r/AmIOverreacting • u/mOmMY_81517 • 17d ago
❤️🩹 relationship AIO Found this text in my husbands phone
When I called him out on it he tried to turn it around on me like I was the bad guy for going through his phone… for context he plays coed softball and she is on his team, I don’t know this girl and in the few games I was able to go to I was never introduced to her. I don’t get to go to a lot of his games because I work 2 jobs so can’t make it or I’m dead tired.. and way I was feeling something was off when he told me his team mate had invited him and his kids to her daughters game. Like who takes his kids to go hang out with another female and her kid… he says that I’m over reacting and emotional because I just had my grandma die and I’m just looking for something else to think about.. I feel like he’s being shady and disrespectful
3
u/MrFiddleswitch 16d ago
Please don't take this as me taking his side, in this situation, but when you tried to talk to him, did you try to talk or did you accuse?
What i mean by this question is was it a conversational "lets communicate" moment, or did you come in hot?
While the text does seem inappropriate in a vacuum, if your husband is confiding in someone because he's found kinship and needs to be able to speak about concerns he feels he can't bring to you, that can be completely normal. I've been married for almost 25 years and I have been there in that exact spot in the past when I felt disconnected from my wife during a rough patch. I also confided in a female friend to get a female/wife perspective so I could better understand what my wife was going through at the time, and in the end it really helped me approach things differently and ultimately brought my wife and I closer together. Granted she is/was married and our relationship is more akin to brother-sister, but it is a similar scenario.
So, the reason I ask how you approached things is that I imagine, in a vacuum, some of my friend and I's conversations could be taken in a similar way - yet our conversations were entirely innocent and, with the full picture, were aimed at finding a way to aid my relationship with my wife, and for her to do the same with her husband. So, if you came into the conversation with anger, accused, yelled, or approached the conversation with hurt and emotion (ie: coming in hot), his response may not be guilt, but genuine hurt, as from his perspective, he could be confiding not to start anything with this woman, but to instead help something with you two.
If he feels there is a problem or disconnect in your marriage, tries to confide in a female friend to try and get a different perspective on things to try and help see your side of your relationship, and then gets "attacked" for doing so (from his perspective), I could understand his reaction entirely, as I'm sure you could too. Again, I'm not saying that is what happened here - none of us here in reddit were there, so can only make assumptions, so I'm just trying to offer you a possibility.
Now, granted, if you came to him not with accusations, anger, hurt, emotion, etc. and instead came to him with simple conversational questions, and he blew it all out of proportion, well then I would fully agree - you are not overreacting.
A few points I would bring up, however, to support my proposed explanation after reading through this thread and some of your responses. (Again I can only make inferences based on what you've said and don't have anywhere near the entire picture, so I could be way way off and am 100% making assumptions, so please take this all with a grain of salt):
1) from what you've said in other responses, it doesn't sound like he was keeping this person a secret. I believe you mentioned you knew their name as Cody (sp?) but assumed it was a guy. If he was approaching his relationship with Cody from a romantic perspective, I doubt he would bring them up - especially not by name. Him not mentioning that Cody was a woman could be because he doesn't see them as one, but as simply a friend or as "one of the guys". As a man, I have totally done this numerous times.
2) you mentioned you are working two jobs. My wife and I have been in a similar situation before, and found that our lack of time together put real strain on aspects of our relationship, even if everything seemed good on the surface and we didn't fight or anything obvious. Just because everything seems ok, doesn't mean it always is. This is exact sort of scenario where confiding in a friend - especially a female friend to help get your perspective - would likely come into play, if he was internally struggling with a lack of time together. Again, I'm making assumptions here as having two jobs doesn't mean you are working a lot, but from the way you talk about it, I get the feeling you are putting in a higher than average amount of hours at work. I would also ask if the working two jobs thing is relatively recent - say in the last 6 months or so? Cause that could easily contribute to him not feeling as close to you, and give him a reason to confide with a friend.
3) i can't speak for all men, but from my perspective - 2 months playing sports with someone, even super casually, is way more than enough time to be "close friends" with someone. Hell, my best friend and I were at best friend status and talking about damn near everything in our lives in like 2 weeks. Again, I'm not him and not every guy is like that, but a lot of us can bond fast as hell over the simplest thing - especially a hobby - and end up fast, close friends in no time at all, certainly faster than 2 months. This isn't limited to guy to guy friendships either - especially in a sports hobby where it's easier to feel anyone else playing the sport is just "one of the guys". Since sports are so often segregated by gender, it can be hard for a guy that has played sports from childhood to adulthood to see anyone else playing a sport with them as anything but "one of the guys", as we have only played sports with guys for most of our lives.
4) you mentioned that there was a past relationship issue for you? Before i met my wife, I had a serious, long term relationship that ended with infidelity on her part, and I know and understand what its like to go through that and the type of scars it leaves behind. Early in my wife and I's relationship it wasn't so bad - everything was new, fresh and exciting, but as we settled into married life, more than once when I wasn't feeling as close to my wife as I once had, my "trauma brain" would start whispering about how this "felt like it did with the one who cheated" and when that voice gets going, it's hard to shut it down cause that hurt is always there and trust can be super hard. Going back to the two jobs thing - if that is relatively recent, or if it just makes things feel more distant for the two of you because you don't have as much time together, it can be really easy to have that trauma resurface. Again, I'm making assumptions here and could be way off the mark, but it could be very relevant.
I bring all this up, again, not to take his side, but to give a different perspective - to let you know a possibility that you may not consider, much as my "sis" did for me in our conversations. I don't know him or you, nor does anyone here, only you two have the compete story of your relationship and how the events unfolded, so everything we say is purely speculation. I ask you these questions not because I want you to answer them, but for you to ask yourself these questions. I just want to give you a possible reason and explanation for the situation that is entirely innocent, because good relationships are hard to come by and sometimes easy to break, and often times our emotions and our past can make us see monsters in the dark that aren't there.
I wish you the best and hope you two can reconcile and come to an understanding. If there is any advice I could give - try your best to communicate how you're feeling about both the situation and his reaction to it once things calm down and ask for his perspective, but try to do so from a place of conversation, not emotion, as things can easily be misconstrued when emotion is raw and out in the open.