Dealing with Trust in a marriage

I am a 30 year old and married for 5 years. Me and my husband have had a healthy married life so far, off course with some ups and downs. Recently, when I was using my husband's phone, I read his messages. And the one that completely shattered my trust were messages to another woman, who he later said was a friend whom he met 12 years back. (One point to mention, this woman is in another country). The conversations were flirtatious in nature and the frequency was more than 50 messages per day and mostly at night after me and my daughter would go to sleep. The messages would go on all day and continue into the night. I confronted him and he said that there is nothing between us and also promised that he would decrease talking and eventually stop any communication with that woman. I still saw some messages being exchanged between them where that woman is desperate to re-engage talking with my husband. We have had several fights after that and I seem to have lost all trust. Entire day I keep on speculating about what would they be talking about. I cannot deal with the emotions and this is affecting my work. I feel completely burnt from inside and feel helpless. I have tried to spend more time with my husband by organizing several activities for us, but deep down inside I feel betrayed and that feeling that the one whom you loved may not care for you, just breaks me down. Every morning I try to think positive, but by mid day a relapse of emotions occurs and I again fall into that loop of tears-hatred-fear. I really want to make this marriage work as we loved each other so much and we want to give our daughter a good upbringing. I would really appreciate your advice and comments on how to deal with this situation. Thank you in advance.

Reading your partner's text messages is a good way to bring trouble to your relationship, but what is done is done, so you have to figure out how you will deal with it, positively or negatively, many ways, try to improve your relationship with him by bringing in issues that have to do with him with trust so that you can re-establish the trust that seems to have vanished. He might be genuine to state that nothing is going on, but it is clear his attention has shifted, maybe due to monotony of certain activities - maybe these activities need more sugar and spice to make the man refocus... Also, stop reading his text messages, and ensure he knows that, bring the trust in. If you feel emotional about it, you need to allow it to pass so do not hang on to emotions of betray because that is what you will get at the end of that road. Kill the emotions or allow them to be and you will get him back, because he hasn't actually left, but it looks like. Here in Africa what we do is we send someone to his rural home to be talked to by old village people, so unless there is an African village somewhere within your vicinity, this remain to be your moves and actions, and I suggest you drive into gear 3, where you are not stressed about it and you are handling it very maturely and smartly - what we all need anyway. Good Luck!