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The original was posted on /r/relationships by /u/jackienicole94 on 2023-07-18 00:47:06+00:00.
I (28F) and my husband (28M) have been together for almost 11 years, married for nearly 1. I recently found out he is having an affair with his 21F (almost 22F) coworker. He is her manager at work. They are friendly and I’ve allowed him to go to a mutual friends’ parties with her. But I didn’t notice anything serious until now. I know he drinks and smokes weed at these parties which is unlike him. I always suspected he was attracted to/had feelings for her but I never thought my husband to be the type to cheat, in fact he has always been against cheating and said this is a dealbreaker for him. I recently started noticing a change in him. He was very low energy , taking jabs at me here and there and trying to get me to spend more time away from home. He has also been coming home late from work a lot and coming home chewing gum and one night smelling like weed when he doesn’t smoke. I recently went home to see family and he was normal, except for a night where I could not reach him and he said he was asleep. When I got home , we had a very emotional fight after him saying he didn’t know about our marriage when I asked him but he was in tears and begging me not to leave. I thought we would be able to fix our marriage. Our marriage wasn’t perfect but I’ve done a lot for my husband and I felt we were genuinely in love. We did nearly everything together and were like best friends. We’ve had dry spells here and there but would always come out of them and to me, the sex was still extremely satisfying with him and he always seems into it. In fact the night I came home from my trip we were intimate and he was saying how much he missed me. The night I found out I saw he had 17,000 deleted texts between the two of them. He got extremely defensive and wouldn’t let me see the texts. I tried to lock myself in our room to read them and he burst through the door and tackled me to grab the phone. He ran out of the house barefoot and angry to permanently delete the texts. I called her in front of him when he came back in the house and he was straight faced the entire time. She admitted she’s been helping him with mental health issues and they kissed a few weeks ago at work. Come to find out this kiss happened after he had a panic attack at work, which he’s never struggled with before. She claims she cares for him but not romantically , which he seemed bothered by. I left to stay with a friend. He didn’t call me or try to reconcile, but I saw he called her that night and a few nights since then. She has also been over his friend’s house where he is staying. He’s shown absolutely no remorse except for a text he sent me almost a week ago saying he loves me but he’s not good right now and maybe in the future if I’m still willing we can try again. This was obviously not good enough for me. I’ve had to coax information out of him and he admitted he’s not in love with me any more and this would have happened either way. This was a shock because we got married 9 months ago and he was in tears our entire wedding day and absolutely beaming. He was also reassuring me that I’m his life and there was no one else and telling me how much he loves me. We were even planning a vacation together before this happened. He says he is depressed and has been having suicidal thoughts and has been confiding this in her but claimed it was nothing more. He has already moved out of our apartment and deleted me off of all of his social media and added her. I’ve been begging him to come home and reconcile but he claims he has too much going on, there’s nothing to fix and he doesn’t want to put in the effort for it to fail. He makes no effort to call or try to speak to me. I’ve learned from his brother that he called him one night when I was home being extremely aggressive asking for his netflix password and speaking nonsensically which is VERY unlike my husband. He is also avoiding his family and old friends who would not condone his behavior. I recently discovered his DMs between him and the coworker and he has been professing his love for her , saying he never knew love until he met her , she’s all he wants, everything was hard until he met her and I also discovered they have been having sex quite a lot. They haven’t even gone on proper dates yet so I’m quite confused how he can be professing this deep love to her and throwing away 11 years as well as his stability and potentially his job for this woman. This behavior is completely unlike him. He has always been very loving , kind hearted and logical. I have wondered if he is on drugs or experiencing a mental health episode. No one in his life recognizes this person or his behavior and his family is shocked and disappointed. Any advice ? Could this be limerence? I’m so sad to see my relationship end this way and I don’t recognize this person. TL;DR husband says he is depressed/suicidal but is having emotional and physical affair with young coworker he claims is the love of his life and refuses to come home or reconcile.