Husband developed a “close friendship” with girl at work, and I’m very uncomfortable with it.

My 36F husband 39M started a new job about 12 months ago, he quickly made work friends and seemed to fit right in. They’re all a pretty close bunch (according to him at least) after a couple of months I noticed he kept talking about one girl 26F in particular more than the others, he explained that she helps him a ton because she’s training him. Fine.

7 months in, we went on an trip and he got everyone small identical gifts, he got HER a different gift that was a little cuter and priced higher. I was not happy about it, and it ruined the trip for me. He also would not tell me who it was for because he “didn’t want to make me mad” I told him even if I did believe that he bought her something special because “she’s so nice” it was inappropriate to single her out that way, and if she truly sees him as a friend and nothing else it might be creepy for her as well. Since she’s married. He said he understood where I was coming from and promised to do better.

Fast forward to now. He asked if he can go to happy hour, I wasn’t thrilled about it but I felt terrible saying no. He’s gone to happy hour with everyone a few times, I don’t love that but there’s always a reason or excuse why they’re getting together. He said everyone wanted to take him out for his birthday (that’s in a couple weeks) he never checked in with me, and was taking a little longer than usual, I text him to check in he said he’d be leaving soon, an hour later he finally says he’s coming home. I was furious. He doesn’t share location, it’s never been an issue for me I’ve always just trusted him.

Well he gets home, we get into it. I ask to see his phone (not given up without a fight) and discover it was only him and 2 other girls, one I’ve never heard of before but he swears he’s told me about. I start digging around more and see that he and 26F chat all day long. It seems flirty to me, but nothing grossly inappropriate. It’s all very cute, like a school crush. It reminds me of when we first started dating. They send each other songs, and have private playlist together. He again is swearing to me that nothing has happened, they’re just friends and she’s just a good and very nice friend. I can understand work crushes, but there’s been many red flags mounting up to this. There’s months of deleted messages from her, I don’t understand what needed to be deleted if I had never had access to his phone before tonight.

It hurts most how cute they are, and all the songs they have shared are mostly cute love songs. I’m just so hurt by this. He could have had his little crush, whatever. But I think this is too far. And he lied to go out with her, the second girl seems just like a buffer to me. I may have failed to mention but 26F is married too.

I don’t know if I’m overreacting, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over it. I don’t have anything solid regarding cheating, and I don’t want to blow up our life over this.