'AITA for 'emasculating' my husband by telling him I have more respect for his cheating friend?' UPDATED

"AITA for telling my husband he is all bark and no bite, and I have more respect for his friend than him?"

I (25 F) have been married to my husband (26 M) for 3 years. He has two male friends from a job he used to work who are both also married. Let’s call them Holden and Cameron.

He has been friends with them for around 2 years and since then, we have all moved to different states. These are friends that he has had over for beers here and there, but mainly they like to call, text, and play video games on some weekends.

I personally do not like Cameron. This is because he isn’t respectful of his wife. They all used to have a female coworker that Cameron would CONSTANTLY hit on and try to ask out.

He would tell my husband how much he wanted to sleep with her, despite him having a wife and daughter at home. I told my husband he should let the wife know, but neither of us had her contact information as we have never met her in person.

When he moved to a different state, his wife stayed behind since it was only going to be a training for a few months and that’s when things got worse with him. Cameron had informed both my husband and Holden that he had told his wife he wanted as divorce and did not want to have any custody of his child.

This turned out not to be true as his wife had NO IDEA he was planning on leaving her and instead, he had been ghosting his wife; not responding to any calls or texts for weeks.

I was not shy about my dislike for Cameron and did tell my husband that he was no longer welcome in my home and that I was no longer comfortable with them hanging out together, which my husband was just fine with since they really didn’t hangout much to begin with. They would still occasionally play games online together and text on a group chat that a lot of their old coworkers still had.

Holden had also told us that Cameron had gotten on dating apps and began sleeping around with multiple women. He even went as far as to SEND HOLDEN A VIDEO OF HIM WITH TWO OTHER WOMEN!! This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Holden felt disgusted that he was sent this video without consent, and his wife was livid (understandably so).

After this, Holden decided to drop Cameron and go no contact, no confrontation or anything. Ghosting him like Cameron was doing to his wife.

Yesterday, I had asked my husband if he was still talking to Cameron and he informed me that he was not. He went on and on about how Cameron hadn’t even reached out to him because he made himself clear about how he was not okay with what Cameron was doing to his marriage and all the hell he was putting his wife through.

He said he had more of a spine than Holden did since Holden wouldn’t even inform Cameron that they were no longer friends. Today, my husband gets a call from Cameron. The call was nothing important in particular but what really threw me was how Cameron was not acting like anything was different between my husband and him.

He mentioned that Holden hasn’t spoken to him in 2 weeks and then the call pretty much ended there. I then asked my husband if him and Cameron still talked, and he admitted that they still do here and there. I felt hurt.

To be clear, I did not care if my husband was talking to Cameron, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the idea, but he is an adult and as long as he wasn’t hanging out with him, that was good by me.

However, the fact that he put on a big show about how he was more of a man than Holden because he “stood on business” when Holden wasn’t willing to, and that Cameron felt too embarrassed to even reach out to my husband because he knows my husbands standards, only to actually be talking to him and not ever telling Cameron that he has issues with what he is doing in his marriage?

It felt like such a sham. I got upset and told him he was “all bark and no bite” and that at least Holden ACTUALLY “stood on business” because he sat least followed through with what he said he was going to do and that for this, I respected Holden more than him.

This REALLY upset my husband. He said he didn’t like that I insinuated that he wasn’t a man of honor, and that he felt emasculated with that statement. He told me that if I respect Holden so much, that I should “go and sleep with holden then."

Which is NOT something my husband has ever said to me. It really hurt that it went there. I think I may have been too harsh with what I said, but I don’t appreciate being lied to, OR being talked to like that.

He is still hurt by the statement that I made, and now I don’t know what to do. I don’t like feeling like my husband is condoning this behavior from his friend, but what really bothers me is him trying to make himself look good and putting down his other friend, when he wasn’t telling the truth about the situation. So what do I do from here? And AITAH?

What do you think? AITA? This is what commenters had to say:

Pristine-Poem2005 said:

Something tells me your husband never really told Cameron all those things. Are you sure he did???

West-Scale-6800 said:

Sooooooo are we not concerned that your husband enjoys talking to a serial cheater liar and just got caught in a lie himself??? Me thinks you wouldn’t be happy if you saw their text string. NTA. He was pissed he got caught and you called him out for it. Not. Your. Fault. Tell him he can go sleep with Cameron if he loves him so much.

Abject_Jump9617 said:

So he has all the smoke for his wife who called him out for his lying but no smoke for his cheating scumbag of a friend. What a spineless dick! NTA.

hepzibah59 said:

NTA Your husband is upset because you inferred that he isn't a man of honour. Well, a man of honour wouldn't have lied about still talking to his awful friend.

MaliciousBrowny said:

NTA I have a group of core friends who are married now and I would abandon them in a heartbeat if those were their morals. If you can't be honest and decent to the person you've committed yourself to then how could you be true to our friendship.

And skittles_disney said:

totally NTA, your husband is a spineless idiot who can’t clearly see his actions and what they are interpreting. if you want to try to get through his head you could compare his actions to Holden’s, but at that point you may anger him since he feels so strongly about you sleeping with Holden.

i would honestly talk to Holden. i’m not fond of going behind my partners back to talk to his friends about things he’s doing, but this situation also inadvertently involves him. i would talk to Holden AND his wife so you can understand their united front as well. because that’s what your husband also needs to understand.

you’re husband is straight up disrespecting you, don’t let him push you down. stand on business as you said

Two days later, she shared this update:

Thank you everyone for all the comments and feedback on my last post. It was quite overwhelming so I did not respond to most, but I did read every comment

To answer some questions and things I saw in the comments:

Holden and Cameron were friends with each other for a few years before my husband met either of them. Holden was the closest with Cameron and my husband was closer to Holden than he was to Cameron.

I have only met Cameron twice, both briefly, when he came over to our house for some beers and video games, my husband has never hung out with him outside of work besides that, and when they would go to workout at the gym that their work had.

Neither my husband or I had Camerons wife's information. I did try to find her on multiple social media platforms but her name is very common and since I have never seen her before, it was hard to locate her. My husband does not have any social media besides Youtube.

I do want to preface that I never told my husband that I did not want him texting Cameron. (Was I a fan of the idea? No. But he is an adult and free to make his own choices and so I never even had asked him to) I did however, say that Cameron was no longer welcome in my home.

My husband saw no issue with this and agreed, this is something that is not really a factor for us anymore anyways since we have moved away so they never see each other in person and haven't for months.

My issue was the fact that he had lied to me about not talking to Cameron and went to bash his other friend when there wasn't any truth behind that. Not the fact that he was messaging Cameron.

Now for the update:

My husband and I did sit down and talk with each other earlier today and while I feel like we both have bit more we need to discuss and work on, I feel like we are making a good start with things.

I apologized for comparing him to Holden and for not being mature in how I discussed my anger. I also apologized for saying I respected his friend more than him in the moment because I really do have a lot of respect for my husband and always have thought highly of him.

I am not someone who likes to discuss things when my emotions are high, and that got the better of me. It is something I am going to be a lot more conscious of from here on out and really try to work on.

He apologized for making things seem one way when that wasn't really the truth. He did say that he had told Cameron that he did not like hearing about all of his "escapades" trying to live a single life while still married, and that Cameron had stopped messaging him about that specifically.

But he did admit that he never went further than that. (such as telling him that he wasn't wanting to have a friendship, game with him, etc.) and that they were still occasionally messaging about other things.

He also apologized for the "go sleep with holden" comment and said that he did feel emasculated because he has been struggling because he thinks his testosterone levels are lower than he wants them to be. (both his dad and brother have low testosterone).

He said he has been wrestling with the idea that he has low T for months now, and how he feels like he is less of a man because of it. For some context there, he fits all the symptoms for it, our intimate life has been a lot less than it used to be, he is tired all the time, he has been pretty irritable, etc.

I told him that there was nothing to be embarrassed about, how it doesn't make him less of a man, and to go speak to a Dr to try and talk through it and figure out a route to take and I will support him.

I did say, that while I want to be there for him and that I DO think he is a man, that doesn't excuse the comment that he made, how its not okay to speak to his wife that way, and if he wants to feel like a man, he does also need to act like a man and be honest in all aspects of his life, both with me, and his friendships.

He did give me his phone and let me look through their past conversations because I mentioned I felt weird about the threesome video. Their messages were pretty dry, mainly talking about music and old coworkers.

But, while I did not find that video anywhere, I did find a group chat with the three of them from about a month ago where Cameron had sent Holden and my husband some partially nude pictures of a trans woman he was seeing.

This upset me. I found it really disturbing and disrespectful that Cameron had sent this to them, and that neither Holden or my husband said anything. They just carried on with the conversation like nothing had happened. When I confronted my husband on this, he just said he ignored the photo and they moved on.

This is something I am still kind of struggling with. Do men send their friends, especially married friends nudes or videos of women they are seeing? I don't like that I felt brushed off when I addressed that to him, but I am so tired of feeling crazy.

I don't like to look through his phone, or feel like I am obsessing over his friendships. That has never been who I am and I feel like I am turning into someone who is and who overthinks and is honestly crazy.

I may update if anything else comes of this, I hope that we can work through things more and find a resolution one way or another. Thank you guys for reading this again and especially thank you to everyone who was kind in the comments. I appreciate it more than you know.