This is long...so prepare yourself.
My wife and I have been in the midst of an on and off trust/understanding issue for the past 6-7 months and feel it may be time to talk with someone. We'll have been married for 16 years and have two children (ages 7 and 12). We've always had a good marriage and outside of the normal arguments/disagreements (typically brought on by stress, kids, and fatigue) we generally have a loving, caring relationship. We've lived out west for the past 15 years while the rest of our family resides in the midwest. My wife is a physician, while I have stayed at home (working as a substitute teacher part-time) to raise our two kids. Like most families we're busy. My wife and I are both active and share similar interests in fitness and health, while our girls always have something going on (school activities, soccer, gymnastics, swimming, running, sleepovers, and on and on). We rarely get time alone....especially away form the house. So it can be a bit draining and really doesn't allow us time to really connect. Over the past years, we generally only get few nights out a year without children...and the majority of those nights are gatherings with co-workers, neighbors, or friends where often we end up talking to others more than to each other. We always have good intentions to plan a night out...but it seems to rarely come to fruition. We both agree that not having time to relax and enjoy one another seems to lead to frustrations and immature disagreements. But even with all the fatigue, limited quality time together...we've maintained a good relationship. Even our sexual relationship has been good.
DECEMBER 2016
As I mentioned, my wife is a physician. She's a an amazing doctor and goes above and beyond for her patients. This past December she came home with flowers from a patient (a guy), which is not completely out of the norm as she's brought home food, desserts, and even flowers from a variety of patients over the years. I did ask (as I typically do) who the flowers were from. In all honesty, I didn't think much more about it. The next evening I saw she'd just added a new friend to her Facebook account. This friend was the patient who had just given her flowers just the day before. I figured it was nothing, but there was a small part of me that did start to get curious (and probably for no good reason at this point). By coincidence, that same evening my wife asked if I would be okay if she went to a bar next night with two women friends from the neighborhood (both of whom had just separated/divorced from their husbands in the past 6-12 months). I'll admit, I probably over-reacted! That night as we lied in bed, I told her I wasn't comfortable with her going out and that "she was kinda freaking me out". I explained myself. I told her the combination of her getting flowers, immediately adding this guy as a Facebook friend, and then wanting to spend the evening out at a downtown bar with two recently divorced women left me with an uneasy feeling (especially when we almost never get to go out alone as a couple). It also didn't help that we've seen probably 10-15 couples divorce/separate (just within out neighborhood) over the past couple years. I did inquire more about this person before bed (which was probably wrong)...and my wife explained to me that he was just a patient, nothing more! We both fell asleep frustrated with one another, but within a day his name really wasn't mentioned again.
FEBRUARY 2017
Fast forward to February. My wife receives a text message at about 11pm one night as we going to sleep. It's from this patient...and he's inquiring about some recent stitches/sutures that were separating that my wife had recently placed in his hand. Take in mind this is out of my wife's normal scope of practice, not that she's not qualified to handle such a procedure, but definitely not something she ever does in her office. I immediately began to question why she'd be fixing this guys hand when this is not part of her job description...also why this patient would feel it's okay to text his doctor at 11pm. We argued for a bit. I went to bed frustrated and concern...even though she explained it was nothing and that I was just over-reacting. I barely slept and just had this feeling that there was something more. Two days later (while my wife was at work) I decided to view her text message thread via our desktop computer. Probably the unfair thing to do (I'll admit my curiosity and insecurities got the best of me), but I needed some reassurance that this was "nothing" as my wife had promised. Unfortunately for me, the messages I saw left me wondering if my wife was lying to me. There was evidence that there has been some additional messaging...and he'd even given mention of having stopped by her office at lunch the day before to say "hi". That night I started to inquire more about this patient, but never relinquishing the fact that I'd viewed her text messages. It just started a big argument...me accusing her of not being honest and her accusing me of over-reacting. Again, I felt unsure about everything and was simply frustrated. So two additional days later, on a Friday morning, I decide to look at her messages once more. There I would find a thread of messages from Thursday...with a number of fun/flirty comments, emojis, silly images (nothing inappropriate) and comments about a texting curfew ("I'll get in trouble" as my wife put it). Additional messages from Friday was evidence that they'd (at the least) been messaging back and forth for the past three days (I could not see any messages further back, but my wife did later admit to additional messaging). I was an emotional mess...just angry and disappointed awaiting my wife to arrive home from work. What was I going to say...but more frighten about how she'd react? Before talking with her I checked her text messages directly from her phone. I could see that she has been deleting all the messages with this guy for the past couple days (and as far as I knew this could've been going on for weeks). I could see in her face that she was in shock to learn that I had seen those messages. It was a challenging weekend...some moments I felt we were making ground and couple fix this problem, the next it was back to I'm just "over-reacting" and that this was just a "fun" friendship...nothing more. We literally sat through an entire church service together on Saturday evening crying. [NOTE: On Friday when I found those new messages I took it upon myself to delete this person from her Facebook account. Again probably the wrong thing to do, but I was mad. Of course when she found out (on Sunday) she was extremely upset with me and immediately added him back. She commented that she'd just have to change all her passwords and start locking her phone. This only left me skeptical that she would continue this relationship.] On Monday she agreed to tell him that the messaging was making me upset and that it'd have to stop. It took a few days...but honestly within a week or so we'd basically moved on. I still had my suspicions from time to time...but felt like the situation was over. She kept his phone number, they stayed Facebook friends, and I crossed my fingers that it'd all be okay.
APRIL 2017
Unfortunately I was wrong, in April I found new evidence of further communication (again with friendly chat, emojis, random pics, etc.) via Facebook Messenger. Immediately I was frustrated, but this time I bit my tongue and forced myself to not over-react...and simply let it slide. I didn't want to create the same issue we'd dealt with in February. Maybe I was over-reacting? Maybe this was all my fault? I wanted to trust my wife, so I gave her the benefit of the doubt. I said nothing. She had also added SnapChat around this time period...something I was definitely not excited about, but I didn't tell her to delete it. Again...I'd have to trust her. Of course, it wasn't too long afterwards that I found they were friends on this social media outlet too! Since SnapChat messages are immediately deleted once read, I have no idea if they were communicating via this outlet.
JUNE 2017
On Monday, I came to the discovery that more messaging (via Facebook Messenger) had been taking place and that there was further evidence of deceit. He's been visiting her at her office. She had hid a telephone conversation with him. [NOTE: My wife had returned a call to him because he had a minor motorcycle accident and she told me she was worried about him. In her messages it was clear she was...saying "OMG, I'm so worried about you Michael" and "Poor thing"]. Of course his injuries were not an injury my wife deals with in her practice, but of course he contacted my wife first. Their was also evidence that they had a scheduled motorcycle ride together up Sunshine Canyon (during my wife's lunch break) for Thursday. Over our years of marriage my wife has made it clear to me that she would never want me to have a motorcycle and feels they're a "deathtrap", so hearing she was willing to jump on the back of one with someone I don't even know came as quite a surprise. The big kicker was that my wife even questioned him about having the cancel the motorcycle ride due to his shoulder, but she would still be up for the trip in his/her car. Even with all this new info, when I approach my wife about the situation she just tells me that "I'm over-reacting" and "if I hadn't been snooping through her messages everything would've been fine". She tells me she's just a really nice guy and that he's just "fun" and "easy to talk to". She tells me she's sorry and never meant to hurt me, but I get the feeling she's still not being straight forward in the situation. I just get the feeling she's torn between doing what she wants to do and what she knows is right. The hardest thing of all, is that I feel like she's making all these excuses in order to keep this guy around...even if that hurts me. The interesting thing is that we've still had some really enjoyable moments together (bike rides, time at the pool with our girls, conversation) over the past week...even in the midst of this mess. So I know we can get past this, but we still may need some help. For now, my mind keeps racing...and I'm having a hard time trusting her right now.
Her reactions to this situation is to tell me I don't let her do anything and that I'm just a jealous husband. I've admitted to her that I've made poor choices in my comments at times...by questioning this guy or that guy. I know it's wrong and not healthy for our relationship. I know that's not fair to my wife, it's just me being insecure. It's not frequent (not even once a year). She says that I don't let her have male friends, which is untrue. She works with men everyday in her medical practices (doctors, assistants, reps, patients, etc) and many of them have become her friends. She's even has male friends that she exercises with from time to time. I don't question those relationships, because I've seen nothing to make me question them.
Any helpful thought would be appreciated?