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Originally Posted by Entropy3000  I believe blind trust is some combination of lazy, naive and ambivalent. You make the call. Trust is earned. Marriage is based on Love and Respect. Trust is a by-product. Yes trust is essential, but when folks claim marriage is about trust they are really having the tail wag the dog EAs are chemically based and it all seems quite innocent at the beginning. Nothing going on here we are just friends. Effectively people form a deep emotional bond and then fall in love. We trust our partners not to do that. But they are not thinking clearly. They can be very naive as well. It feels ok. |
Details are private, but our first time going to therapy was before we had kids. Suffice it to say there was a reason for that, and we have more training in the signs of unfaithfulness than someone who has not been through therapy or this situation before.
Admittedly, we've perhaps been repeating mistakes we could've corrected the first time - the first time we had therapy, we paid out of pocket and stopped for financial reasons. We thought we had fixed our problems, or at least we fixed enough that we could fix the rest on our own.
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VERY BAD!!! Filling needs like this outside of marriage is dangerous. Especially when needs are not being met at home. In y opinion this is very inappropriate. This can move to unfaithful quickly. If you tell her she needs to stop doing this and she does anyway it is by definition unfaithful.
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I was describing recent history, not the present state of things.
I told her to stop last week and she did. And on Sunday, I made the change in myself that she needed so she the pieces would be in place that would allow her to start getting her emotional connectionfrom me instead of being repulsed by me.
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People in EAs are in the fog. I did not realize that my wife was correct until I went through withdrawal. So you tell her that her relationship with this guy is unacceptable. if she resists she is definitely in an EA. Stop partially believing her. That is unhelpful. That is being a nice guy. She may not realize how deep she is in. No matter. The thing is that this stuff progresses very quickly. Like travelling too close to a black hole. This must be stopped early. Put you foot down and insist on no contact. IMMEDIATELY. No fond farewells. FWIW by the time this type of thing is noticed it is usually way down the road already. Squash this today.
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For the reasons I mentioned earlier, I think that if things progressed, my wife would have noticed and cut it off. The drama that resulted from suspicions was enough that she cut it off whether she believed it was EA or not.
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Originally Posted by me As a measure of what's going on, he frequently texts her. My wife doesn't text back very much, sometimes not at all. |
I should elaborate this point. Up to some time last week he texted a good number of messages to her and she responded a few times. I couldn't say exactly when it changed, but I can say that here's some timeline:
Last Thursday - I was driving my wife to a store that's an hour's drive away. He was texting her, she responded twice. I read the texts, I forget what was going on, but he knew about what we were doing and that bothered me since they were still apparently talking when she drops off kids at school. Her responses were harmless, as I said I forget what they were - my concern from this day was the degree to which he knew what we were up to.
Friday and Saturday my wife went out of town with her mom for a marathon and there was no texting activity.
Sunday, I worked with our kids to give her a nice mothers day. He texted asking if she was having a good mothers day. She didn't respond.
Monday, I started my new job. He texted her a lot. She never responded. She deleted the texts. I had not had a chance to read them.
Tuesday, he texted about our child having lunch with his child. He sent 2 messages all together. My wife responded once that our child would like that.
I saw the Tuesday texts after my wife went to sleep. I went to work having had no chance to discuss it with my wife because she had to go to a event, the details of which I am leaving out because I want to maintain anonymity and those details can be sumarized sufficiently by saying my wife went with her mom and there was nothing to be suspicious about it.
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She needs to cut him out of her life. She may or may not be contacting him in other ways. But cut this off now. Feel free to tell this guy to cease and desist but you need to get your wife to shut it down first. You do want to start monitoring activities.
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done and done. Even before I had this suspicion. I'm monitoring, and I'm doing it openly.
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Many folks have affairs with people others think are unlikely. Does not matter in how you approach this. He is after your wife. She has not shut him down. bad sign.
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If that's how it sounded, then I explained poorly.
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Stop this. Shut this down. Then start reconnecting with your wife. You cannot work on the marriage while she has this relationship. Stopp being nice about this unless you want your wife to connect with other men.
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It's a tricky situation. She sought emotional support elsewhere because it wasn't coming from me. That is a sentence that describes 2 problems. 1) she sought emotional support elsewhere 2) it wasn't coming from me. Both problems needed to be adressed concurrently and that is what I did. I stopped the connection. I fixed my problems that had precluded the connection with me.
Maybe it wasn't concurrent exactly, I fixed things on Sunday from my realization I made Saturday night - at that point the connection was already shut down.
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Deal with your wife first. Make sure she shuts this down. Monitor it. If he pursues her anyway, get in his face. I do not think one can play witn this stuff. It takes urgency to shut things down. You have another person in your marriage now. Cut them out. THEN, work on your marriage.
Deal with your wife first. Make sure she shuts this down. Monitor it. If he pursues her anyway, get in his face. I do not think one can play witn this stuff. It takes urgency to shut things down. You have another person in your marriage now. Cut them out. THEN, work on your marriage. |
I guess in the end, it turns out I took your advice before I even posted here, so thanks for helping me feel reassured I am doing things the right way.
