Hubby [35M] not really respecting my [31F] boundaries
Husband not respecting boundaries
My (31F) hubby (35M) of 8 years (together 13) is a gamer. Over the last 2+ years he is made a group of friends he or she regularly plays with (about 7 people) including one more married couple who online in another country.
He’s become very close with the wife. I can call her “A”. These people message on discord randomly throughout the day and then play live together almost every night. I’ve told my husband multiple times that this amount of time spent with her vs me is totally excessive and he’d apologize yet after a while go back to doing it.
They don’t talk about everything inappropriate or intimate but he does talk to her about stuff going on in the day that he doesn’t speak with me about. I’ve tried getting into gaming with the team to be closer to my husband.
We all played Minecraft jointly; the two of them ran off in-game and built a house. This individual apologized when I confronted him and said he didn’t think of it like that. He promised we would build a cabin on a mountain in the game nevertheless I had to work and couldn’t play for a few days I came home to see him finishing up a cabin and he was reluctant to tell me personally she’d helped him with it.
There are other examples and so they sound childish and small but I don’t care. He said it meant a great deal that I wanted to play games with him but then he put her first in all the games.
He got me an expensive Christmas present last year that I told your pet before he got it which i didn’t need or wish but she recommended this to him. I don’t make use of it because it still upsets me and he’s disappointed that I don’t use it. It’s a drawing tablet. We already have one and am comfortable with the program it has. The one he got me is really a whole different program I don’t also know how to use.
This has been going on over a yr. I can’t tell him to slice her out because they’re the only friend group he’s had in a while and so they all play DnD together each week. I’ve tried speaking with him and explaining just how him putting all his time and energy into both The and gaming is harming our marriage but he’s not getting it.
We’ve tried having him tell A that he needs to focus on his marriage and that they should just message through group talks and not privately and she mentioned she understood but continues messaging him and after a week or so he broke down plus resumed messaging with the girl and then lied to me about this. I only found out a few weeks later when I saw their discord messages up on his computer. He said it’s just become a habit and he is struggling to break it.
I hate that she’s his best friend and that he or she finds it easier to talk to the girl than me. I’ve cried and told him I was sorry I couldn’t be more like her or more of a gamer. He’s cried plus swears he doesn’t have feelings for her; but to me he or she likes her enough to lie to me about messages her.
We’re stuck not so sure what to do because he doesn’t wish to lose his best friend and doesn’t want to lose me personally but I can’t consider any other compromises since they can’t seem to just message by means of group chat. My sister and her husband sport together with a friend group and they both agree that it’s inappropriate that my husband foretells A so much.
The above I have had typed up on the phone for a while and was holding off on posting because they all planned a visit (5 people total) in order to finally meet in person and we went out of state and everything stayed together for a few times. The one boundary I gave my husband was to not become alone with her. The 5th person in the group who came is a single guy and she was cuddled up and physically affectionate with him throughout the journey even in front of her husband who didn’t seem bothered by it.
Oddly enough it made me personally feel better because she has been giving him a lot of attention and hardly any to my hubby. Then the second to last day of the trip I woke up and they acquired both gone on a 10-15min walk together just the 2 of them.
He didn’t wake me to ask if I wanted to come or anything. He was hesitant to tell me who this individual was with when I texted him asking where he’d gone. When they got back my hubby came into the bedroom and apologized and said he “didn’t think about it” and that they had been just looking to see if there were any good views and looking into how bad the snowfall was.
He knew I had reservations about arriving on this trip and I just agreed because he was so excited and it had meant a lot to him. He is offered counseling and we are going to be looking into that. I really believe they didn’t perform anything inappropriate on the walk but I’m still harm and pissed off that he disregarded my feelings.
Any advice on what other compromises we could try or ways to get him to take this a lot more seriously?
TL; DR! – Husband has a female on the web friend who he usually spends more time with than me personally
