I have been seeing a lot of confusion on emotional abuse, and I am sad to say that I am confused as well.

My husband and I have been together for 18 years, married for 12.  I am no saint, and really endangered our relationship so I have no idea if the treatment that I am receiving is validated by my husband's actions or not.

Background-18 years ago-we had only been dating for a few short months.  I was 19 and just got out of a terrible relationship.  I am not proud but I did have a one night stand.  He found out through a mutual friend and I thought that we worked it out.  I realized that I did love him and wanted to be with him so I committed fully to him. 

We married 6 years later and I always had it in the back of my head that he never really got over what I did to him.  He would accuse me of cheating if my nail appointment we longer than I thought.  If I went to my parents house and came home later, then he would be upset because he was lonely without me.  He would question my spending habits, but never deny me money.  We have 2 children together, so I thought that as we got older, that he would question my actions less, but it never happened.

I caught him on numerous occasions going through my texts, and he wouldn't deny it.  I never really had any outside the relationship friends since high school and met someone at worked who I really liked.  We began going to movies and every odd time, dinner together.  He asked if I was sleeping with her.

Current situation

I messed up again.  I sometimes hated my husband so much and started to resent our relationship.  We have really close family friends and one night, while I was drinking, I told this married man, that I had feelings for him.  This man would listen and we could talk about anything.  We even had similar up bringings.  That was as far as it went.  A few months later, I got drunk again and texted him that I was having a hard time getting over him.  While my husband found that text and accused me of much worse.  He called me names and didn't believe that nothing physical happened between us.  He threatened to tell his wife.  He even brought up the situation from 18 years prior and asked me if I enjoyed having this man drip down my leg as I came back to him.

I know what I did was wrong.  I apologised and tried to explain that I was hurt and feeling lost, but my husband couldn't understand.  He saw that sometimes he was a jerk to me and is trying to change the way he talks to me.

Last night we were sitting on the couch and he told me that he thinks that I made up everything to try to get out of the mess that I'm in.  He still is constantly wanting to know who's pictures I'm looking at on Instagram, and wondering why I want to look at them (I seriously have 14 followers and half of them are family-all women except for one which is his cousin).

I could go on and on about his choices in his life, but that would take forever- But I will tell you that he has kissed another woman before we got married.

I don't want to use his mistakes to fight back.  I don't know if I'm being emotionally abused or if I'm the abuser.  I feel so helpless right now.