I (33M) have been married to my wife (31F) for 7 years. We’ve been together for a decade, and until recently, I thought our marriage was solid. Enter my best friend “Liam” (33M), who I’ve known since elementary school. He’s basically family. He was my best man. My ride-or-die.

Liam moved back to our city a few months ago after getting out of a messy long-term relationship. Naturally, I welcomed him back into my life. We hung out all the time again—dinners, game nights, weekends at our place. My wife’s always gotten along with him, but lately… something felt off.

She laughs way too hard at his jokes. She playfully punches his arm. I caught her touching up her makeup when she knew he was coming over. I overheard them whispering in the kitchen once, and when I walked in, they stopped talking immediately and acted like nothing happened.

I felt sick. Like I was the third wheel in my own house.

I confronted her. She flipped it on me—called me paranoid and jealous. Said Liam is like a brother to her. I asked Liam if anything weird was going on. He gave me that same condescending grin he used to give teachers when he got away with stuff and said I was “overthinking everything.”

So yeah—I started thinking about divorce. I didn’t want to live in suspicion. I didn’t want to keep watching her light up every time he walked into the room instead of me.

But then... I found out the truth.

She wasn’t flirting with him. She was investigating him.

Without telling me, she hired a private investigator. She’d noticed things I hadn’t: inconsistencies in Liam’s stories, shady behavior, times when he “borrowed” money from us and never paid it back. She got suspicious. And what she found?

Liam has been stalking me for years.

He never left the city after his breakup. That was a lie. He had been living less than ten minutes away for months. He knew our routines. He had fake social accounts to follow me, her, even my coworkers. He was sabotaging my job interviews (one HR rep recognized his name—he’d “anonymously” emailed them dirt about me). He had been inside our house when we weren’t home—she found photos taken from inside our bedroom.

It wasn’t just creepy. It was obsessive. He was trying to become me.

My wife was getting close to him to try to gather proof before she told me because she knew how deep my loyalty to him ran, and she wasn’t sure I’d believe her otherwise. She had already planned to take it all to the police.

And now? I feel shattered. My best friend is a psycho. My wife betrayed my trust by keeping all this from me, even if it was to protect me. And I don’t know what the hell to do.

AITA?