I was referred here by someone in r/relationships. I want to preface this by saying that I asked him to leave today, but I honestly don’t know how I’ll react if he comes at me trying to stay. I feel strong at the moment but it changes on a dime. I just read a message where someone is basically saying that it was my trust issues that made me think he’s having an affair, that the evidence isn’t there, and it’s making me doubt everything again.

Husband won’t admit affair and now is done bc I don’t trust him (some NSFW details)

This is going to be long. I’ve been married for 16 years. We have two boys in middle school and our marriage always seemed rock solid. This past September I found out my husband had been vaping weed. Initially he denied it but quickly admired that it had been smoking before bedtime for about 2 years. I wasn’t upset up the weed at all, but that he had kept this from me.

Up until then, I had never known my husband to keep anything from me, so after almost 16 years of marriage this threw me into a tailspin. I saw my husband in a different light, as someone who was capable of keeping a big secret from me. A year before he had opened a checking account so we could do our business transactions separately from our personal account, and wasn’t able to add me to the account bc I wasn’t with him when he opened it. Because I had never been distrustful before I never thought about it and we never got around to adding me to the account.

A few days after discovering the weed, I told him I wanted to be added to the business account( I handle all the administration side of his craft side business). He said no problem but when I asked a few days later if we could call the bank to add me he blew up and said really you have to bring that up again??? I was upset but let it go. I started having panic attacks and broke down and he briefly let me scroll through the phone to see the past few transactions. But I wanted to be in t the he account and said that he must be hiding something if he wasn’t willing to put me on an account t that I was supposed to have been in anyways. He got very upset and said if I was going to be like that that we needed a break. This completely crushed me that he would say that. It felt l I’ll le a betrayal bc why would he want to separate when all he had to do was show me the account. We had never had separate accounts.

We made up but at the jus point I was doing really bad. My anxiety was through the roof and I was afraid that something was going on, but had no idea what that something was. But nothing felt right about his reactions and it made me have some questionable moments. At one point I accused him of doing cocaine because of a mirror in our bathroom. We had a huge argument and after a few days he said this was the last time he was forgiving me and I promised to go to therapy to get help for MY problem. He never acknowledged that any of his actions were causing my trust issues.

Things got better. Throughout all this our sex life was way better bc I was anxious and insecure and therefore wanted more sex. I told him about a threesome fantasy I had during sex one time and we would talk about it during sex and I thought he was into it until during one argument he accused me of playing with his head. He thought that I was bringing up the threesome fantasy to catch him. It wasn’t like that at all, it was just a fantasy and dirty pillow talk so I stopped mentioning it after that. Until one occasion during sex that he said he was sorry about saying he didn’t want to hear about it and it once again became a topic. Eventually we talked about it outside of bed and we even went to a strip club together to gage my reaction. I loved it so we decided to go ahead with the threesome.

I said I wanted somebody completely random but he wanted someone know. I kept on saying someone random is better, he wanted someone know and even suggested to it happen more than once with whomever it might be. I told him that wasn’t a threesome, that’s a relationship and he just patted my head and said, well I’m a man of habit. It felt very dismissive but I was excited about the prospect and started looking for women on Tinder.

About a week later he said he had found someone that he knew from his previous job ( but only knew her from seeing her around the private community where he worked and from casual conversations.) She was the daughter of the maid at the house that he worked at and according to him a lesbian, but she had agreed to a threesome bc she needed a car and we had one that we were getting rid of. When I asked him how he had her number ( since he only knew her through her mother) he said it was bc her mom had told her that he was selling a car. Mind you it had been a little over a year since he stopped working there but I remembered him making quite a few trips to the mothers house (the maid at the house he worked for before) to help her with her car, to take a bicycle for another one of her daughters, etc. The mom and daughter live together by the way.

The day before the threesome was set to happen we went grocery shopping. He got cranberry to drink with some vodka we had at home that we never drank and suggested we get some brownies. I thought the vodka thing was strange since I’ve never seen him drink that ever. Brownies either. In talking about the woman, he mentioned how her mom treated her badly and had wrecked her car and never fixed it. This seemed odd to me that he knew such details of her life since he only knew her casually. It gave me a sinking feeling but I ignored it. Amazingly, he also knew her age, which I also thought was weird.

The day of the threesome came around and my husband suggested we get sushi. She was coming over to our house and we’d have dinner together. She got there and I offered her beer, red wine, vodka and cranberry. Before she could answer my husband interjects “vodka and cranberry”. My heart sank because it was clear that he knew what she liked to drink from before. There was a familiarity between them that was unsettling but I didn’t back down. I asked her if she had ever been with a woman before. Nope. But she had been in a hetero relationship and had a 15 year old kid. Didn’t come across as lesbian at all. But I ignored my gut feeling and invited her to the bedroom. Now before she got there I told my husband about how nervous I was and he said don’t worry everything will be fine. I did say don’t do too much with her until I give you the go ahead that I am comfortable.

Her and I made our way to the bedroom and my husband followed. Her and I were did some kissing, I performed oral sex on her while my husband had sex with me. We moved positions and she got on top of me. My husband was standing next to the bed by our legs. He hadn’t done anything with her yet. Mind you this is supposed to be a lesbian woman who is doing this for a car. You would think he would start with something light like grabbing a boob. Instead he shoves what seemed like his entire hand inside her and started pouring her with his hand. She instantly went crazy. No where close to her reaction with me. He was going at it so hard that I could feel her rocking back and forth in top of me. Instantly I thought, these two have had sex before. That’s just not a first move with a lesbian acquaintance you barely know who’s doing this for payment. I said I thought they had had sex before and they both vigorously denied it and asked me if I wanted to stop. Perhaps bc I was high in weed (but I’m clear in the details) I decided to keep going. The whole thing lasted for some 3 hours. Several times during lulls I would close my eyes while we rested and both of them would repeatedly ask me if I was following asleep which made me think they were hoping I would’ve passed out so they could continue alone. A few time while her and I were cuddling in bed with my husband standing behind me I got the sense as I opened my eyes that she was looking at him. My husband kept saying he would go to the sofa and her and I could sleep in bed but I didn’t say anything. She mentioned going home and when I didn’t say anything she got the clue and said she would go home. I wasn’t about to have her sleep over.

We drove her home and I told my husband that I thought he’d had a relationship with her before. He got upset and said he knew this was going to happen. I got scared like I did during the last few times we had argued and blamed it in the weed fir making me paranoid. Next day he was constantly checking in on me at work to see how I was doing. He had asked if I wanted to di it again with her, if I had liked it, saying I could take it just with her. He told me that she was crazy about me and wanted to do it again, insinuating that she was all about me. I told him I wasn’t sure about it, bc even if it was just the weed making me paranoid, the whole thing left we thinking they had know each other well before. And again he said well I don’t have to be involved at all. That evening he suggested I send her a text thanking her. I thought that was a weird thing to request if your wife.

Did I mention that she never took the car, bc her license was expired. So this lesbian woman he barely knows came all the way to have sex with us and then left without the car. I wasn’t buying it. He was eager to see my text to her but wouldn’t show me their convos, saying that he hadn’t texted with her anyways. Mind you the contact he sent me was her WhatsApp. This was Tuesday night. Threesome was Monday night. Wednesday I’m at work obsessing over it but questioning myself. Then I get a text message from her asking if we can add her to our insurance, since she doesn’t have the money to do the car transfer. Huge red flag. A woman he barely knows us not going to have the gall to ask this, but I knew I would know every by his reaction. So instead of saying hell no I said let me check with my husband.

When he got home I told him I had talked to her and he said he knew and showed me their WhatsApp chat. Amazingly the chat started that morning, nothing before that. It was basically her saying how badly she wanted to get back together with me. It seemed really scripted because I knew there was no way they had never texted before that day if they had been communicated since before. I asked him about the insurance and he said yeah she told me I told her to talk to you. And that’s when I became certain that he had not only fucked her before, but they were pretty close. There is no way he would be ok with adding a woman we had slept with to our insurance if he barely knew her and even if he knew her well. The fact that he was on with it told me that he had quite an esteem for her. Did I mention that before he had mentioned her specifically but in the few days preceding( when he already knew it would be her obviously) he had said that we could take her when we went away for THe weekend in March to celebrate our anniversary? I was so down the rabbit hole that I was like oh ok. After the actual threesome it became clear to me that he was trying to infiltrate his side chick into our relationship.

I confronted him with all my suspicions. Initially he had said that the vodka was for him, but he didn’t even drink vodka that night. He finally said well I called her and asked her what she wanted and she said vodka with cranberries, sushi, and brownies. He had never mentioned that all of these were for her. He had me bake the fucking brownies thinking they were for him. He’d had one piece maybe that afternoon and she took the rest with her along with all The leftover sushi. I had checked his google contacts and she was listed under her name, but her mom, which was the one he claimed he knew her through was listed as “so and sos mom” which means that the person he knew first was her, not her mother. When I told him this he said that it was because it helped him remember, but when I pressed him in who he had met first ( he had always maintained that he knew he through her mother) he said that he knew her froM seeing her at the community market and she had asked for a job for her mom since they needed a made at the house he worked for. I didn’t buy it, there were just too many things. Now it made perfect sense why he had been helping her mom so much, even though he was no longer working with their fir over a year. I asked him to tell me the truth but he vehemently denied having had anything with her. She was just someone he found so that I wouldn’t go looking in Tinder. He had done thus all to please me and now I was accusing him of an affair. He asked me if I wanted him to leave. I said no but that I believed he had cheated and would always believe it. If he was ok with that he could stay, but he needed to cut if all contact with her and her mom. He said no problem. I told her it was a no in the insurance but to contact me once she had her license and we would do the transfer. She decided that she didn’t want the car bc she hadn’t earned it properly .

After a few awkward days things cleared up and he became extremely affectionate, constantly checking in on me. I was doing my best to move on, and refused to cry but I was occasionally upset because well my husband had cheated on me but I had to pretend like everything was ok. I admit this past month he was wonderful, so doting and affectionate. I figured he was trying to make up even though he would never admit to the affair. It was hard fir me to let go of it, so I would constantly check to see if she was in WhatsApp when he would got into the bathroom or start texting in his phone. Oftentimes she was but she was on almost all day, on and off. It wasn’t good for me to be checking this if I had chosen to forgive him but I couldn’t shake the feeling that they were still talking. This weekend we went away and were haunt a great time until I freaked out bc she was online just as he was texting. I had gone to the bathroom To check and was fine a few minutes. I asked him who he was texting and he got upset and said just so and so I was sending him a photo and he shows me he hands me his phone. I saw ok and don’t see her on any of the latest WhatsApp chats but decide to put her name intbe WhatsApp search. Her contact pops up. I ask him why since he had agreed to end all intact and he was like well I haven’t contacted her, I just haven’t erased the contact. When I press him as to why he says it bc he was expecting her to contact him about the card and that he would have given it to her (but let me know about it). Remember how she had said she didn’t want the car.

I know the real reason she was still a contact is bc they were talking, but his excuse was pretty bad too. So he was willing to risk our marriage by keeping his promise to give her the car. A woman he barely knew? I told him it was horrible that he had preferred to honor the promise he made to her over the one he made to me and he just scoffed and said that nothing he dies will ever be right. He left andcame back drunk and crying. Next morning he blamed me for constantly looking for something and that it was done. I thought he meant the conversation. That was Monday morning. He was no longer talking to me. We got home Monday night and he slept on the sofa. Yesterday I got home and told him I wanted to apologize for the constant WhatsApp checking and saying that I knew it wasn’t good.

But he said he is done. He’s forgiven me too many times. Basically this is all my fault for pushing and pushing this past few months. He’s completely blameless and it’s all my fault. All he wanted was to make me happy, and this weekend was the last straw. He said he was done with us but that he would stay to help out with bills and the kids. I begged him to reconsider, to give me one more chance. But he did not relent. I told him that I can’t live with him as just a roommate but that he should stay o e month and to please reconsider. That was yesterday. I humiliated myself so much. I shouldered all the blame. I begged. I told him I knew I was “sick”. It was horrible. And now another day has passed. He basically doesn’t talk to me, today I got see you later in the amand hey in the pm. That was it. No other talking, he walks past me in the house like I don’t exist. And even though I know what is happening, I doubt myself all the time. I know he cheated on me and he’s playing with my mind, trying to make me believe it’s all my doing. And I love him so much but this morning I just didn’t wake up feeling that he loves me.

So I think I will wait until this week is over, and if he is still adamant about not wanting to go on, then I’ll ask him to leave the house. Because it is heartbreaking,soul crushing to be in the same house with him and to know that he doesn’t want anything, that he blames me for everything, that he can’t even take one little bit of responsibility....my husband has always been my everything. I never thought he would hurt me this way. I guess I just want to hear that people don’t think I’m crazy, that I’m not imagining things. Thanks if you made it this far.

TLDR My husband won’t admit his affair and instead blames me for seeing things wrong when everything’s ok. I’m pretty sure he’s manipulating me but now that he says he’s done I just need some confirmation that this is not all in my head, if only to withstand this heartache a little better.

QUESTION: Should I allow him to stay during this month and continue the relationship if he decides that he wants to work it out? How should I approach this situation with him wanting to stay but he's done with us?