Dear Coleen

I’VE been married to my wife for more than 20 years but recently she was “text cheating” with an ex-boyfriend.

When I confronted her about it, she admitted to it and said nothing physical happened between them.

Our relationship had been in a bad place for a long time but I was still so hurt, as I would never do that to her.

I know I haven’t shown her the affection she deserves, both emotionally and physically, and it was like we were just co-existing in the same household for many years.

I read all of their text messages to each other and it wasn’t pretty. I still love her very much and we have two beautiful girls aged 11 and six. I would never want to hurt them.

Since finding the texts on her phone, our relationship has been stronger and things feel great. I told her at the time that I didn’t want her to have any contact with this guy in order to rebuild my trust in her.

After a couple of weeks I brought up the issue again and she was still bewildered as to why I would ask her this when things were going fine with us. After arguing about it for a while, I asked her to delete his number and the messages and she said she would, which made me feel much better.

However, I recently looked at her phone and saw she’s kept this guy’s phone number and all the original text messages too.

I am so confused. I feel if I confront her she’ll have a go at me for looking through her phone again. I really want to be with her but I can’t take it that she lied to my face.

How should I handle it?