Dh and I have been married for 13 years, together 15. We’ve had our ups and downs, but this year has been a disaster. After a job loss (his), a death in the family and hurricane Sandy, which destroyed the lower level of our second home, we were already neck up in stress, but there was still more to come…
This summer, my mother broke her foot, and I went out of state (with my daughter) to take care of her for the week. My son and dh had some plans in the city and they stayed home. My son is 10 and had never been left alone in the house at night, but dh told me he was going to get drinks with his two colleagues (guy friends from work) one evening that week. I was uncomfortable with this but dh told me he needed to network (to get another job) and ds told me he would be fine. We live in a large, doorman building, and we know our neighbors, so I finally agreed. The plan was: Dh and his friends would be at a pub in the neighborhood, a 5-7 minute walk away, and dh would leave at 8:30 and be home by 10:30. And he would call home every 30 mins to check on ds.
Well, at 10:50, my son called me (at my mother’s house) to tell me that his dad wasn’t home, and he hadn’t heard from him since 9:30, and he had tried calling and texting him, but he wasn’t answering his phone. So I tried, and got no answer either. I emailed. No answer. 11:00 rolls around. Nothing. 11:30. Nothing. By now, ds is visibly upset (we were on Face Time), and I was just trying to keep it together. I thought of calling the friends’ homes, but dh is looking for a job, and I didn’t want him to appear irresponsible, or get the friends in trouble with their wives.
So at 11:50, (Dh is 1 hour and 20 mins late at this point), I called the pub instead. I described my dh to the host, telling him he would be with two men. The host said, rather carefully, “Yeah, there is a man here fitting that description, but he’s here with a woman.” My heart was in my throat when dh got on the phone. I told him to get his ass home, to which he said, in a rather businesslike way, “Yes, yes. I’m leaving now. I just lost track of time. We’re seated really far into the restaurant, and the cell reception isn’t good here.”
At 12:20, he still wasn’t home! The place is a 5-7 minute walk away! So I called the pub again, and this time someone else answered the phone (a woman), who was also very careful in her tone, and told me he had just left.
At 12:30, dh finally walked in the door – drunk as a skunk - and told my son not to be wimp and told me I need to let my son grow up. This was his first time at home at night alone!
Now, to get to the good stuff. During the highly heated discussion that followed, I found out the two guys “couldn’t make it.” DH told me the woman he was with was someone who worked for him. She is 20 years younger than him btw, and all I know about her reputation at work is that she couldn’t get the job done (was ineffectual), so she was transferred out of the department and now works somewhere else. BTW, she’s stunning, and one of the ONLY other things I remember dh saying about her (a long time ago—2 years maybe?) was that every guy at work wanted to sleep with her, but she trusted him because he was never going to be that kind of guy.
He also said, during this argument, that he wasn’t going to give up this friendship with her and that I was insecure and couldn’t handle him having a woman friend. I said, “I don’t think this is a friend. No other “friend” of yours ever made you lose your head and forget your kid!” I’ll also add here that I’ve NEVER seen an email or a text from this person, so what kind of good friend (that he will not give up) is this if I’ve never heard of her? Well, he gave me his new email password and told me he had nothing to hide and he loved me and he had always been faithful. He told her, “Hey you got me into trouble…” Nice, huh? You see how he was nowhere to be found in the drama?? And I don’t even want to know how the rest of that conversation went.
Which brings me to, this week. Almost two months after that incident, I sat down at the computer we share to pay some bills and noticed a single email from this woman. The subject was “Drinks Soon Hopefully” (yes, she punctuated it like it was the title of a book). I decided not to click at that moment because some friends were coming over and I thought, ok this is normal. A friend’s email in the mailbox. Nothing hidden. Nothing more.
But later, when I went back to the computer. Poof! It was gone. And he was signed out of email. Well, I signed him right back in and…even the trash had been emptied. When I confronted dh, he said he knew I was paranoid about this person and that’s why he had deleted it because he knew I would freak out. He has never been unfaithful. He loves me. He loves our kids. Yada yada yada.
I have never had reason to doubt him before this, but over the last couple of years he’s been increasingly distant. We never have sex. He’s never affectionate. We just go through the motions of living this life together.
Please tell me, is this what I think it is?
