Is husband ‘36 M’ deleting texts from Nanny ‘27 F’ considered cheating?

I (32 F) have been struggling with trust issues and suspicion about my husband (36 M) and the nanny (27 F) who watched our daughters (ages 2 and 8 weeks).

My husband works from home and I work on campus. The past 2 years, we had a nanny who came to our home on the days I worked. My husband was in the home with our children and the nanny.

At first, this set up really seemed to work. It felt good to know that my husband would be there if anything went wrong with our daughter and the nanny seemed like a great fit and someone we could trust. She has a son around my daughter’s age and they get along great. We grew close and she attended our family parties and get togethers with her son on several occasions.

I began to feel uncomfortable with the fact that my husband was spending more time with the nanny when I was not present. At the nanny’s request, my husband would drive her and my daughter to different places like the library, the park, the nature center, a coffee shop for outings. However, no one would tell me about where they were going until after the fact which was odd because the nanny was updating me throughout the day about my daughter.

I know that I am someone with trust issues (I’ve been cheated on multiple times in other relationships) but it didn’t sit right with me. I also noticed small changes in my husband ( he started running when he has never been interested in running before and bought the same brand of running shoes as the nanny- the nanny is really into running and ran a half marathon; he started drinking the same brand of energy drinks that the nanny would bring to the house; bought new clothes/ new cologne. He also began being more protective about his phone. He never left it unattended and would get weird if I ever tried to use it (for example, he didn’t like when I would open it to look up a song on Spotify when wee were in the car). I also noticed that she sent me a friend request on Facebook and that my husband was already friends with her. When I asked him about it he said she had friend requested him way earlier than she had reached out to me.

I tried to ignore my intuition and tried to rationalize my feelings of anxiety and suspicion as my hormones reeking havoc (I recently had my 2nd child in June so pregnancy and postpartum hormones have definitely been affecting me). But then something really odd happened. In mid-July the nanny texted me 30 minutes before her shift that she wasn’t going the be able to make it over and that she would ‘explain later’. I liked the message and went about my day. A few days later, I texted her in a group chat with my husband asking if she wanted any hours the following week. She didn’t respond and I chocked it up to her being busy or forgetting to get back to us. I tried again a week later and again got no response. I waited another week and then texted again asking if she was still wanting to work with our family or if she was thinking about moving on ( the nanny has a very busy schedule, nannies for another family and is finishing up a nursing degree so it wouldn’t be outside the realm of possibility that she didn’t have the bandwidth to continue working with our family) and still got no response.

I brought up to my husband how odd it was that she was ghosting us. I expressed that it was bizzarre that someone who had been worked with our family and had such a close relationship with our daughter would just disappear without saying goodbye. I asked if he knew why she would do this or if he knew of anything that would have upset her. He kind of shrugged it off and suggested that we start looking for someone new to nanny for us. I asked if he had heard from her and he denied it. I felt in my gut that something wasn’t right and that he was keeping something from me. I asked if I could see his phone and he began getting upset saying I always make up things in my head and that he shouldn’t have to let me see. His hands were visibly shaking. He then abruptly left the room and walked outside to his car with his phone. I followed him and he claimed that he wanted to get something out of his car and that I was ‘annoying the crap out of him’. We walked back inside and continued the conversation/ argument. I expressed that I was feeling uneasy and looking through his messages would put me at ease. He expressed that he shouldn’t have to show me his texts. Eventually he relented and said we could go through all of his texts and he could ‘provide context’.

I began looking though and didn’t see any texts between just the two of them. However I noticed that in the group text with the nanny, my husband and I that her name had the blocked symbol next to it. I asked why she was blocked and he said the reason was that he was annoyed that she hadn’t responded to us. I found that answer confusing and thought it didn’t make a lot of sense. I then looked in the recently deleted section of his texts and saw her name at the top of the list and that he had recently deleted 15 messages from her. As soon as he realized what I was looking at, he literally ripped the phone out of my hand and ran to another room in our house. I followed him but by the time I got to the other room he had deleted the messages from the deleted folder- they were now permanently deleted and there was no way for me to see what they were. I told him his reaction was so suspicious and shady and asked why he did that. His only answer was that I had ‘made him mad’ and that ‘it didn’t matter what was in the texts, I would have found a way to twist it into something it wasn’t’. He told me the only thing in the texts were pictures and videos of our daughter and the nanny checking in about mundane things while she was working with our daughter. I just can’t believe him because if that was the case, why not just show me and explain it. His reaction is screaming that something else was going on. He swore to me that he didn’t cheat on me and that he isn’t in contact with the nanny. But I have too may unanswered questions to truly believe that. Even if it wasn’t physical it seems like some emotional cheating may have occurred.

Does this sound like cheating?