My husband and I have been married 4 years and the marriage has been pretty rocky the whole time with significant job stress due to the economy and excessive alcohol use on his part. He finally got a new job (wall street type work) and started feeling good about himself and his career. Unfortunately the firm's culture included a lot of drinking and staying out late which he was doing regularly for months - not coming home until 12 -2 am and always drunk. I was not happy and it finally got to a breaking point in a confrontation where he said he was moving out and had gotten a lawyer. I found his comment of engaging a lawyer to be such a radical move given we hadn't even talked about separating that I thought something more must be at play. After we agreed to sleep on it I checked his phone. I've never done that type of thing before and I felt like I was hit by a ton of bricks by what I found. A colleague of his had hired a 27 year old fashion model to work at the firm and I discovered the following text message exchanges between them:
Husband: Battery about to die! Love
Her: Miss you love! I'll see you tomorrow beautiful!
Husband: Shhhhhhhhh...... Panda bears......
Her: Panda ears are new...
Husband: In a good way
Her: [Pic of a panda bear]
Husband: I'm going to sleep now. I love you. I know it's late but I can't help it. Love Love Love
[Next night - they must have met for dinner]
Her: You showed up today and that meant a world for me love. Thank you. We have our whole life ahead of us so I'm not worried. I love you, love of my life.
Him: [Pic of pig]
Him: It means I love you
Her: I mean, are you mocking me now? I've told you some pretty serious stuff about how much my family supports us and how I'm always by your side... Anyway, I did have a beautiful night with you tonight...
Her: I love you.
Her: Lover?
Her: Anyway, I still have something special for you and I'll give it to you when I see you
Her: Love, I cannot even sleep anymore... I wish you were next to me
I felt sick to my stomach when I found these messages and that it must have been my fault for not being supportive enough, so I talked him into staying and trying to work on the relationship. But I've never really felt confident since then. I do think after this discovery he cut off contact with her. I've confronted him several times over the past few months about this subject telling him I saw inappropriate text messages, and he swore up and down that there is no relationships with this women - they are just friends - he often tells his friends he loves them. I find that to be BS and it has taken me months to get to a point where I can now look at these messages dispassionately. We nearly separated over Thanksgiving - he left and I told him not to contact me - he signed a lease for a new place and then he came back 2 days later crying and showing some remorse about wanting to work on the relationship. I told him I would be willing to try counseling. We have been going for a few weeks now. I remain feeling in this place of indecision and doubt about whether I can trust this person or whether I even want to, while he is acting like the husband of the year - he's being attentive, kind, asking about my day, doing errands, etc etc - all the things I would have loved to have him do over the past several years but now I just look at him doing those things and feel nothing. If I really think about it I feel such a deep resrvoir of anger to him since if it has been so easy for him to make these changes now on the brink of divorce, why didn't he do them over the past few years when I kept asking him? While he is feeling good and making progress in counseling I am feeling progressively worse. I feel like I need to know what the nature of his relationship was with this women and a clear explanation for these messages before I can even get close to moving forward, but he has denied this to me for months. He won't answer the questions directly and when I bring it up now all he says is that was months ago and he never cheated. I'm just really ready to call it quits, as I don't see how I can trust someone who is repeatedly not answering when asked very directly about whether he had an affair, about the text messages, etc.
Please help - what do you as objective readers think of those messages? Is it ever possible to go forward if your partner does not admit anything improper happened? THanks for your help