I’m a stay-at-home mother to two preschoolers and I shouldn’t have read my husband’s private messages.
As the covid measures relaxed over the last few months, my husband has been going out drinking after work with his friends on Fridays and sometimes even Saturday nights. He typically leaves home before dinner and only comes back home at 3am or later. The man deserves to unwind and do something enjoyable after working hard for the family but I still find it hard to accept that he chooses to enjoy such activities when he is married and is a father of two.
He works throughout the day while I am left alone with the children even when things get tough when the children are home and sick. After I get the children back from school, it’s often a mad scramble to get them to eat dinner, shower, and get ready for bed. In between caring for them, I still have to do other chores like washing up the dishes, preparing their bags for school the next day, clearing the rubbish, and other household chores. My husband, tired from his day at work, often just lays on the couch with his phone in hand, scrolling through his social media, texting with his friends or watching shows on Netflix. My children are very attached to me and often doesn’t allow their father to do things for them but I feel that there is plenty for him to do to help me during the evenings. It’s tiring for me to keep asking him to do stuff for me while I am juggling the children so after some time, I stopped asking and he is more glued to the couch than ever.
Prior times when I told him about his behavior, he told me how tired he is after work and how much the children doesn’t want his involvement anyway. After years and years of asking him to improve his relationship with them, he still spends the 1 to 1.5 hour window with his phone rather than with children. He is so tired from Mondays to Thursdays to do anything significant for that short time and yet he finds the energy to go drink and socialize for 7 to 8 hours AFTER a whole week of work. This is what gives me anger, disappointment and exhaustion.
I was burnt before in a relationship where an ex cheated on me and I only found out after I instinctively checked on the private messages. This time after repeated weeks of partying outside, I had a nagging feeling and I checked on my husband’s texts while he was asleep. I found out that he lied/covered up on two occasions at least. There was one night where he went to a young, female stranger’s house with her friend for drinks. It was someone whom they only met that night and yet he told me that it was a house of his friend.
Then recently, he went out till almost 4am to drink with his friends who were meeting with a very pretty woman (I’ll name her Pretty H) that I know as an acquaintance. Pretty H came back alone to visit from abroad with the opening of the borders and was married quite recently. In the chat my wife’s friends asked her why he disappeared with Pretty H after the drinking session. My husband actually went up to her hotel room alone and said he only went to pee and slept on her bed, drunk. He told them that he cannot remember much and yet “nothing happened” because he is out of her league but jokingly said that he could have raped her.
So to me, nothing happened not because my husband sees himself as married but because Pretty H isn’t interested in him. My husband’s friend then told him to tell me what happened because it would looked very suspicious if I ever found out. I’ve waited some time and he really didn’t tell me a thing.
Now I am unsure if nothing really happened.