The message I keep coming back to is my husband’s colleague telling him that age is just a number. I found it in their WhatsApp conversation, in an exchange that also included a shared video and a message she had deleted. My husband had asked what she’d deleted. I was left wondering too.
I had gone through his phone. I’m not proud of that, and I know it will be part of any conversation we have about what I found. But before I opened it, I’d had a feeling I couldn’t shake. He had broken my trust before. I wasn’t looking at these messages from the comfortable position of someone who had never had a reason to worry.
The exchange began on October 22, when she sent him a TikTok video of people cooking and cleaning at about 6:50 p.m. He responded with laughing emojis and said it was the perfect video to describe it. Then came her replies: “Yeah you wish” and “Age is just a number.” After that, she deleted a message.
He replied that he knew, that he always said that, and asked, “What did you delete madam.” Those messages were around eight that evening. He was at home with me while they were having this exchange.
I don’t know what the video meant to them or what prompted the comment about age. That missing context matters. It could change how the words read. Still, taken together, the teasing and the deleted message made me wonder whether they were flirting. I wasn’t concerned about the existence of a female colleague. I was concerned about how familiar they seemed with each other.
Then I saw that he had started another conversation at 6:07 the next morning. He told her he didn’t want to leave in the rain. She sent back a link to a song called “Rain” at 6:59. There was also an eleven-minute voice call later that day. Something had happened at work, so I assumed the call was about that. I don’t know what they actually discussed.
The early message bothered me for a different reason. The previous evening’s conversation hadn’t simply ended and stayed there. He had reached out again, casually, about the weather. He doesn’t usually message female colleagues socially, which made this feel unusual for him. I found myself wondering how much of their everyday lives they were sharing.
As far as I know, he has never physically cheated on me. These messages don’t establish that he has. But the earlier breach of trust means I can’t easily dismiss my discomfort as a reaction to a few harmless words. I’m questioning my marriage without knowing whether what I’ve found is innocent banter or flirtation he knows would upset me.
And to ask him about it, I have to tell him I searched his phone. I can acknowledge that without pretending the messages didn’t unsettle me. What I haven’t worked out is how to begin that conversation when I already know I’ll have something difficult to admit, and I still need him to explain what I read.
