AIO for seriously considering divorce after my husband lied about who he was with?

I’m looking for unbiased opinions because my emotions are running high and I honestly don’t know if I’m reacting appropriately or if I’m letting anger take the wheel.

My husband (37M) and I (37F) have two young kids — a 6-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter. Two weeks ago, my husband texted me asking if he could go camping for the weekend. He said it would be with a friend and possibly his brother. The fact that he asked via text matters, because I know exactly what was said and when.

I told him I wasn’t thrilled with the idea. Our daughter had a cheer competition that weekend, and I didn’t love the idea of managing that alone while also figuring out childcare for our son. Cheer competitions are long, chaotic days, and getting our daughter up early and ready is already stressful. Adding an extra stop to drop our son at a sitter just felt like piling more on me.

He offered to arrange childcare, but I still wasn’t convinced. The competition was close to our house and early in the morning. Eventually, we learned her performance time was later than expected, and that’s when he decided he’d go. At that point, he told me it would just be him and his brother because the friend could no longer attend.

The night before he left, he specifically mentioned that he was worried about phone service because both he and his brother use Verizon and there were reported outages. That detail stuck with me.

Thursday morning, he texted to say he arrived safely at the campsite. After that — silence.

Normally, even when he’s camping, he checks in at least once a day. By Friday around noon, I started to worry and texted him just to make sure he was okay. No response. By early evening, my anxiety was spiraling, so I reached out to my sister-in-law to ask if my brother-in-law had been able to contact her.

Her response stopped me cold.

She said her husband was sitting on the couch next to her.

That’s when everything clicked, and I felt pure rage. In my mind, my husband was still camping — just not with his brother. He had used his brother as a shield, assuming I wouldn’t question it or want to disrupt his trip if I thought family was involved.

For context, I carry the majority of the mental and physical load in our household. I work full time and manage almost everything related to the kids. My husband works a swing shift and is gone for up to 14 hours on his workdays, which means I’m often solo-parenting. When he does have time off, it hurts when he chooses to be unavailable or disengaged rather than present and helpful.

Saturday afternoon, he finally texted that he had service again and was heading home. I didn’t respond. He tried calling, but I was driving with our daughter in the car and wasn’t ready to have that conversation.

Once I had space, I texted him and directly confronted him about lying. Instead of owning it, he insisted he hadn’t lied — claiming it was a last-minute plan change and that by the time he knew our daughter’s competition schedule allowed him to go, it was “too late” to involve his brother.

That explanation felt flimsy at best.

It’s now Monday. Since coming home, he’s been sleeping in the basement or staying late at work. He hasn’t tried to talk things through or repair anything. Instead, he’s acting like he’s the one wronged — angry at me for being upset.

From my perspective, he lied, manipulated the situation, and when caught, doubled down rather than apologizing. Now he’s turning my reaction into the problem. The trust feels broken, and that’s not something I take lightly. I’ve already reached out to a divorce attorney because I don’t know how to move forward when honesty seems optional.

So… am I overreacting?