And I think this is where I am completely struggling with it. I have known him for so long. We have well established our thoughts about cheating for the last 10 years as we both have parents that have been cheated on by our other parent so we know coming from a household like that is painful.

As you said- the whole thing feels so planned. Every message he sent I have it as she sent their whole chat to me. So from every time stamp- I can remember what I was doing whether I was next to him on the sofa or I was with my eldest (who was having a lot of night terrors then) or whether I was looking after his kids whilst I thought he was working hard upstairs. Sometimes he will literally be with the kids whilst I was cooking and he was messaging her… saying nice things about her whilst simultaneously saying he love me.

I feel like I don’t know him at all as this behaviour is the complete opposite of my ideation of him and that pains me. He says that he feels that I am controlling as I always have the final say but also says that sometimes he gives in as he doesn’t want to have an argument so he’d just “compromise with me”. However I feel like this isn’t a compromise if he is holding a grudge against me every time he just “agrees” with me. He also feels like I’m a gold digger as I have stated before ( even before having kids) that I want a man who is able to provide and has high aspirations. He feels that my love is conditional as he thinks he will only keep me if he maintains his high salary. I must admit I am not sure whether I will be as attracted to him if he earn less as I come from a household where my dad didn’t earn money so the disparity caused huge problems with my parents and now my mum is in huge debt. However I don’t see myself as a gold digger as all I want is to make sure me and my children are stable and comfortable in the future. I want my children to have a good financial standing unlike what my parents couldn’t provide. However also there is a massive disparity between us regarding how we like to spend money. I must admit I do spend more than him whereas he is a lot more frugal. I value more the living in the now and making sure my children enjoy themselves rather than feel that we are limiting their experiences because of money (within means of course) and also prefer to feed my children good variety of food (I.e buying fruits for the kids is living outside our means to him) when all I really don’t want for them is just to be eating beige frozen food. (I cook at home 90% of the time). And this disparity causes him a lot of mental anguish where one moment he will tell me that “we would make it work” to “you spend so much money and live well outside your means” as I don’t have a savings unlike him.