Is this cheating or not ?

***Update: thank you all for the love and support 🙏🙏🙏 This community is so affirming and I really appreciate the advice.

At this point I don’t know if I will leave him yet, we have a counseling appointment tomorrow and we will take it day by day. Unfortunately there is more- another hypothetical love letter and the text of the “break up” letter that he actually gave her. I will add to the comments because getting outside opinions is actually helping me find the words for my emotions in the midst of this shock. ***

I’m so angry and I just need some other outside opinions.

So back story, I’ve been married for 6 years and recently went through a seasonal depression. It was made worse when I felt my husband distancing himself from me by leaving the house a lot and communicating less. He is also planning on going to school in Aukland for 9 months. It was a very hard decision but we decided I would stay in the US (because I couldn’t get a visa and we have a dog that would have cost $7000 to transport) We had been doing better in the last month. Then I found this on his laptop. Taylor is the name of his past coworker he was really good friends with…

When I confronted him about it he said he meant to delete it and that he was never going to send it. He only wrote it as a writing exercise to get his thoughts on paper to see what he really wanted. Nothing physical ever happened. He told the girl he couldn’t talk to her anymore because he was attracted to her (end of January) then in February he sent her a text asking how she was- which she didn’t respond to. Then in March I find out that he ordered a birthday card for her through Etsy. This letter was written on February 12, after he was supposed to not contact her again. I made him show me their texts which were pretty frequent but nothing sexual. I made him delete her contact and all her messages. Then I found a screenshot of her address on his phone that I made him delete too.

What the hell?? After 6 years of marriage I have to worry about him and coworkers? After I found out I gave him multiple chances to come clean, asking him multiple times if he was hiding something from me. Said he wasn’t.

I feel like this is emotional cheating because it seems like he is still hanging on to this girl, even though there was no physical cheating. I’m just thankful the girl didn’t encourage him… because I think he would have cheated. Is this actual cheating?

*Update: just went on his computer and the recycle bin was empty… it was not yesterday before I confronted him. I can see in his recent documents that he went through all his stuff. I don’t know if I can trust him anymore and I feel like I’m going to throw up

*Another update: I’ve been messaging the girl, the stories line up except that he gave her gifts and a letter about his feelings for her. Apparently he gave her this letter explaining why he couldn’t hang out with her anymore. She is going to send me a pic of the letter. I believe her when she said nothing physical happened and that she was shocked and did not reciprocate. He also gave her a mug as a joke that she says she threw away because it made her uncomfortable.