My husband and I have been together for 7 years, married for 2 and we have two kids together. A few days before our two year wedding anniversary, my husband came home from work very upset and later he told me that he didn’t like the way his life was going and I just listened. The next day when he can home rather than coming in the house he asked me to come to the car, he said he wanted to separate and he was gonna get him and apartment and he was going to move into his own apartment. I was a SAHM at this time, so he told me that I needed to get a job and start doing everything he was doing, he worked, I took care of the house and kids but he didn’t really see how that was helpful. Later that night, he came back to the house and would be sleeping on the couch for the time being. This all came as a shock to me because we were just having an amazing date night like a week before this happened and we weren’t having any issues. He didn’t tell me where this was coming from he just kept saying he needed time.

He bought us tickets to a baseball game for our anniversary, when I said that I didn’t really want to go because I was in an emotional roller coaster. The day of our anniversary, I heard something say check his phone, so i did and he was texting a female coworker, he invited her to the game (he says he invited another guy as well but he only had two tickets). When i saw the message he immediately grabbed his phone, whereas we’ve always shared our phones, our face ID on each other phone and been like that our whole relationship. He start gaslighting saying “you really think you found something” i’m crying and heartbroken because to me that was supposed to be our date and he was gonna take another woman even if i decided not yo go, she didn’t go because it was too last minute. After a couple days he told me he would stop texting her, we made up and he said we would work on things so we’re “back together” immediately after this conversation he was texting her again. He told me he would block her but the next day, I told him that I know he’s still texting her even though he changed his password because i was looking at it o his apple watch, i told him that it makes me feel like his value this relationship with this girl more than our marriage and he was still texting her afterwards even at 3am, nothing sexual but suspicious for a married man. I asked him to text her and tell her that he wouldn’t text her anymore because it makes his wife uncomfortable, we went back and forth for 3 hours then he texted her “i talked to (my name) about you)” but wouldn’t show me what he texted then when she asked who i was he said the mother of my kids, he claim he had told her that we were separated even though that supposed separation lasted 3 days. when she texted back he apologized to her and agreed with her that i was doing too much then he sent her a meme to make her laugh and he kept texting her. I was frustrated and hurt so i told him that if he couldn’t stop texting her then I just needed to hear him tell me that he didn’t want to be with me anymore because that’s what his actions were showing and he said it. A couple days later he stopped her because he said it feels weird now that he texted her that, during this time he was so cold towards me and was texting her all hours of the day. Now this happened two months ago and I’ve forgiven him since but he continues to deny that this was emotional cheating? I believe I caught it before it progressed past the point where he really started developing feelings for her ñ but if your wife is crying and begging you to stop texting another woman because it makes her feel uncomfortable, betrayed, and heartbroken and you refuse then that has to be emotional cheating right? He continues to minimize this whole situation and making it seem like the only thing he did wrong was text her but insists that it wasn’t behind my back, he wasn’t taking her on a date because it was just a baseball game and that we weren’t together. Am I tripping or was this emotional cheating?