I (26F) thought my husband (27M) was cheating. I followed him on his work trip and he was not. Now what?

A woman, feeling suspicious of her husband’s loyalty due to concerns from a friend, decides to track him during a work trip to investigate if he is cheating. Despite finding no evidence of infidelity, she is consumed by guilt and wonders how to move forward, particularly when a friend gives her an ultimatum to either confess or have her secret exposed. Read the full story below.

‘ I (26F) thought my husband (27M) was cheating. I followed him on his work trip and he was not. Now what?’

My husband (27M) and I (26F) have been together for five years and we have been married for just over three years and we have a baby boy who is almost two years old and we are hoping to have a second child soon. We have a really good marriage and there’s a lot of quality emotional, physical, and s**ual intimacy and he’s a great father as well. However, I think I may have just ruined it all.

A friend of mine works in the same department of the company as my husband and they occasionally run into each other but they have never worked together. Three weeks ago, she called and told me that my husband had a “work wife”, someone of our age who joined the company three months ago on my husband’s team and advised me to be suspicious.

She showed me pictures and videos that she had taken of my husband with his alleged work wife and none of it looked particularly alarming and looked like normal interactions between coworkers.

My husband has mentioned her before and said that they are working on the same projects and he would have to help her get up to speed and they would be occasionally working together. My husband and I both have an open-device policy so I looked through his phone that evening and found only work-related texts and emails between them.

I asked my husband about it and let him know that my friend had mentioned him working with the work wife. My husband laughed and reassured me and said it was purely work and told me there’s nothing to be worried about. I trust him fully so I dropped it and told my friend that there was nothing going on between them.

My friend was adamant that there was at least an emotional affair going on and it would turn physical if they got the chance and I asked for her solid proof. There are no signs of my husband cheating from my perspective. He wasn’t hiding his phone, mysteriously going out, and he was emotionally present at home, and we were getting intimate very often as well.

However, for the next week, my friend would text me everyday that they were doing this and that but there was simply no proof. I grew tired of this and told my friend to either send me actual proof of something going on or stop. I was still periodically checking my husband’s phone and laptop but never found anything.

She told me that to her knowledge, they hadn’t kissed or even hugged but there was definitely something brewing there but she would stop telling me if she just simply saw a conversation between the two.

That week, my husband was given a promotion, meaning his current team, including the alleged work wife, will be directly working under him starting in a few weeks. We celebrated that night and I basically forgot all about what my friend had been saying until the next day, where my husband came home with a bottle of red wine with a taped sticky note congratulating my husband on the promotion with a little heart at the end of the message.

I went ballistic at my husband for the first time that day and accused him of cheating and said horrible things that I never should have said to him. He denied everything. Again, there was no proof that my husband was cheating and he was emotionally and physically as present as ever. I apologized to him the next day and we made up.

This week, my husband had to go on a work trip for three days (not the whole week due to it being the 4th of July) with three other people, including the work wife. He doesn’t travel for work often and I was again suspicious if something was going on and made up my mind to follow my husband and to see for myself if anything was going on.

He had a choice between taking a 1.5 hour flight and or a 5 hour drive and my husband being the car fanatic he is, he chose the 5 hour drive. I told my best friend (different friend) about the situation and she warned me that if my husband wasn’t cheating, I would regret doing this but she did agree to look after our son for a few days.

After he left, I rented a car and also drove to the city he was going to. I trusted that if something was going on, nothing would happen in the office and they would wait to get back to the hotel. For three days and two nights, I tracked his location and observed from a distance and nothing ever happened.

Both days, my husband would have a drink at dinner with the other three colleagues and then he would go back to the hotel room and call me and on the third day, he drove back home after work. I made excuses as to why we couldn’t facetime and we would just talk on a voice call for a few minutes.

I drove back on the third morning and I was relieved that my husband was loyal to me but I have had an overwhelming sense of guilt and self-disgust for breaching my husband’s privacy and trust ever since.

When my husband came home, I had his favourite meal prepared and I just hugged him as tight as I possibly could. It’s been 24 hours since he came home and we went to a 4th of July show today but all I have been thinking about is what I did.

I told my best friend about how guilty and ashamed I feel and she gave me an ultimatum that either I tell my husband about how I stalked him during his business trip or she will tell him. I know what I did was wrong. I knew it was wrong when I was doing it but I needed to know for my own sanity. What do I do now?

Here’s how people reacted to the post:

wtfgirl21 −  Okay I can say at least this much…Your friend? is not your friend. drop her block her be done with her trust your husband or don’t.

JustMMlurkingMM −  Drop your “friend”. She is deliberately trying to destroy your marriage, and has been from the start. Tell your husband everything, as you have explained it here, apologise for not trusting him and tell him that you are blocking your “ex-friend” and never speaking to her again. He sounds like a pretty chilled guy, so he’ll probably forgive you but it may take a while to get his full trust back.

Sufficient_Motor_458 −  I trust him fully. The stalking determined that was a lie

50pencepeace −  My husband has continued to prove he is not cheating, I have no evidence but my friend says he is so he must be. That’s a ridiculous summary of this. Talk to your husband about this please, he needs to know how far you’ve gone

Subject_Criticism136 −  Your friend has a crush on him and is trying to blow your marriage up by you doing it so she can make a move.

Piilootus −  Yes, you absolutely need to tell your husband AND stop talking to the friend who convinced you he was cheating.

HmajTK −  It’ll be better to tell him yourself and truly apologize. It’s better to hear it from you than find it out about you. Note that this does not guarantee his reaction. I certainly cannot even begin to formulate how I’d react to finding out that my spouse harbored suspicions in the lack of evidence to such an extreme of not only regularly going through my phone on missions but covertly tailing me.

This had been resolved before and recurred yet again. There is no reason to believe it won’t occur again. You need therapy regardless of what comes of this.

giB_kciD_ygrenE −  The only person that looks good in this story is the husband. Literally everyone else appears to have serious issues

Heavy-Educator8398 −  “We have a really good marriage”. “I fully trust him”. Uhuh. Well best thing you can do now is come clean to your husband and pray he doesn’t kick you out.

thatvintagething −  Your friend is a m**ipulative p**cho

Trust is vital in a relationship, but so is communication and understanding when doubt arises. How should this woman approach her husband about what she did, and what can she do to rebuild trust moving forward? Share your thoughts below!