I’ve always thought that what my husband and I had was special. We’re so similar—love the same music, identical upbringings, parallel values. He’s always been there for me and goes the extra mile. I love him so much and everyone else does, too.

About two years ago we had a setback. I don’t know what prompted me to do it, but I looked at his text messages. I guess I’m just nosy. But there I found a conversation with a girl he’d known since before we were married. She now lives in New York working for a wine company and is extremely pretty. Their conversation wasn’t in any way sexual, but it was certainly flirtatious. She was calling him handsome, they were trying to plan a time to catch up for drinks, that sort of thing. The texts would usually happen when he was out of town, or late at night, or when he was tipsy.

I felt so betrayed. I never thought in a million years that he would do that to me. Our love was different.

A couple weeks later, I finally got the nerve to call him out on it. I cried and he cried and we stayed up late as I listened to him apologize a hundred times. He went on a long hike the next day and told me he’d cleared his head, that he was going to work hard to make me gain his trust again. He told me that it would never happen again, that he would cut off all contact and I friend her from every social media outlet. I forgave him.

That was in August 2018.

Fast forward to present day. We have a beautiful six-month-old baby boy. I’ve had a lot of time at home over the past year. And of course, I’ve still periodically checked his messages to see if anything shady was going on. The last couple of weeks, he’s been so distant. I try to joke around, and I just get practical answers back. He doesn’t reach for my hand. He hasn’t been saying he loves me before he hangs up the phone. He almost seems annoyed with me and I feel like every move I make is being judged or criticized. It’s honestly exhausting and emotionally draining. It makes me so deeply sad that something so purely wonderful has turned into tension.

I couldn’t help but wonder if something more was going on, so again I decided to look through his messages. Lo and behold, there was a message to that same girl from 2018. But it was just one text from him to her: “You there?” was all it said. There was no message before or after from her. That was a month ago, and to my knowledge there has been no other interaction between them.

My question is this: am I right to feel betrayed again?

It was just one text, one question. But the fact that he reached out to her at all after telling me he would stop contact...it just feels so icky. My self esteem is already at an all-time low being six months post partum, and then he texts this beautiful woman he had fling with years ago. On top of his coldness and distance lately.

Should I let all of this go? I feel petty, but I’m really unhappy right now. Advice would be great, y’all.

UPDATE: Confronting him tonight. I’m so anxious.