My (32M) husband of 5 years (together for 7) may have single-handedly imploded not just our marriage, but my (38F) career and the life we built together. Didn’t see this coming.

To start, names and locations from my post have been altered to protect the privacy of other’s. I (37F) met my current husband(32M) in 2018 while working in the same office. We got close during COVID lockdown, got engaged, and married in 2021. This is the second marriage for both of us. We both grew up dirt poor and experienced things no child should have to experience. In a lot of ways, we trauma bonded. He was the first person I truly felt I could be myself with. Everything felt easy together. We shared so many of the same interests, and every day I felt lucky that I found him. During the tail end of lockdown, we took advantage of the low interest rates and bought a brand-new house together. Not just any house a new build. Neither of us had ever lived in something like that before, and it felt like we were breaking generational cycles. It was big enough to expand our family. We did it all on our own. We don't have big families to help us, so we were incredibly proud of what we built. Fast forward to 2023, and we have our first child together. Things were great for a while, and then I started to feel a shift. I can't tell you exactly what changed or pinpoint a specific moment, but it became this constant walking-on-eggshells feeling. For context, he was raised in south Texas, and I was raised in upstate New York. He says our parenting styles are different, and he wants our son raised more like people in the South. Part of that includes me becoming a stay-at-home mom. He knew before we got together that I never wanted that. I was previously married for 10 years and share an 18-year-old son with my ex-husband. My ex was physically and verbally abusive. I wasn't allowed to work, have my own credit card, or even have my own car. I was granted a three-year PFA against him. My current husband knew all of that, but after we had our son, something changed. Being put in a situation that even remotely resembles my previous marriage is incredibly triggering for me. I never want to be in a position again where I'm financially or emotionally trapped. I don't think I'll ever be able to trust another person 100% because of what I've been through. Currently, my husband works two jobs, and I work two jobs. On top of preparing to send my oldest to college this fall and raising our three-year-old, life has been overwhelming. My husband's main job took a huge hit this year, and his hours were cut in half, so money has been extremely tight. We barely see each other outside of maybe 30 minutes on weekdays. We've tried to make time for date nights, but we don't have a village, so everything falls on us. Two days ago, I put our son to bed like I do every night. I usually fall asleep in his room because our nights are long and our three-year-old still doesn't sleep through the night. Things were already tense because I had been asking my husband for more help mentally and physically. I feel like I'm living in a pressure cooker. He brushed off the conversation, left the house to go for a walk, and told me he had a feeling something else was going on because it couldn't "just be stress" causing me to feel this overwhelmed. While I was asleep in our son's room, my husband went through my phone. He said my phone looked "too clean," so he decided to unlock and search through all of my deleted text messages. I woke up to him screaming at me and waving my phone in my face. The message he found was a text from a male coworker three weeks earlier. It was an inappropriate joke that he had sent me. I deleted it immediately and honestly forgot it even existed. I have never had a phone/ text conversation with this coworker, and I've barely spoken to him at work because he's still relatively new. I can’t remember that particular morning events and why he would’ve asked me if I was OK. I have a lot going on so often sometimes I come into work a little late and disheveled. For full transparency and context here is the message: Coworker: Good morning! Are you okay? Me: (sent a GIF of someone crying dramatically in the shower) Coworker: "You were squirting like crazy!" Me: "Gross. Tell Todd he needs to water Samantha plants. Poor things are bone dry!" Coworker: "Aww...sorry. Thought you'd laugh!" Me: "Jordan was right here. " Samantha is out on medical leave and she has been for several months. She’s working part-time from home but likes to keep her large plants in our office. Todd is an intern so she gave Todd her plants and said keep these alive. He’s 20 years old and doing a terrible job. So when I water the office plants, I tend to her plants one of the plants likes to get watered by being sprayed by a water bottle. It’s a large palm Lake tree plant so it has me spraying it a lot. I do that every other week and add water the base of the pot once a week so it gets water from the root up (these are her instructions. This might not be the proper way to water plants. This is just what I was told to Do.) the coworkers desk is right next to Todd‘s desk. There’s a small divider in between so he heard me spraying and watering the plants. So that’s where his crude comment comes from. I didn’t like that he texted me that. I brought it the next time I had lunch with Samantha. I said hey look what he sent me, isn’t that disgusting and she goes yeah that’s disgusting, guys are gross. I deleted the text and I went on about my life. So here’s the bombshell. My husband is 100% convinced I’m having an affair with my coworker. He told his coworkers and his boss that I’m having an affair and showed them the text message thread. He took a picture of it with his phone and showed them and his family. They all agree that it looks like I’m having an affair The whole next day he’s fighting with me. I keep going to the bathroom sobbing at work because I said nothing‘s going on and that I have nothing to hide. It was just a crude joke. He told me I need to tell HR if I wanted to save my marriage. I told him it’s just a joke and that there’s no reason that anyone needs to lose their job. So he gave me an ultimatum that I need to text my coworker and let him know that that text wasn’t OK and to set a clear boundary with him, but that’s not OK. Please not involve me in that language again. I did just that. The lm he starts going through my call log sending me phone numbers asking me to look them up on my phone and to screenshot who they belong to and send them to him. I did that. He keeps calling me a liar, threatening divorce blaming this whole thing on me and that he’s lost all my trust. He still wants me to go to HR for a paper trail. In case my coworker tries to what my husband says sexually assault me again, physically in the workplace. He says that I left the door open for my coworker. He also says I can’t be alone with my son because he doesn’t trust me and that if I am alone with my son, he’s taking my car keys if I have to take my son anywhere. I have to let him know about it beforehand. Text him when I leave. Text him when I arrive. Text him when I leave and arrive to come home. We’ve already shared each other’s locations and we already share each other’s passwords but now he wants my phone to be an open book to him whenever he chooses I never reach out to my friends because I’m always protecting my husband’s image. This time I reached out to my friends. I asked them if I was wrong they said no, and they don’t understand why my husband wants a divorce and has gone to this extent to tell his entire office, his boss and his family that I’m cheating.. he’s even asked me to leave HIS house. He has me being interrogated all day. We both called off work. He’s called off of his dayshift and his night shift for both jobs. If I’m sleeping, he wakes me up and he starts the interrogation all over again. He’s done this probably six times now I don’t know what to do besides drop to my knees and cry and just go along with whatever he wants to show to him that I’m not cheating or having an affair and that these few texts are absolutely nothing. Edit to add my (Work) tried calling me a few times. It was a very busy day for us and they needed my help on something. I already let HR know that I was dealing with a family crisis that I can’t make it in but my coworker still kept calling me. My husband wanted me to answer the phone cause he believes I’m probably sleeping with that coworker too, but what else or why else would they be calling me? He says he doesn’t trust a single thing right now on a super paranoid. I didn’t answer and I yelled at him to stop calling me. They didn’t. They then texted me asking me for my passwords. I told them I was dealing with a family crisis, but if they needed anyone to contact my other coworker they apologized, but I’m worried that I’m gonna lose my job over this. Which by the way, my husband is OK if I lose my job even though some months I pull in more than him and we can’t financially afford for me to not work. He also keeps showing people theses messages threatening to call my coworkers’s wife, telling her that we’re having an affair, and even pulling our neighbors into it. I begged him not to. He keeps saying everyone he’s talk to tells him the same thing that I’m a cheater I’m lying and I can’t be trusted. We don’t live in a big town so this is gonna get out really quick. He says that his coworkers and boss are biased opinions, and every person agrees with him and the only people that agree with me are my friends and family because I had to pull them in for emotional support... Willing to answer questions if I didn’t make myself clear. submitted by /u/Whole_Beach_1438 to r/relationship_advice [link] [comments]