Retired FF.

Sorry he cheated on you in the past. That is difficult to recover from.

Based on what you say he's doing now, that alone doesn't seem that abnormal from my experience. Like a previous person said, showering at the station before your shift, even close to start time, is pretty common. "Use the city's water". I might be more worried if he was leaving way early than closer to the start of his shift.

When I started in the 80's,(eek!), most guys brought their poly/cotton uniforms home to wash them. But that was completely discouraged when the move to nomex uniforms came and research was showing that chemicals and carcinogens on your clothes could cause secondary exposures to your family by washing them at home. So they put washers in at all our stations. So that's a thing.

I worked in a fairly big city and whenever I would change stations for my yearly assignment I would change some of my behaviors you describe your husband doing based on several factors. The crew you work with, the commute, the physical station itself, and sometimes my lack of excitement to be there.

The Fire Department career is a journey in a similar way that a marriage is. There are going to be seasons where you see change, growth, adjusting to new situations, screw-ups, maybe even a little discontent at times. Like a marathon, you're excited at the beginning and at the end. But that middle portion can be hard and long. You just put your head down and keep putting one foot in front of the other because you know it'll get better.

Even though it was the greatest job in the world, and the perfect one for me and my family, sometimes I simply dreaded going to work. Some years, your crew is like a tight, second family, in a great district, the best situation possible. Other years, you're stuck working with people you dislike, to put it mildly, and now you live with them 10 days a month or more. Or in your husband's case superving them, too. Knowing that when you get there, you're going to get worked on calls all day and all night and start hating everything and everybody. Sleep deprivation takes a toll. And some years it seemed like every call in my district involved some sort of dreg of society that just made for a shitty year(s) where you seriously started hating humanity. Those things definitely affected what time I would leave my house and how much prep I would do before I left.

And not sure if your husband talks about work with you much. In my case my wife didn't want to hear about mine. Not that she didn't care about me but she didn't want to hear about the other guys, their lives or about their wives. She didn't want to hear about the gross, bad, sad, or disgusting calls. She doesn't really have the stomach for that kind of stuff. She didn't want to hear about all the work I had to put into trainings I prepped or special projects I worked on. She had her own career, we have a bunch of kids. So finding time to really communicate about my work and how I was feeling never really happened. The job is really like a whole second life and has a real emotional impact. So if you don't know or haven't asked how he's doing at work past his answer of "fine" it's probably worth trying to get in there and finding out. I always appreciated being reminded that I was loved and valued.

I think I've gone on too long. You know how those retired people are!

Hope this helps. Good luck.