Sbrown

lol I guess I feel like a home can be broken divorce or not. I can't imagine any kid choosing two parents fighting and not getting along over divorce. As a child that experienced that I can tell you that my siblings and I were greatful for the peace of our parents divorce. And I know several "kids" on dope with intact parents.
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OnTheBrink

Okay - obviously you are anti-divorce, but you can easily come up with examples of kids who don't do well in life from dysfunctional families as well as even healthy ones.

One of the most well-balanced, successful people I know comes from a broken family. Albeit, one where the dad remarried and the second marriage was successful long term, and where this happened when the kids were at a young age.

OnTheBrink

Not physical harm, but possibly emotional harm. Really mostly worried that they will acquire some of the same bad traits as she has. (for example: only uses threats or bribes to get what she wants as opposed to reasoning or logic - never compromising: either she gets what she wants and is okay, or she begrudges not getting her way and makes everyone miserable)

I do think it's quite possible though if my wife doesn't get some kind of help, that she could start another dysfunctional relationship with someone else - and it's possible that person could be abusive. Her ex was controlling and bordering on abusive, so she seems to be more attracted to the macho - jerk kind. Yes - I know I need to not be Mr. Nice Guy, but that was so long established that efforts to the contrary are not well-received. I will keep pushing though...I know I need to be consistent and stay the course.

All that being said, my wife does care about the children and would never knowingly do anything to harm them. For the most part, she seems to do well with them when it's just her and them, and I do well when it's just me and them. It's when we attempt being together with them that things don't go well.

chapparal

I am not anti divorce, I am pro parents growing up and getting alon to raise their children and leaving their infated egos at the door. Angry fights are just ego battles. Learn how to be strong and still get along.

OnTheBrink

Let's shift the discussion about whether to divorce or stay in the marriage to my more general thread at the link below, and leave this one to focus on the original topic. Quotes can still be copied from here to the other if desired.

A year since considering divorce with little progress

OnTheBrink

Well my wife and I had a good talk about things this weekend. She is now acting receptive to my concerns and saying she will make a point to limit her interaction with him. We discussed how this would need to be more so in the near term to break the current trend, and eventually should go back to the original "normal" level of interaction.

It seems like we can never have a good discussion about something sensitive unless we get in a big fight first...hopefully that can change. We also have had many of these discussions to resolve fights/issues along the way, only to have the same things reoccur. So while the words let me feel a little hope, it will be the actions that really matter.

OnTheBrink

Also, results of initial monitoring up to this point have come up clean. If anything suspicious were to surface I could proceed to more in depth monitoring. I do see going through this how stressful this stuff can be to worry about...going through all the possible scenarios in my head. Don't women just love showing you how it feels?

I will still talk to my brother when I get a chance, keeping it more general, but will be more direct with him as necessary if his actions warrant it. If in addition, my wife is on board to stop soliciting the attention, I think the issue can be resolved without unnecessary family drama.

My wife will still not admit any ill motive or action on her part, saying she understands how it makes me feel, so she will change to be respectful of that. I know there is more to it, so it leaves me to wonder if it was more the making me jealous/getting even or an actual inappropriate bond developing. While apparently some of both, I do believe both from what she is saying and my intuition being in the situation that nothing physical was occurring. And ultimately what she is admitting to is the truth she wants to live, with and as long as she changes her behavior to live up to it that is all that should matter.

OnTheBrink

Here’s a “quick” recap of what’s transpired since the last post.

My wife’s behavior with him on the surface has been mostly compliant, but she still gives me an attitude about it and continues to take subtle actions to solicit his attention. For example at a family gathering in the last month or two, she had one of our children wear a shirt for a basketball team he’s a big fan of, even though the season had not started yet. She also had suddenly become a big fan of the team last year and had been tweeting about the team (something he does) which he would often either tweet back about or comment on/ ask about later. I am also a fan of the team, but don’t have time to follow them that closely. In the past I had always thought it would be cool if she would watch games with me, but she would only do so on rare occasions if they happened to be in the playoffs. Now still she wants to watch every game, even if I’m not available to, and still tweets about the team. On a recent occasion, she chose to watch a game without me, when I said I would rather watch something else, and tweeted about it. And just the other day, when she was saying she wanted to watch the game, I said if she was really just that interested in watching on her own that was fine, but I didn’t want her to tweet about it. She asked why and even though it should have been obvious, I said b/c he follows the team and tweets about them. She then started on about there was nothing wrong with doing it, and she had never done anything wrong and blah blah bah, and challenging me to prove otherwise. This was leading up to Thanksgiving, so quickly led to talking about how she should interact with him then. I allowed myself to get into an argument with her that started going around in circles before I finally excused myself from it. At least I did not raise my voice or say anything mean. I just pointed out that her focus was inappropriately on how much she would be able to interact with him. I stated that as long as she refused to acknowledge that she had done anything wrong before and continued excusing the things she continued to do now, this would remain an issue and I was not okay with it.

In fights at various points my wife has sarcastically, and exaggeratingly said she was sexually attracted to him, and had feelings for him. She will say sorry in this fashion and then later claim to have apologized. Similarly, she’ll say she acknowledged things regarding him sometimes but then at other times claim she never did anything wrong. It seems she’s wanting to be able to claim she came clean (possibly more for her than me), while never admitting to any specific wrong action, so she can still always deny things later. The most I’ve gotten from her in a rare genuine conversation is that she never intended anything, or thought anything ill, but understood why it bothered me and thus would try to accommodate. She has said things like ‘If that were true I wouldn’t want anything to do with her’ apparently a factor in her not coming clean. She’ll also say that she needs me to not think that is true about her for us to work. And again, if she would actually live up to the truth she wants to be believed, I could go along with it. But wanting me to play along while she continues inappropriate behavior and lying about it is not acceptable.

OnTheBrink

So Thanksgiving Day, we go to her family’s house first as usual and everything goes well enough there. Now when it’s time to go to my family’s house, she asks if my other brother who had been out of town is going to be there. I realize this is at least the 3rd or 4th time I’ve answered “as far as I know” b/w the night before and earlier that morning. I am reminded that one of the things she’s been doing since lessening her interaction with the one brother is increasing her interaction with the other, and she’s started asking about the other more when she used to ask about the one. When I mentioned this before, she claims that she is talking with him as much as she always has (which is not true). She’s trying to do two things with this: 1) Continue trying to justify that it is okay for her to be close to my brothers, and 2) Make an issue of me asking her to back off rather than complying with it. As such, I advised her that she should be interacting with both of my brothers about the same amount, and not over compensating by spending more time with the other. She immediately gets defensive saying she hasn’t and wasn’t doing anything wrong and that I’m being ridiculous and blah blah blah.This time I didn’t take the bait and refused to argue about it. But it was an issue for me that by continuing to deny there was a problem she was refusing to get on the same page with me regarding how to handle it. Once we arrived he started his now typical practice of gravitating towards her. She wasn’t paying him much attention though while I was there, and he went into the other room to watch football. A little bit later I felt the need to go check on my kids outside to make sure they were safe. I was pretty sure he would take that chance to try talking wtih her. So when I got back in, I asked her if he did, which she denied in a vague way.

I started thinking through some of the advice I had received here, and knew that even though she was a major cause of the problem, expecting her to do the dirty work of fixing it was not only not going to happen, but I wasn’t doing my job as the man to make sure the issue was addressed. So I decided it was time I had a man to man talk with my brother about the issue. I didn’t rush to do it, but took some time to write out and organize my thoughts ahead of time, as well as do a quick pro con list as to whether I should go ahead and proceed. I should have and wanted to talk with my brother before, but a good time never came, and I never made the time. Nevertheless I couldn’t let it slip any longer. At a break in the football action I asked him to go outside with me to talk. I quickly and directly got to the point. He claimed that he never intended anything and wasn’t thinking of her in that way. He mentioned some of the same things my wife said about why they got along well, so these things were apparently mentioned in conversation between them in an attempt to justify them talking so much. It is clear that this wasn’t talked about directly though, as my brother was asking if this was coming from her or from me, and my wife on previous occasions had asked me things regarding what my brother was thinking/saying. My brother almost right away said that if he was doing something that made me uncomfortable he would stop. He asked about what things I had an issue with, and what I expected from him going forward. Before I had a chance to answer, we got called back in the house, so I said I would call him later to not leave things hanging.

My brother at some point was beating himself up in the original conversation and I mentioned that my wife had a portion of the blame for her actions, as well as myself for not bringing it up sooner. I second-guessed myself after for perhaps revealing that my wife was okay with the behavior and it was just me that had an issue. Unless/until the marriage was officially ending, I didn’t want to broadcast any issues b/w my wife and I. When I called him later, I quickly recovered this by shifting the issue with my wife to when she had purposefully acted super cool about his divorce in order to get the details out of him. I said that she was responsible for that, which I saw as when the issue began and a major cause for it. She set herself up to be a confidant regarding his relationship problems, and it was easy for him to turn to anyone that acted like they cared when he was going through such a hard time in his life. He again asked what he should do. I said that the thing that bothered me most was any communication when I wasn’t around, specifically him finding out things about her or my kids from what she was posting on Twitter. As such I said I would like him to stop following her, and that I didn’t want him going out of his way to talk to her when we were all together.

He said he would do what he needed to do, and I could see already by this morning that he had un-followed her. It was quite refreshing to see someone clearly show their loyalty when questioned and to have his actions back up his words. In contrast I’ve been addressing this issue with my wife for over a year now, and she’s hardly shown any loyalty even in her words, while her actions have been clearly opposing.

One other thing, is that my brother volunteered that he had told her a story (while I was out). When I questioned her about what he had talked to her about, she still denied that he talked to her. So she is again caught in a lie. If/when I confront her with this, she will attempt to justify it by saying my mom was there with her, so she didn’t consider this him talking to her directly.

sharkeey

You seem to be entirely too controlling and focusing your efforts in the wrong area.

"Don't talk to him, don't tweet with him, don't tweet about his favorite team, tell me what that doodling was all about, why are you talking to my other brother more, is that a cover up", etc.

You have no significant evidence that anything is going on and by trying to crush what you believe are symptoms is not dealing with the real underlying problem if there even is one.

Stop bugging her about talking to either of your brothers, or about tweeting, or about doodling, or about her favorite sports team or band, or anything else even remotely related to those types of things.

If you suspect something, then do the usual.. keyloggers, VARs in the car, accessing email accounts, even hire a PI if you're so inclined.

I think you just might be over reacting to the point of paranoia, then again you may not be but whatever the case maybe you're not going to squash an affair by telling her not to talk to your brother at public affairs and inquiring about doodling.

The Cro-Magnon

From where I am standing, she is a demented, gaslighting, lying, manipulating, scheming POS.

You should have had it out with your brother long ago, and told him to put his piece back in his pants, and to back off. If my brother was acting inappropriately with my wife, I would punch his head in.

It is good to see your brother is happy to drop her like a hot potato (apparently) now that you asked him. Though he shouldn't have even needed to be asked.

As for her, what good is she?

OnTheBrink

Really? Are you serious???

And O.J. Simpson is an innocent man b/c he wasn't found guilty in a court of law.

I don't have anything to prove. She engaged in behavior that was innappropriate from my viewpoint and regardless of anyone else's view, that as I her husband was not comfortable with. I advised her of this and set boundaries accordingly, and she responded with begrudgingly remaining somewhat within the boundaries while continuing to seek other ways to maintain more of a connection with my brother.

If I'm more senstive about something now b/c of her prior indiscretions, the onus is on her to respectfully discuss her point of view, not defy my right to question. Similarly I am more controlling about this right now than I normally would be.

OnTheBrink

Yes - I know I should have talked to my brother much sooner, as expecting the situation to clear on it's own was not likely to happen especially with my wife continuing to look for ways to solicit his attention.

I do not condone or excuse his behavior in this, but I do understand that, especially in his position, how it was easy to entertain such attention. I appreciate his taking repsonsibillity and action, but actually feel bad that he doesn't seem to realize how much my wife was working to solicit the attention from him. But she of course is innocent unless you can come up with physical proof, right?

chapparal

Its hard to tell what she is up to. It might be as simple as her needing to make you jealous all the way up to her being a serial cheater. After all, she was drawing hearts around your brothers name in front of you. You also may be one of thoe guys who is overly jealous.

You have no piece of mind.

Get at least one VAR for her car. Cheaters always talk in the car. If you can put another VAR in the house where she might use the phone a lot. Be prepared at how bad or good it might be however.

Check her phone/text account to see who she is calling/texting alot. If she uses the computer, put a keylogger on it to see who/what she is doing on there.

You have to do something to settle your mind or you are going to ruin your marriage/family/you.

__________________
Isn't it all about fighting evil?
http://www.amazon.com/Married-Man-Li...d+man+sex+life
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Just-Frien...+shirley+glass

sharkeey

I'm completely serious.

I never said your wife is innocent I simply said that you don't have enough evidence to find her guilty.

And you had an EA that was about to turn into a PA and gave her an ultimatum which if she ignored would lead to you cheating on her.

You're at LEAST as guilty as she is.

You talk about boundaries yet you don't seem to find yourself at fault for your own EA that almost went PA.

Maybe she's more sensitive too because of YOUR indiscretions. You HAD an affair, albeit an emotional one, which many experienced and seasoned posters here on this board feel is way worse than a physical affair yet you seem to completely dismiss it.

I get that you're more sensitive, and concerned, and suspect an affair or the strong possibility that one will develop. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying you're going about it in a rather ineffective way. Prohibiting her from conversing with your brother at a family event is akin to saying "the fire is over there, rather than pouring water on it until it's extinguished let's just sprinkle some water on it and look the other way".

You need to fact find and then if anything definite is discovered, THEN bring the gavel down. All you're doing now is whining incessently and if there's an affair brewing, your actions are doing nothing to stop it and everything to make your wife think you're just a pain in the butt which will drive her further away from you and towards some other guy.