My Husband Mocked My Body in a Group Chat. He Didn’t Expect Me to Read It — Or What I’d Do Next (2 of 3)

At first, I brushed it off. Maybe he was tired from the flight. But by the third day, every time I reached for my phone and asked for a picture, he shut me down — flat, almost annoyed.

Something felt wrong.

Then I noticed he’d started keeping his phone face-down on the table. In the hotel room, if I walked past while he was texting, he’d lock the screen instantly. That small, sharp gut feeling — the one every woman knows — started gnawing at me.

On the fourth night, while he was in the shower, I picked up his phone. My hands were trembling, my heart pounding so loudly I swore he might hear it over the water.

I wasn’t prepared for what I found.

Buried in a group chat with his friends was the kind of cruelty that makes your stomach drop. There it was, in black and white:

“Imagine, guys — at her weight, she still wants me to take pictures of her! Where would she even fit in the photo? She hasn’t been the same since giving birth.”

I felt my face burn. The words blurred as tears filled my eyes. My weight… my body… the body that had carried our child, that had survived sleepless nights, and years of putting everyone else before myself.

Our marriage wasn’t perfect — whose is? — but I’d always believed he loved me for who I was, not for the number on a scale. Reading those messages was like watching every memory we’d built together crack down the middle.

I put the phone back exactly where I’d found it, climbed into bed, and stared at the ceiling until morning.

The next morning, I played my part as if nothing had happened. We went to breakfast, wandered the harbor, even browsed the tourist shops. He didn’t notice the storm building behind my calm face.