T.L.T.R : Husband wants me to end friendship of 25+ years because of a voice note sent in error. I don’t want to end friendship. AITAH?

I (43F) have been married for 16 years and together for 20+ to my husband (45M). My husband has started to grow jealous of a friend (50M) whom I have known for over 25 years and very dear to me, but we have never been more than friends and will never be more than that.

My friend was married , widowed and now in a stable relationship. He lives in a city quite distant from us, and I only communicate with him via text message or voice notes and the very sporadic phone call maybe once a year. My husband has never met him because husband was never interested, but knows of his existence, the extent of our friendship, how I met him, and the little updates about his life and family. When friend visits our town, I meet him for coffee if our schedules align. The schedules have not aligned in 3 years.

Friend and I used to exchange voice notes every week or maybe twice a week when there was something of significance to share. On one occasion, I received a very romantic voice note. The note was clearly not for me and ment for his long term GF. He realized his mistake and sent another voice note apologizing for the mistake, and mentioned he never thought of me in such a way. Then, he questioned if it was true that he never thought of me that way, laughed about it and that was the end of it. I never responded to this two voice notes because I saw no point in continuing the subject. Moved on, as if the voice notes never happened.

I am an open book, I don’t delete messages , my husband knows my passcode, and I have no problem with him using my cellphone or looking through it. What I didn’t know was that He wakes up in the middle of the night and goes through my phone, through my messages , through all my social media account, through my email and who knows what else. He listened to the “mistake” voice notes at some point, and hell broke loose. He gave me the silent treatment for a week. I explained to him the mistake, but to no avail. The damage was done.

Since then, he has asked me to stop talking to my friend, a request I have refused to comply with. There is no romantic interest between friend and I , and also it takes two to tango and I am not interested in breaking my marriage. I love my husband, and I would never jeopardize our relationship any way. But it feels unfair to stop this friendship I cherish so much.

I did decrease the amount of communication and now I send only texts instead of voice notes, and asked my friend to do the same. I also asked friend to be mindful of what he says because I don’t want any misunderstands. My friend has complied.

My husband insists I banish friend from my life. He has blocked my friend numerous times on my phone , deleted my apps, and once deleted my accounts ( which was bad because I lost a bunch of info not related to my friend or the issue). Today my friend sent me a reel on IG and my husband saw it. Now we are back to my husband giving me the silent treatment.

I feel like I am waking on eggshells. If I tell him the truth , bad. If I get a message, bad. I know he won’t stop checking my phone which is another issue in itself.

AITAH for insisting on preserving this friendship or should I comply to my husband’s request and stop this friendship because my husband feels like it? Please help !