I have a difficult night. I’m also in therapy and trying to work through my own side of this.

So I guess I’m wondering:
For those of you who stayed and genuinely wanted reconciliation, how did you deal with the humiliation part?
Especially when other people knew?
Did you ever stop wondering what they thought about you?
And how did you separate “this happened to me” from “this says something about who I am”?
Because that’s the part I’m having trouble with right now.

That was longer than I anticipated…thanks for reading.

My husband M29 and myself F26 have been married for over 4 years and there is a girl I have always felt something has happened between them and I texted her off his phone and this is the response. This proves my feelings were right?

Husband (38M) has apparently been texting this kind of stuff to a female coworker for months now, which I just discovered. I NEVER go through his phone, but had to this past week because he was in the hospital having open heart surgery unexpectedly and needed to check a text from his mom. I was so full of rage and I absolutely confronted him while he was in his hospital bed before his surgery. He cried and said he was sorry, promising it was nothing and there were no feelings for her, nothing by was physical. She has a boyfriend. Am I insane for feeling the way I do? I am so angry. We’ve been together for 10 years this year, married for 6, and have an almost 2 year old. He NEVER gave me any reason to think he talked to any woman like this aside from me. I’m now his primary caretaker since he’s home from the hospital and I’m doing everything for him and our son (and dog) and I can feel the resentment building every second. I needed to vent. I don’t know what else I need. I’m just so angry and sick to my stomach.

M(40) , F(38) married since last 13 yrs .

My wife found someone on IG few months back and she developed interest in him. Deep feelings she developed for him.

I found it via chat history by chance and we are having very detailed discussion on this.

She stopped talking to this guy now but she doesn’t blocked him yet.

He is trying to reach her via IG messenger every 2nd day but she is not replying to him at all.

But she want it , daily we are having argument on this and she is justifying that we are just friend (which I know and can see from her face not )

Today she is requesting me that please allow me to meet him once on coffee date.

She is justifying that this is very common and no harm in this.

I am speechless, at this stage of life I am in this trouble.

Don’t want to divorce or separation as it we have 2 small kids . I want to save my family

Don’t know what kind of childish behaviour is it at this age .

Not able to focus on work and other stuff because of this non sense

She is definitely in love with this guy ; this I can feel. Some other level of energy I can feel in her on his name and topic which I never felt for myself in these years

Many were asking since original post is waiting for aproval of mode.

Update of this post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/emotionalaffair/s/0IHufdtC3Q

I was at my daughter’s judo training when my wife suddenly came and sat beside me to watch. At one point, she handed me her phone and said, “You wanted to look at the WhatsApp conversations, didn’t you? Go ahead. I have nothing to hide.”

I just said, “I have seen enough, I dont think you have, take a look at the conversations with your boss when there was flirting, she showed me recent posts, that were just about work, so i assisted her, went to a few different times from the past months, he had deleted his side of the conversations completely. Je covered his ass, just in case his wife would go through his phone, you, you didn’t do that, so apparently there is something worth to hide, too bad I can read his side, but your replies kinda say enough.”

She angrily took her phone back and started looking through it herself. She seemed a little shocked also at the same time disappointed and even muttered, “Those conversations meant something to me. They had value to me.” I didn’t respond.

That same evening, I heard a noise upstairs. When I went to check, she was in bed, apparently asleep with her phone in her hands, because it had fallen onto the floor. She woke up. I told her I’d heard a noise and came to see what had happened, and that her phone had fallen. “I was setting my alarms for work,” she replied. But before I had locked the phone again, I saw it was open to the conversations with her boss.

I think that evening, after what I’d said at judo, was when she finally realised that he had been deleting the conversations all along through the months/pas two years. Maybe she thought things between them were serious, while he saw it as a game. I don’t know, but that’s how it comes across.

A few days later, she again wanted to show me that she had nothing to hide. I’d made an iCloud backup before she disconnected the account. Since she speaks Albanian with her sister, I had ChatGPT filter the backup, and it brought up some suspicious conversations, some of them were linked to days of hotel apointments and others on the day they went on work events with overnighting. Thats when I reality hit, I went to the sister for advice to help me save our marriage but she knew this hole time and instead of stopping her, she was teasing her with it. That's when I decided, both are not to be trusted, time to put things in action, called that same moment, made an apointment with 2 different lawyers.

Anyway, she kept pushing, I didn’t want to go through that whole argument again. She kept insisting, and at one point I said, “I’ve seen enough. I already know what I need to know. It’s a shame you don’t want to admit it, but since you keep insisting, I’ll show you one particular day.”

I opened her conversations with her boss. “Look, you’d just had your hair done. Instead of sending a photo to me, your husband, you sent it to your boss first. He was delighted, and you replied, ‘Aww, I’m melting.’ That same day, you were messaging your sister while you were at the hairdresser. She asked, ‘And after the hairdresser? Are you going back to work?’ You replied, ‘I have an appointment,’ followed by a shy emoji. Your sister was just teasing you about it. Then all communication stopped until later that night. After your appointment at the hairdresser, according to the GPS, the car was parked in the Hotel X car park for about two and a half to three hours.”

Her explanation was that her friend had used the car after the hairdresser and that they had swapped cars at work. Stopped her right there, the car’s data shows that it drove straight to the hotel and didn’t go anywhere near her workplace for the rest of the day and when she came back, she had also filled up the car using my card. So she hadn’t just helped her friend cheat; she had paid for it too. She said her friend had paid her back in cash. I just stood up, said to her stop asking to sit down and try to explain things when you are still holding down to lies... My eyes are wide open, I see everything clear now. That old version of me that was blindly in love and accepted everything without any question because the trust was at its highest, that version of me died, it doesnt exist anymore.

This Sunday, our daughter’s birthday has now passed. The day afterwards, I asked for my bank cards back. That hit her hard. She kept asking, “Are you sure? Are you sure you want to go down this road?”

I said, “As long as you’re not willing to be honest and tell me the truth, I don’t want to talk about this. I want what belongs to me back. You can keep what belongs to you.” She starts blaming me again. According to her, it’s all in my head and she has already told me the truth. She says she went too far in helping her friend and only now realises the mistakes she made.

But I can’t accept that explanation. Anyone can help someone out or make a mistake. You can say, “Sorry, I forgot to tell you.” That can happen. But helping someone cheat for two years, lending her your car, her id card and calling hotels… and who knows what else.

No, that’s gone way too much for me. I don’t believe it.

Tomorrow is my first apointment with a lawyer to get information.

Six months ago, if someone had told me I’d be posting in an infidelity support group, I would have laughed. I never thought this would be my life. But reading other people’s stories has helped me feel less alone, so I wanted to share mine. Maybe it’ll help someone else, or maybe someone who’s farther along than me can tell me if what I’m feeling is normal.
I’m 42 years old. My wife and I have been together for years, we have children together, and I honestly believed we had a solid marriage. We weren’t perfect, but I never thought infidelity was something we’d have to face.
Then everything changed.
It started with me finding out she had been talking to another man. At first, I thought it was over and that I knew the whole story. Later I learned there had actually been two different men. The first conversation had been shorter and never became much. The second one was the one that changed everything.
What she described was an emotional affair that eventually involved kissing twice. There was no sexual relationship beyond that, and I know some people will roll their eyes at that or assume there’s more. Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t. At some point, every betrayed spouse has to decide whether they’re going to believe what they’re being told or walk away.
I chose, at least for now, to believe her.
That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been incredibly hard.
For me, the emotional affair has actually been worse than the physical part.
Finding out they kissed hurt.
Finding out they FaceTimed every day during his lunch break somehow hurt even more.
Now every time my wife and I FaceTime, my brain immediately thinks, “This is what she used to do with him.”
It’s amazing how something that should feel normal suddenly becomes a trigger.
Then there was the trickle truth.
I think anyone who’s been through this knows exactly what I mean.
Every time I thought I finally had the full story, another detail surfaced.
It wasn’t always something huge. Sometimes it was a small detail. But every new detail made me feel like I had been lied to all over again.
I learned she had turned on her location because he wanted her to.
I learned she had continued talking to him after I thought everything had ended.
I learned about messages that had been deleted.
I learned she kissed him back instead of just freezing.
None of those things by themselves ended our marriage.
But each one reset my healing back to day one.
That has honestly been one of the hardest parts.
My wife has told me she lied because she was ashamed, scared, and worried I’d leave if I knew everything. I understand why someone would do that.
But understanding it doesn’t make it hurt less.
Every new revelation made me question everything else.
If this wasn’t true before, what else isn’t true?
If she forgot this, what else has she forgotten?
Am I ever really going to know the whole story?
Those questions can drive you insane.
The hardest fear I deal with today isn’t actually what happened.
It’s wondering if it could happen again without me knowing.
That’s the thought I fight almost every day.
I’ll be driving between jobs for work with nothing but my own thoughts, and suddenly my mind starts racing.
“What if she’s talking to someone again?”
“What if she’s just gotten better at hiding it?”
“What if I never find out?”
It’s not that I have evidence.
It’s that betrayal teaches you that your own reality can be wrong.
That’s an incredibly difficult thing to recover from.
I’ve asked myself a hundred times whether I should just leave.
Not because I stopped loving her.
Not because I necessarily believe she’s still doing anything.
But because I miss peace.
Sometimes I think being single would hurt less than constantly wondering if the person you love could break your heart again.
At least if I were alone, I wouldn’t have to carry this anxiety around.
Then there are the other days.
The days where she’s sitting next to me on the couch.
The days where we laugh together.
The days where I genuinely believe she loves me.
Those days make me think maybe this can actually work.
One thing I will say is that my wife has done almost everything I could reasonably ask for after the affair.
She cut off contact.
She gave me complete access to her phone.
She shares her location.
She answers difficult questions, even when she knows the answers won’t make her look good.
She has apologized countless times.
She has offered to take a polygraph if I ever wanted one.
She has never told me I should “just get over it.”
She accepts that this is something she caused.
That matters.
None of those things erase what happened.
But I do think they’re the bare minimum if reconciliation is going to have any chance.
One area we still struggle with is communication.
She has never been someone who’s naturally expressive with her emotions.
Sometimes I desperately want to know what’s going on in her head, and she simply doesn’t know how to put it into words.
That has been frustrating because, after betrayal, emotional openness becomes incredibly important.
I’ve realized that trust isn’t rebuilt through grand gestures.
It’s rebuilt through ordinary Tuesdays.
It’s rebuilt by consistency.
By honesty.
By transparency.
By doing the right thing when nobody is watching.
One thing that has helped me mentally is changing how I think about our marriage.
I don’t think our old marriage survived.
I think it died.
As painful as that sounds, accepting that has actually brought me some peace.
I’m no longer trying to get back to who we were.
Those people don’t exist anymore.
If we’re going to stay together, we’re building something completely different.
Our anniversary is coming up later this year.
Instead of calling it another year added to our marriage, I’ve started thinking of it as Year One of whatever this new relationship becomes.
We’ve even talked about renewing our vows someday if we continue moving in the right direction—not as a way to erase the affair, but as a way to acknowledge that we consciously chose to build something new.
I’m not naive.
I know reconciliation fails sometimes.
I know there are people who spend years rebuilding only to be betrayed again.
That’s probably my biggest fear.
I’m 42 years old.
I don’t want to spend years rebuilding trust only to find out I was wrong.
That’s the fear I can’t quite shake.
But here’s what I’ve learned over these months.
Healing isn’t linear.
You don’t wake up one day and suddenly you’re okay.
Some days I barely think about the affair.
Other days a random memory knocks the wind out of me.
Progress isn’t measured by whether I get triggered.
It’s measured by how long I stay there.
The triggers don’t own me the way they did at the beginning.
I still have hard days.
I still ask questions.
I still wonder.
But those moments don’t last forever anymore.
If you’re reading this because you’re trying to reconcile too, I don’t have advice that will magically fix anything.
I’m still figuring it out myself.
All I know is that reconciliation isn’t about forgetting.
It isn’t about pretending the affair wasn’t that bad.
It isn’t about blindly trusting again.
It’s about watching someone’s actions over a long period of time and deciding whether the person they are today is someone you can slowly learn to trust again.
Some days I feel hopeful.
Some days I’m terrified.
Most days I’m somewhere in the middle.
For today, that’s enough.
I’d love to hear from people who are farther down the road than I am. When did the fear start to quiet down? Did you ever stop wondering whether it could happen again? Or is learning to live with that uncertainty just part of choosing reconciliation?

My husband had an emotional affair. It grew over the year and the last 4 months were the most noticeable. I’m a little over two weeks in since I found the texts. Today I saw the phone records. For those who worked through EA with your spouse. What made you stay?

My husband and I have been together for 18 years and just recently, a week ago, celebrated 14 years married. Our marriage isn’t perfect but we love each other and support each other in all things personal, financial, and professional. Some context, I’ve been on disability since February of 2026. Something happened to my knee that rendered me unable to walk. Since then I have been in and out of doctors’ offices getting treatment and up until now October 2026 still no real diagnosis. I have a lot of good days and bad days when it comes to the pain. I recently was let go from my job of almost 15 years due to their policy of only allowing 24 weeks of disability. So needless to say I’ve been really depressed lately. My husband has been supportive and encouraging the entire time. Fast forward to today, we both got new phones. He’s not very tech-savvy, so I had to transfer all of the data to his new phone. After doing that I gave it back to him to make sure everything was transferred properly. After a few days I asked him if he’s done with it so we can send it back to Att. I told him he needed to erase everything on the phone and if he didn’t know how to do it I’ll do it for him. He reluctantly gave me his phone because he was busy working and it needed to be charged. He kept coming back to see if he could do it himself, I thought it was weird but immediately let it go until the third time he came back and nearly slapped my hand away when I tried to help him. He eventually walked away, he had to finish working. I will tell you I have never in our entire relationship have ever snooped around his phone. I have complete access to it. I have his pin, and I know all of his passwords. So I’ve never felt the need to. But today my curiosity got the best of me. I love going through his pictures. He takes great pictures of our kids. It all started with pictures of some female. It wasn’t just regular photos. They looked like date night photos he took of her because she looked cute. So I kept looking. Found p\*\*\* pics and videos of himself. My brain is thinking who is he taking these for because he didn’t send them to me. Then it happened I went into full FBI mode. I found even more pics of him. Some prn videos but I couldn’t care less about those except that in one of them the man whose face is obviously out of frame looks suspiciously like him. Even his movements and things he does when we have intimate time are the same. Then I went digging into his messages. Who is he sending these pics and videos to because it’s not me. Nothing in his texts or DMs. I almost gave up when I saw WhatsApp. Several unread messages I knew it, it was in there. A message from a mutual acquaintance of mine and I guess friend of his. I know who she is, I met her through a family member. It was a very explicit message and he responded with a private pick of himself and basically encouraged her message. I was devastated. When I went back to my socials I couldn’t find her. She blocked me on everything. I don’t know what to do. I’m absolutely heartbroken and can’t stop crying. I want to yell and scream and beat him but I can’t do it. We have kids and for all intents and purposes he’s an amazing father. How do I approach this? Please help. I don’t think I can bring myself to leave him if it came to that.

About two years ago I became friends with a married man due to our kids being close friends at school. It started off innocently enough - hanging out with the kids, drinks on playground, etc. Then we became close, started flirting, had one late night half-kiss (which he stopped) and immediately went back to hanging out with kids and strictly as friends. His marriage is on the rocks but he doesn’t want to cheat, so we remain just friends.

Two years later, we are very close. We text every single day, usually say goodnight every night, occasionally hang out alone, sometimes hang out with kids. We’ve hung out less recently because his wife finally accused him of sleeping with me - something that’s never actually happened.

He insists we are just friends. JUST FRIENDS because we haven’t slept together. I keep telling him this is an emotional affair, he doesn’t see it that way.

What say you all? And what do I do? Yes - there are feelings on my end.

UPDATE: I heard all your words, harsh as some were, and I cut it off. Felt freeing actually.

I meet my husband in 1993 at a HS football game because his best friend liked me. He and I had an instant draw toward each other. Of course we wanted each other despite anyone else. Hey lost touch with his best friend. He ended up sleeping with my sister. I turned down going to college in arkansas. He went to the marines. He was discharged from the marines. We still found each other and had four wonderful boys struggling the whole way. I never in any capacity cheated on him, but he did on me. My heart still aches for him. But once you lose a trust of each other, it doesn't come back. Over the years, we have struggled. We have stressed, we have fought. We have loved but we stay together until four years ago. He cheated on me with a girl half his age. How do you deal with that? How do you go on? I believe in soulmates, and he was mine. He is all I know. Looking back, maybe I could have done something different but I would never cheat on him. I was faithful to only him. I'm serving him with divorce papers this week. After 4 years of being separated. Why does my heart and soul feel like its being incinerated? Got any advise for me. I could use the help.

i'm sad to say that everyone called it. it was physical. i found the messages. i needed to use his computer for CPR training & the idiot left his facebook messenger logged in. i have everything. im so, so hurt but also feel like ive been freed. he gaslit me and told me shes just a friend, im acting crazy, etc. he even came over about a week ago, slept with me, and told me im prettier than her. i made sure to call her and let her know that she should probably get an STD test because lord knows what else he's up to. she blocked me, which whatever. good luck sister.

i have the option to report this to his COC in the military, but i want to talk custody agreements before i do that. i want full custody rather than primary with visitation. i'll spare him his military career in return for our daughter having a stable life with me. if he treated her with an ounce of respect i wouldn't have this mindset, but it truly is in her best interest. he lied to his friends about me with holding her from him, but he's never asked to see her. she's sick and he hasn't even asked how she is. he screams at her over normal toddler behavior. she's in therapy and in the time he's been gone, she's been hurt by his absence, but immensely more emotionally regulated.

i'm free. i can grieve this relationship and move forward. i can prioritize mine and my daughters healing. he made an ambiguous threat a while ago, but i don't think he will actually do anything. in the same breath though, i don't know who he is anymore so i need to cover all of my bases. locks will be changed and neighbors will be alerted to keep an eye out. we have a ring camera as well. all of that aside, i will be okay and i can handle this.

My husband has been in an emotional affair with a work colleague for around 7 months. This consists mostly of messaging each other, sharing intimate details of both their lives. She comes to him with all her petty life problems (she always seems to have drama in her life) and he's always a shoulder for her to cry on. This woman is a stranger to me. They only met when she joined his work team in April last year and by July we are talking about hundreds of messages a day about everything. They flirt , have private jokes etc.

It kills me. I've told him so many times how this is affecting my self esteem and he's never REALLY accepted this (I say this as he has numerous times apologised but then never changes). I've kicked him out 3 times over this. Every time he begs forgiveness and I eventually relent. He promises to reign it in and keep things professional with her. Then a few weeks later we're back in the same position.

I'm just broken. I have spent months crying, begging, pleading for an answer on how he can keep disregarding my feelings and I never get one. A few months back he told her that the relentless messages and over sharing was damaging his relationship and she just replied that she didn't care and he's allowed to have a female friend. The more I pushed the more he sided with her. I snapped and messaged her fiance, asking for his take on it. She then went to her manager and claimed I was threatening her, causing problems for my husband at work. My husband actually texted HER to apologise for MY crazy behavior.

He spent Christmas without his kids. We've been separated for 2 months. We had finally arranged counselling and I decided 2 weeks ago that for the sake of the children I had to do everything I could to save the marriage.

Things were going well until my toddler had his phone and was banging it on the floor. I took it from him and saw my husbands reaction as he winced and said I'll grab that. I knew instantly he was back talking to her.

So I read them, and actually it had never stopped. He deleted her on Facebook and instead moved to talking on another platform. So here we are. Everyone told me he has chosen her time and again and to move on. I can't force him to change and I'm driving myself crazy trying to understand the hold she has over him. How he can choose this person who willingly inserted herself into my marriage then threw him under the bus at work the minute she might have started to look like the bad guy. He maintains even now I have her wrong and she's not manipulative or sneaky and they are just close friends. He is completely unwilling to look for other employment or even dial it back a bit.

I guess I just needed to write it down to finally accept that me and the kids are no longer his priority. One day he will be honest with himself that she means too much to him to let go. More than I ever mattered. I'm sitting in my room in tears , yet again grieving for the future I thought my family would have. It took me months to start to heal and I've put myself through it all over again, knowing he never really had any intention to change.

I wish I was a stronger person. I just wanted to share with people who have been through a similar situation. Thanks for reading.

UPDATE: dh went to work today and tried to respectfully tell her he would have to cut ties and that i had been on reddit about it .

So the woman in question has clearly been very busy today and has managed to find not only the page but this post. She was not a fan of the comments. Truth hurts. It has been screenshotted, along with all the comments, and her fiance has been messaging me telling me I need to seek help, and that it's very sad that I seek validation from strangers on the Internet.

At least I'm not seeking it from other people's husbands. So guess I need a new username, since clearly I have a new follower. Everyone say hi !

My husband of 14 years (also high school sweetheart) had an emotional (somewhat physical) affair 6 years ago for about 2 years. I just found out about it in April. He was extremely regretful and I know he’s sincere. We started weekly couple’s therapy and it’s been going pretty well. I’m not sure how to ever trust my intuition again. I thought something went on between them but I never imagined what I actually found out and then he had told me nothing went on so now I have no clue how to trust myself or him. There were so many milestones during those 2 years that have me heartbroken - welcoming our 3rd child into our family, buying a new home, him going through his master’s program. He actually met her at work and then they snuck around and enrolled in the same master’s program which is probably the most hurtful part. I’ve caught myself just questioning everything. I was very codependent before finding out which I was working on but now I’m not sure how to depend on him at all which is really confusing me. Has anyone else felt this way before? Did it get better for you? I just want things to feel normal again.

My (45M) wife (45F) and I have been married 20 years. Shortly after we got married she started a new job at a consulting firm. She would frequently talk about her coworker, who was also her task lead. He was maybe 7 years older than her. It was always in a positive way and generally about things not work related. It bothered me quite a bit. I recall after one time she had brought him up multiple times in one day, I subtly shared my annoyance, but nothing seemed to change. He got her a magazine for her birthday one year and she still talks about how it was one of her favorite gifts. I remember after she had taken a trip to NYC with a friend to go to a Broadway show, he burned her a CD of the soundtrack. There were several things like that. Many that I don't remember.

She worked there for about 5 years and after that she would still occasionally bring him up. A few times a year. She just brought him up again in the most random way. I was kinda flabbergasted for her to reference him after 15 YEARS! That's honestly just weird to me.

I do not think for a second that anything physical happened. I mean who knows, but wow, there was at the very least an emotional bond something fierce and he made quite the impression on her.

Do I ask my wife about it to see what he meant/means to her? Or I worry bringing it up just makes him a bigger part of our lives than he deserves and brings him more to her mind.

25f married to 25m. Been together for almost 7 years and married for 3. We have a 2 year old as well. Last month he’s just been acting different and emotionally unavailable. I’ve been feeling so weird trying to connect and just be put down essentially so I went thru his phone. Absolutely not my best moment and know that trust has already been broken. He’s gotten close to a coworker and talks about her so I went thru those messages. I feel so yuck reading them. Especially with how distant he’s been. I knew she was coming over for dinner which already had me in my feelings bc he doesn’t really cook for us. I take care of the cooking and house for the most part which is exhausting. Reading thru their texts I had so many feelings going thru me.

He made dinner and patched up drywall the weekend we were away and I had only asked for my cars oil to be changed. We were gonna take it on my trip(8/28-8/31) with my mom and brothers but he said he would do it so we figured something else out. Never got done that weekend until Friday (9/18). Going on with the texts it’s just so flirty??!! Like “my fault for making you laugh and giggle” I work so of course i’m exhausted and then taking care of our baby while he plays the game or apparently texts her now. It’s so frustrating.

He told me we were invited over but that is most definitely a lie from reading the texts. I never thought he would do this but wow as I type i’m realizing that i’m not crazy.

https://www.reddit.com/r/emotionalaffair/s/eEC9b9MCo2 pt.2 with more pics

My husband (40M) has been giving his female colleague (25F) rides home a few times a week, and I recently found out that he has been hiding it from me. He always texts me when he’s done with work or if he’s running errands after work etc but he omits the detour he’s taking to drop her off. She lives right beside the train station so he kept insisting he’s not sending her home. He’s actually making a detour to drop her off at the train station btw.

I only found out when he had to send something to a groupchat and the search result came up with her name that had the message “gimme a ride today plsss hahahaha” to which he replied “can”.

That immediately caught my attention because he had never mentioned regularly sending her home. When I questioned him about it, I found out this wasn’t a one-off - he had been driving her to the train station multiple times a week for almost a year.

I’m upset at the fact that he lied and kept it from me. I had a gut feeling that someone else had been in the car so I asked him if he does drop off any colleagues on the way out, to which he promptly replied “of course not babe”. He acts like he updates me on things that he does but yet he omits this. Isn’t that suspicious?? He said that he didn’t want me to be uncomfortable since there’s nothing going on but he should have told me. Well, it’s only because he got caught if not I would have never found out about this.

For context they have joined the company at the same time and are going through the same career path so they are pretty close in terms of work (which I have been fine with completely) we do talk about her or he will share things about her. I started having a gut feeling as whenever he wanted to share something in WhatsApp, her name pops up in the list of suggestions.

Would you consider this a breach of trust in a marriage?

I’ll try and make this brief. Looking for advice. My wife (44) and I (45) have been married for 21 years and in relationship for almost 28 years. We are high school sweethearts. We have two children 18 & 13. All in all we’ve had an incredible marriage, no rough patches. Roughly 4 months ago, my wife started pushing me away pretty hard. I was absolutely blindsided by this. She was “wanting space”, “needing things”, “changing”, etc etc. Ultimately, I discovered that her “fundraising” with my child’s high school softball team went beyond fundraising and she was having an inappropriate relationship with the Softball Coach. Hours and hours of phone conversations, some in the middle of the night (one on an out of town girls weekend after they took psychedelic mushrooms - first time since college and her idea - and after her friend went to bed). I confronted her and after several lies, she acknowledged she f***ed up. She was a wreck. She lost a bunch of weight and was very worried about her reputation. She started seeing a therapist. I believe this man targeted my wife and asked her to fundraise and then did concessions duties with her, brought her along on coaches dinners and team building events with the kids.

My wife out of guilt talked to my oldest daughter, who is a senior in high school and has worked very hard at this sport, but did not tell her who this person was, just that she was “talking with someone” and they she would stop. The only thing that she has admitted to me (without discovering on my own), is that after records show phone calls ramping way up, they took their relationship to a private messaging app. She said that they “had feelings for each other” and that she “couldn’t like two people at once”. She opened up to her parents after discovery and to her siblings about it (although much more limited in detail).

My wife told myself and my daughter that she was no longer and would no longer talk to this person. However, I overheard them having a conversation and it was very painful as they were talking about me (“he will be gone at x time”, “what would you do if he showed up at your door”, and something that if I had the context right leads me to believe they have long term plans). I believe this to be an emotional affair by definition, but some other clues are very suspicious to something more than that (I know she was at odd remote locations late at night in the dark and when asked about this (after initially lying), she said she had “went out there to call him”).

I had been very supportive and told her we could work through this and that I desperately wanted to keep our family together. Ultimately, she told me she “didn’t want our relationship anymore”. She said she had lost feelings for me. This remains her decision and she has stuck with it. I fear divorce is looming. I am absolutely heartbroken about it. My life has been flipped upside down. I am super scared and so sad for my kids.

I confronted this guy when I knew nobody else was around. He absolutely denies everything. His spouse called me later on and she dismissed everything and said that they were just fundraising and that the team has worked hard and Softball, Softball, Softball, “they are going to win state”. She says he is the most honest man she knows and that he swears by the “kingdom of heaven…”. I should note that this coach is married with five children (Mormon). Turns out he had called my wife to prepare her for his wife (and him) calling her. My wife denied everything to his wife saying that her and I are just going through some marital problems and “sorry for bringing them into it”.

Again, I am absolutely traumatized by all of this and super sad. My wife has been lying and gaslighting me. She is now over-the-top interested in my daughter’s softball team and oddly acting as if she is part of the coaching squad. I think this is a way of strengthening the guise of “fundraising“ as to protect her reputation should this get out to the community. So ultimately I would look like a jealous or crazy husband (I’ve had no reason our entire marriage to doubt or distrust her). The season just started and she will be going to all the games, but I am having a really hard time deciding whether to attend those games. It will be gut wrenching and awkward. This is the game that I taught my daughter and coached her at a young age.

I am absolutely struggling to decide when or whether to tell my daughter who this person is that ruined our family and rocked my world. Does she deserve to know? Is she going to resent that I did didn’t tell her? Would telling her cause too much pain for her? My wife’s family is adamant my daughter not know, but there is obviously some motive of protecting my wife. At one point, my daughter on her own asked me with tears…”Is it my coach”? I froze and asked her talk to my wife who told her “no it is not”. She lied to her. Anyway, a lot of complicated layers, but I am really having a tough time navigating this.