Hello there, I’m new here and will probably never post again, truth is I’m feeling very desperate and in need for some good advice since I don’t really have any good friends I can trust, so I created this thread in hopes of finding some enlightening, so this is how it goes;

I’ve been married for seven years (almost 8) and have a wonderful kid with my husband. We are a very good and strong marriage, we do a lot of things together, love each deeply and never really experienced any problems related to our relationship until now, these past few months I have been experiencing the most excruciating pangs of jealousy towards a female friend my husband has. I’m generally not a jealous wife, I have never started a jealousy scene or anything like that, so this just kind of takes me off-guard, my husband is usually the jealous one in our relationship, but I don’t think he’s ever been as jealous as I’m currently feeling.

This female friend, who I will call "Elly" is my husband’s best friend’s girlfriend, so we met her through him, at first she became sort of close with me as we would normally double date with her and my husband’s BFF, back then my husband disliked her a little because she is the "drama queen" type and would often involve her boyfriend (my husband’s BBF) in a lot of dramatic situations. At the beginning of this year my husband decided to start a musical project (he’s a guitar player) and he needed a vocal in his band, and Elly happens to sing beautifully, I was the one that pushed him to include her in the band when he wasn’t sure about it (***** me, right?), so he did. The project started and so did a lot of rehearsal sessions, my husband was very happy with Elly and her singing, I could notice that they started to become close but I didn’t really mind, I was happy my husband was finally accepting my friend. He started telling me how talented Elly was, how funny she was, how clever she was, etc. I thought nothing of it at first, but eventually I started to feel pangs of jealousy every time he would mention her, I tried to get rid of them without making a fuss, I really did, but they wouldn’t go away. I started to notice that they had inside jokes of their own every time we hung out, and that they would talk for the longest time in complete confidence, every occasion we shared with her started to cause me some serious pain.

One day I checked my husband’s phone conversations while he was in the shower (I shouldn’t have, I know, I regret it now), and discovered that they were closer than I’d thought in the first place, they would talk every damn day about a lot of things, telling each other the dreams they had (he even confessed dreaming about her, nothing sexy but still), their insecurities, praising each other and else, they even had pet names for each other, names I had never heard in public. I felt sick to my stomach after that and couldn’t hold it anymore, I told my husband how I felt and he was truly startled, he tried desperately to make me understand that he didn’t feel absolutely anything romantic about Elly, and that he saw her just like a very good friend. I tried to explain to him that I was sure of that, but I still felt the way I did and couldn’t help myself, but he couldn’t understand where my pain was coming from and got angry saying I didn’t trust him and that he had never given me any reason to doubt him. In the end I ended up asking him, almost imploring him to end his friendship with Elly since it caused me so much pain and I couldn’t think of a way of stopping that. It was such a selfish thing to do, I feel very ashamed about it, but it made me feel a little better to see that he was willing to do it.

A few days later, I checked my husband’s phone again, (I’m horrible, I know), but I couldn’t stop thinking about his friendship with Elly and whether he had ended it or not. I found out that he hadn’t. Elly and him would still text each other every day. I felt horribly hurt by this, and got into a huge fight with my husband about it, he told me that he tried to push her out a little bit, but she kept on pursuing him, texting him about the silliest things, he didn’t tell me as to not upset me, he doesn’t want to hurt me but he is not sure about what to do since he feels that he’s not really doing anything wrong. At the end he agreed to stop talking to Elly, but he feels that by avoiding her, he is starting to avoid his friend (Elly’s boyfriend) and all of the friend they have in common, which makes me upset since he suffers from depression and has the hardest time making friends.

I’m feeling like a flat tire now, I’m very used to being my husband’s one and only best friend, he’s not much of a ladies man and I’ve never seen him act like this with another woman, I never thought this would transform into this horrible situation and making him feel guilty is making me feel like crap. He is right, I have no reason to doubt him, he has never ever done anything that I could consider suspicious, but I can’t help feeling this crazy jealousy, it physically hurts and I’m obsessing over it, I can’t stop thinking about ways of snooping on my husband’s private things, and this is driving him crazy, he has even erased text messages on his phone and is bitter at me for my lunatic reactions. And the truth is I don’t think he could ever cheat on me or something like that, but I desperately want him to stay away from that other girl, I hate the closeness they achieved.

Please, what can I do to feel better? how can I get over this horrible feeling and just let this go? This is seriously taking a blow on my happy marriage and I’m worried it can ruin it completely. I’m sorry for the long post and bad English (Spanish is my mother language). Cheers.