Heartbroken

I’m looking for an objective assessment from people who have dealt with emotional infidelity. I’m intentionally leaving feelings and conclusions out and sticking to what I can document.

My husband and I have been together 27 years and live in Arizona. We have a 20 year old son. The other person is a woman he knew in high school who lives in Illinois. To my knowledge, they have not seen each other in person since they were young.

She reconnected with him through LinkedIn in January while our son was in active cancer treatment.

There are really two distinct phases to the communication.

From January until September, their communication was entirely through LinkedIn as far as I can determine. It was intermittent. They might exchange quite a few messages on a particular day and then have little or no communication for a while. I have read those conversations. Most appear platonic and involve their children, travel, hobbies and catching up on their lives.

What I subsequently learned is that she had already been divorced when she first contacted him in January.

She did not tell him that.

For more than six months, she communicated with him as an old high school friend without disclosing that she was divorced. Nothing I have seen indicates that my husband knew she was single.

Then around September 11, she told him she needed to talk to him because she had something she needed to tell him.

That became their first phone conversation.

What she needed to tell him was that she was divorced after a 23 year marriage.

She subsequently wrote that she and her former husband had not "grown together" and that despite being divorced, they were still living in the same home while their son finished high school.

That phone call appears to be the dividing line.

From approximately September 11 through October 4, the communication changed dramatically.

In roughly three weeks there were approximately 30 phone calls, dozens of text messages and continued communication online. The majority of the calls were initiated by her.

Some calls lasted 30 minutes, an hour or longer. There were days with multiple calls. On one afternoon, three calls totaled roughly three hours.

I knew about ONE of these phone calls.

I happened to be outside when my husband pulled into our driveway while talking to her. He casually told me that his old friend had gotten back in touch and that she and her brother were coming to Arizona.

My immediate response was that they could stay with us.

He apparently relayed my offer to her. She asked, "Are you sure your wife won’t mind?" She said she could stay in a hotel because she didn’t want to cause trouble and said she just wanted to "borrow an old friend for a day or 2."

After reviewing all of their written communication, I cannot find anywhere that she says her brother was coming to Arizona with her. It is entirely possible that was discussed verbally, so I cannot say otherwise.

During this same three week period, she repeatedly asked to call him, researched flights to Arizona, told him she wished she could have seen him on a particular weekend and discussed hiking together. My husband invited her to stay in our home.

They exchanged pictures.

She also went through my husband’s brother’s Facebook page, found an old picture of my husband and sent it to him. She then texted, "you look," followed by a separate text containing the starry eyed emoji.

I’m deliberately not assigning a meaning to that. I’m including exactly what occurred.

Then came the first late night call.

My husband and I had been fighting badly throughout that day. He had been drinking and was drunk.

That night he talked to her for 97 minutes.

When I walked into the garage, he ended the call.

The conversation occurred within range of our Ring camera. I later reviewed the footage and heard my husband tell her that his favorite picture she had sent him was the one where she looked "sexy confident."

The following morning he texted her that he "woke up smiling."

He then called her while driving to go fishing and talked to her for approximately another 30 minutes.

Until I discovered all of this, I believed there had essentially been ONE phone conversation between them.

After this came to light, I reviewed his phone, laptop, LinkedIn, texts, emails and the available call history with him present and without giving him an opportunity to delete anything first.

I have not found sexting.

I have not found declarations of love or explicit romantic feelings.

I have not found plans for sex or evidence of a physical relationship.

I have not found another communication platform.

She lives in Illinois and we live in Arizona, and I currently have no evidence that they met in person.

I think those facts are important too.

My husband continues to say that he genuinely believed he was doing nothing wrong. He says he viewed this as reconnecting and catching up with an old friend and was not consciously pursuing a romantic relationship. He acknowledges the amount of communication and the "sexy confident" comment.

After I confronted the woman, she went back to my husband. She said I had the wrong perception of her, asked "Can’t you have female friends?", asked him whether he wanted her to call me and expressed concern about what he was going through.

She also suggested that if I was recording my husband, I had a bigger problem. I was not recording him. I unexpectedly encountered him talking to another woman late at night and subsequently reviewed footage from my own home security camera.

My husband blocked her phone number.

She then contacted him privately through LinkedIn and asked, "Are you ok?"

I currently have no evidence of a physical affair, so I’m not asking anyone to assume one occurred.

What I’m trying to understand is how people who have experienced this would categorize what DID happen.

The part I’m particularly interested in is the progression.

January through early September: more than six months of intermittent, largely platonic LinkedIn communication while she was already divorced but had not disclosed that to him.

Around September 11: she says she needs to talk to him because she has something to tell him. Their first phone conversation occurs and she tells him she is divorced.

September 11 through October 4: approximately 30 phone calls in roughly three weeks, dozens of texts, exchanged pictures, discussion of her traveling from Illinois to Arizona, increasingly personal communication and most of the phone contact initiated by her.

Then the first late night call: 97 minutes after my husband and I had been fighting all day, his "sexy confident" comment about her picture, him ending the call when I entered the garage, followed the next morning by "woke up smiling" and another 30 minute phone call.

Does that constitute an emotional affair even without explicit romantic declarations or physical contact?

Does it look more like a friendship that rapidly crossed boundaries and was progressing toward an emotional affair?

And is it credible that my husband could have participated in this level of communication while genuinely believing he was simply reconnecting with an old friend and doing nothing wrong?

I’m genuinely interested in opinions in either direction. I want people responding to what actually happened, not assuming either that it must have become physical or that it was harmless because it didn’t.

7 comments posted: Thursday, October 8th, 2026