Why I've forgiven my husband's emotional affair: Late-night texts. Secret dates. But he swears they never made love...

Why I've forgiven my husband's emotional affair: Late-night texts. Secret dates. But he swears they never made love...

By Lucy Hawkins

PUBLISHED: 20:19 EST, 12 February 2013 | UPDATED: 20:33 EST, 12 February 2013

Shock: Lucy Hawkins felt sick as she trawled through her husband's messages and found texts from another woman

Even now I can’t explain what prompted me to pick up my husband’s mobile phone and trawl through his messages.

I’m not inherently suspicious and had no reason to mistrust him. 

On the contrary, had you asked me to describe him I would have said he was dependable, loving and the least likely man in our circle of friends to betray his wife.

It happened on Christmas Eve and I was provoked, at first, just by idle curiosity.

Our two young sons were tucked up in bed, their stockings hung by the fireplace.

The table was set for lunch with family and friends the next day. Mark was busy in the garage.

I had flopped, exhausted, on the sofa and there on the coffee table was Mark’s swanky new mobile.

I had no real sense of purpose when I flicked across to his texts.

It was only when I r ealized I couldn’t access them because he had protected them with a password that the first glimmer of suspicion struck. Why would he do that?

I’m not particularly proud of myself, but at this point I turned amateur sleuth.

I decided I had to crack the code. I tried many possibilities â€" our birthdays, those of our sons, the burglar alarm code â€" but all were fruitless.

Each failure made me more determined and a little more uneasy: Mark had clearly settled on a configuration of letters and numbers that was far from obvious.

Finally, I got it. He’d used his mum’s date of birth. And as I scrolled through his messages I smiled to myself.

Mundane work texts were interspersed with ones from me and photos of our boys, aged two and six.

Then my stomach lurched. I had stumbled on a cache of secret messages that were neither work-related nor innoc ent.

They were sent by a woman â€" Lorna â€" whose name I did not recognize. At the end of each was a string of kisses.

And Mark, my husband of 11 years, my best friend and the man I loved and trusted, had replied in a similar tone.

‘We share a deep connection xxxx’ she had written to him at two o’clock one morning.

‘Sweet dreams xxx,’ he had responded on another night.

‘We must stay in each other’s lives xxx’ read another from her.

His final message felt like a nail in my heart: ‘I have to fly home tomorrow or I will lose everything xxx.’

I was dumbfounded. For a few dizzying minutes, cogent thought deserted me. I felt shocked, confused, disbelieving. 

Who was this woman? How did he meet her? Had they slept together? Was he still seeing her? Did he plan to leave me and the boys for her? I felt sick.

Meanwhile, Mark was putting a new bike together for our elder son Jack’s Christmas present.

An image of him, spanner in hand, happy and oblivious, flashed into my mind. 

I knew our lives had changed irrevocably, and that I needed to arm myself with as much information on this woman as I could â€" and quickly, before he came back into the house.

So, with as cool a head as I could muster, I read the messages again, more carefully, searching for clues. 

From the dates and times I realized they had met in October when Mark traveled to Boston for business.

I realized, too, that Mark, who runs his own public relations company, had seen her again in November when he had returned to the city to finish a project. 

I was consumed by a terrible rage and felt compelled to find out more.

I searched for Lorna’s Facebook page and discovered she was just 26. With long blonde hair and an electric smile, she beamed out of the screen at me.

Snooping: According to one law firm, Divorce-Online, Facebook was cited as a reason for a third of divorces last year

Suddenly I felt old, bland and tired. I’m 41. Mark is 43. It was all shaping up into a horrible cliché: successful middle-aged businessman travels to America and meets an impressionable young woman while his wife, oblivious to his antics, stays at home looking after their children.

I flicked through hundreds of her photos. I saw who her friends were, where she worked, what she’d been doing lately.

The more I discovered, the more I hated her. And all the while, this young American woman had no idea I was spying on her from the other side of the Atlantic.

By the time Mark returned from the garage I was eerily composed.

Watching his every facial muscle for signs of further lies, I launched a hand grenade into our marriage with the question: ‘Who is Lorna?’

His eyes flicked nervously from side to side and his face tensed before he calmed down and sa id casually: ‘Lorna? Oh, she’s just a colleague in Boston.’

‘Liar,’ I spat, and told him I had read the messages on his phone. He was like a rabbit caught in headlights. ‘What texts? What did they say? Nothing happened.’

I hit him with everything I had uncovered and accused him of being unfaithful and destroying our family.

Of course, Mark was horrified that I’d invaded his privacy. But I wasn’t going to let him off the hook.

Then the story slowly came out: he had met this woman at a work party, they had hit it off and shared intimate dinners.

It had quickly spiraled out of control and they had started texting each other deeply personal and inappropriate messages at all hours.

I felt bitterly and completely betrayed. But the most pressing question was whether they had slept together. 

You may consider me credulo us, naive, over-trusting â€" even stupid â€" but I believe they hadn’t. 

It was not only Mark’s consistent and adamant denials that convinced me â€" he swore he had never ‘been unfaithful’. 

I had examined the messages in detail and felt fairly confident there had not been a full-blown affair. For a start, there was no ‘sexting’.

Their texts, while intimate and flirtatious, stopped short of being smutty or sexually explicit. 

Moreover, that they ended in the early hours and began again the next day suggested the senders had not spent the night together. 

This is not incontrovertible evidence that they did not have sex, but I have decided to believe him. Mark, I tell myself, was flattered by the attentions of a young woman.

Hurt: It was four days before Lucy and her husband shared a bed again, and a return to physical intimacy took weeks

In short, I believe he had an emotional affair. My husband may not have had sex with Lorna, but it is still a huge betrayal.

And it seems I am among a growing number of spouses whose partners have been unfaithful in this manner. 

Facilitated by mobile phones and texting, social networking websites and international travel, affairs such as his are on the increase. 

According to one law firm, Divorce-Online, Facebook was cited as a reason for a third of divorces last year because it makes clandestine communication so easy.

How do you define an emotional affair? Experts say secrecy is key: if a partner fails to tell his or her spouse about meetings or conversations with someone and behaves with them in a way they would not wish their partner to know about, that is emotional infidelity.

Paula Hall, a psychotherapist at Relate, says emotional affairs can be as devastati ng as sexual infidelity.

‘Relationships develop faster and become more intimate online. Be open about your Facebook page and text messages and if your partner puts a password on his computer or phone, ask why.’

In her book After The Affair, relationship counsellor Julia Cole agrees that the definition of an affair has changed in the 21st century. With new technology come new and dangerous opportunities. 

She says that the only way to survive an affair is to be more open and honest with each other.

But in the immediate aftermath of our confrontation on Christmas Eve, rational analysis or discussion was impossible. 

I could not bear to be near Mark. My family arrived for Christmas Day and I treated him with a coldness bordering on contempt.

He, meanwhile, rushed round in a flurry of attentiveness. My anger boiled, but I spoke to no one about the reason for it.

That night I slept, for the second time, in the spare room, visions of Lorna swimming into my mind.
In my lowest moments I was convinced I’d leave Mark, yet over the next few weeks I calmed down.

It dawned on me that though he accepted he had been a ‘complete idiot’, he didn’t believe his behavior amounted to infidelity. 

To his male mind these were simply the naive mistakes of a middle-aged man. After all, he insisted, they had not slept together.

I’m sure it was a perilously close-run thing, but I believe I know my husband well enough to be confident that, though they may have shared kisses, he stopped short of the ultimate betrayal.

It still took days for the deep hurt and rage I felt to subside, though.

Trust: Things are slowly improving and Mark knows that shared meals and affectionate texts with another woman are a betrayal

It was four days before we shared our bed again, and a return to physical intimacy took weeks.

Yet wounded and angry as I was, I knew I wasn’t prepared to throw everything away for one mistake. 

This was a warning, a near miss, while I’m sure a full-blown sexual affair would have proved fatal.

I demanded that Mark cut all contact with Lorna and delete her number from his phone.

I insisted he remove all passwords from his phone and computer or, at least, ensure I always knew them. He did the latter â€" and so far I have resisted the urge to look.

In a more vicious moment I insisted he text Lorna, telling her his wife knew everything and he would never contact her again. He did so; I pressed the ‘send’ button. 

I even considered texting Lorna myself, telling her to stay away from him, but I abandoned the idea as over-dramatic.< /span>

Things are slowly improving. Mark knows that shared meals and affectionate clandestine texts with another woman constitute, in my view, a betrayal.

Though I sometimes wonder if I am being naive, I have come to realize that my love for him and our children is greater than my pride.

The greatest test for me will come when he boards a plane again. I will be feeling anxious and suspicious. At the same time, I realise that I must learn to trust him again. 

Julia Cole believes relationships can survive affairs, but it can take up to a year for the hurt to subside.

Will our marriage endure? I do hope so. It is a work in progress.

Some names have been changed.