My story starts about 2 months ago. Me and my wife have been married for 11 years and have been together for about 18 years. My wife has always had issues with depression, anxiety, and OCD. She has been taking some form of med for these now since I can remember. We have a 10 year old daughter and a 7 year old son. We both make decent money, have new vehicles, recently built our dream house and live close to work and in a great neighborhood. I would have to believe we have a pretty good life that not everyone gets to experience. Back to my story, she had a work trip to Georgia about a month and a half ago. i had been feeling like our relationship was certainly not bad but we really lacked closeness like we have had for many years. I attributed it to having 2 kids, all kinds of activities, and professional careers. She didn't seem to enjoy sex all the time and she would sometimes make me feel like it was a chore. She had been sleeping on the couch almost every night. I had questioned her about this for about 2 years and she always had some type of excuse. It was too hot in our room, she couldn't sleep, etc. I just blew it off as I didn't know what else I could do. I did try really hard to get her to stay in our room and she would on occasion. She really seemed withdrawn for a long time now. She would sit on the couch and not do much of anything but sit on her phone and text people and surf social media. That would drive me crazy because she really wouldn't do things with the kids or even carry on a conversation with me. I did all the shopping and took care of everything for the family at that point. It was like she was in her own little world that didn't involve the rest of her family. She would be gone for a week at a conference. However, the conference is more like a big party. Every night all the vendors provide free apps and all the alcohol you could want. I certainly didn't feel thrilled that my wife was going to this conference where it becomes what I believe is a big drunk fest. My uneasiness stemmed from the fact that she really liked to party it up and we didn't seem all that close like I would have liked. I still felt like we had a great life together though. She works in a predominately male oriented career so there are thousands of guys at the conference and much fewer women. We had recently gone on a vacation with our kids and even had some great sex. I should also mention that my wife loves attention. She had been starting to fix her hair everyday, and put on makeup. She also lost about 30 pounds. I know that she was getting a lot of attention from guys at work and she just eats that up. When I would give her attention she would blow it off. The days before her leaving on her trip, we had nice close family time. Spent extra time with the kids and me. Seemed very happy and helped clean up the house and prepare to leave and not make it so difficult for me when she is gone. While she was gone, I had decided that I really didn't want to continue to have a relationship like this with the lack of closeness. I decided I wanted to try to fix it and felt even if me pushing to fix it would split us up, it was still the right thing to do because I didn't want to grow old living like this anymore. Also to my dismay, I see her posting on social media pics of herself in a brand new dress that I had never seen looking as seductive as possible and she was going out like this to the drunkfest activities. Her friends joke saying it looks like the cover for a tinder profile. I was not pleased at all but didn't let her know. She never dressed up for me anytime recently.
So she returned in a week and I didn't get much of a warm greeting at all. I felt like I was being avoided. I had planned to sit her down and talk with her how I felt. Her response really shocked me. She said she wants me to give her my understanding as a friend while she tries to work out things in her head. She seemed to indicate she was having some sort of midlife crisis. I had fully wanted to start working on getting our relationship to a better place. I was a little shocked because we had a great family vacation just a short time before this. She even initiated sex and we had a great time. So I suggest counseling and she seems to agree. I want to re-kindle our relationship. So after the fall out of that and me reeling through my mind what just happened I felt lost. I wanted to have a date night where we go to the place we used to hang back when we were dating. She dressed up like she did when she was on her trip. We went out to a few places and had drinks. She would leave the table briefly every now and then and she would check her phone and send people messages. We went to another place and had some drinks. I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back she was texting some guys name that I knew I didn't know. I know most all of her friends as we work in the same line of business. I find out this is someone she met on her trip. Now she is texting him while out with me trying to re-kindle our relationship. What a train wreck that night was. On our way home she indicated that she wasn't attracted to me and she believed that if we had an open marriage it would fix our problems. I completely disagree as I can't see how 2 people that are not being close will become closer by opening up their marriage. I felt like my marriage was completely over at this point. We talked the next day and I asked her about this guy she is texting. She said it was just a friend. Obviously that is not the case. I asked if he is just a friend if she would feel embarrassed if I would see what she is sending him. Her response was so what if we send flirty texts back and forth. This is all not OK with me at all. We agree to sign up for some counseling. She said she never had sex with this guy but I have no way to know either way. I know she met him at a place where she had a fancy hotel thousands of miles away. This person told her that he was having the same marriage problems she had and that he fixed them by having an open marriage. I don't know if that is just a pickup line but it would certainly seem to me like a pretty slick way to pick up vulnerable women. So now here we sit in this state of uncertainty. I started to look at phone records and it appears that she would text him thousands of times in a short number of days while she was at this conference and after. She later admitted to hanging out with him at least 3 nights. I didn't mention I knew about the texts. She then told me that when she left for this conference she was so deeply depressed that she felt like killing herself and she poured her heart out to this random guy. She obviously has some attraction for this person but I still don't know how they met. This guy is married and lives far away. However I have seen that she does text him and I believe she sends him messenger messages during the day. I don't know if this guys wife has any idea of all of this activity and I don't believe I will ever know if they slept together. I do know that looking at her text records, she would text him into the wee hours of the morning and start again right way very early sending thousands of texts. I remained silent about all of this. She seemed to be dealing with a midlife crisis of sorts and now this guy she is attracted to is now complicating things more for us and our family. I quietly watch and my wife would go home from work "sick" and sit and text this guy. I would come home and she would be as nice as can be to me. I didn't let her know that I know. We went on a family vacation for a couple days. I would say at this point the relationship seems more like we are just being nice to each other then like anything that felt more normal like it did before our trip. Then as a little more time passed and we were doing what I would say is trying to work on our relationship, she comes home and wants me to watch the kids while she lays down because she has a headache. All this time I am now depressed and experiencing anxiety with all these things going on. I couldn't sleep and I decided to check her text records and I see she would sneak away while we were on our trip and send this guy messages when she was in the bathroom and a couple other times. I also saw that when she needed to lay down, she texted him from the other room for an hour. I had always known that they were messaging each other and I also know logically me wanting her to stop doesn't mean she will want to stop. But now I was mad. I called her out on it. She denied it and said I was crazy. I told her I can show her. She insisted she was messaging a girl friend. Shortly after that she admitted to it and said she wouldn't lie about it anymore. THis is a very sore spot for me. I don't know a tactful way to make whatever texting relationship she has go away. All of these things have happened in the last couple weeks.
So we went to counseling and I brought up how she has been isolated and not participating at all with the family and how she said she was so depressed and met some guy and has been carrying on an emotional affair at best. My wife goes to counseling to separately. She is putting forth a lot of effort not to not sit on her phone all day and night and will carry on a conversation with me. SHe helps with house things again and started to buy groceries. She added another anti-depressant to her med regimen. We seems to be connecting to some degree. We have had sex on occasion. I am still hurt by her saying she isn't attracted to me anymore. We had a date night and talked about our relationship and it sounds like after much deliberation she wants to stay in the marriage with me. I am still at a loss how we ever got to this point because I have always treated her well and feel like this person she met has more then contributed to our problems. So I have been tollerant of her still texting this person. After I called her out, she no longer sends texts from her phone to him but I believe she uses a messenger program. When I asked her if she still sends them she says yes but not everyday. I feel like whatever this relationship is that she has with this random guy, so needs to go away for us to work on our marriage. I don't know any tactful way to make this happen. I am looking for advice. I can't express how deeply this hurts to think your spouse has some brand new super close relationship with some random guys she seems to be attracted to. This is a problem that bothers me all the time. I also know for certain she is on social media all day at work and can easily message this guy all the time. I also notice her checking her facebook messenger often and I can only believe it is to message this person.
Fast forward to the present. She had informed me she was going to have a girls trip this weekend. Her and her girlfriend would go to a big city from Thursday through Monday. I don't feel like I have any say in anything at all at this point because anytime I say anything I get blasted so I just didn't say much at all. It is very difficult to trust my wife now because she is prone to lie or exaggerate all the time. She had recently denied and lied about keeping in touch with this guy. I don't know if she is meeting him there now or what. I do know that she has 2 phones with her. Seeing her without a phone in her hand and texting is something you almost never see. It appears to me that she is leaving her normal phone in her purse because she appears to be off social media for many hours at a time and i can only believe she is binging on sending this person texts from her work phone while she is out of town like she did last time. I am completely helpless right now and it deeply bothers me that this relationship she has continues. I know that this person is into atheism and tattoos and one of the first thing my wife did is get a tattoo when she returned from her trip. I do computer forensics and I was able to get info on this person as to where he works, lives, his wifes name, and I even found several ways to contact this guys wife. I see him and his wife post in an anteism forum. I can't recall her ever really mentioning wanting a tattoo before. It seems like she has aligned herself with this person. This new trip also brings back very recent memories of the last trip she went on. I had no idea in the world that she was so deeply depressed. I don't really know where to go from here. I think she genuinely wants to work on our marriage. I don't know if it's more because she knows she has some very good things or she just really doesn't want to go through a divorce financially and deal with child custody. I am willing to do whatever it would take to work on our marriage because I think the effort is well spent compared to going through a divorce. It would kill me not to be able to spend everyday with my kids and put them to bed each night. They are the most important thing to me in the whole world. in the past I thought we had a happy marriage and I don't see why we can't have that again. So now I feel hurt that my wife is continuing this relationship but I don't want to try to force her to stop. I don't know if she cares how much it bothers me and I feel that it has to go away eventually to get to a point where we feel like things can be closer to normal. Sorry to rant but I have been going through hell for the past 3 months. Any advice is much appreciated, especially to get rid of this emotional affair she is having. I am trying to get my life back to normal but I have become depressed over all of this and feel like I need to be on guard for whatever antics my wife tries next.
So she returned in a week and I didn't get much of a warm greeting at all. I felt like I was being avoided. I had planned to sit her down and talk with her how I felt. Her response really shocked me. She said she wants me to give her my understanding as a friend while she tries to work out things in her head. She seemed to indicate she was having some sort of midlife crisis. I had fully wanted to start working on getting our relationship to a better place. I was a little shocked because we had a great family vacation just a short time before this. She even initiated sex and we had a great time. So I suggest counseling and she seems to agree. I want to re-kindle our relationship. So after the fall out of that and me reeling through my mind what just happened I felt lost. I wanted to have a date night where we go to the place we used to hang back when we were dating. She dressed up like she did when she was on her trip. We went out to a few places and had drinks. She would leave the table briefly every now and then and she would check her phone and send people messages. We went to another place and had some drinks. I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back she was texting some guys name that I knew I didn't know. I know most all of her friends as we work in the same line of business. I find out this is someone she met on her trip. Now she is texting him while out with me trying to re-kindle our relationship. What a train wreck that night was. On our way home she indicated that she wasn't attracted to me and she believed that if we had an open marriage it would fix our problems. I completely disagree as I can't see how 2 people that are not being close will become closer by opening up their marriage. I felt like my marriage was completely over at this point. We talked the next day and I asked her about this guy she is texting. She said it was just a friend. Obviously that is not the case. I asked if he is just a friend if she would feel embarrassed if I would see what she is sending him. Her response was so what if we send flirty texts back and forth. This is all not OK with me at all. We agree to sign up for some counseling. She said she never had sex with this guy but I have no way to know either way. I know she met him at a place where she had a fancy hotel thousands of miles away. This person told her that he was having the same marriage problems she had and that he fixed them by having an open marriage. I don't know if that is just a pickup line but it would certainly seem to me like a pretty slick way to pick up vulnerable women. So now here we sit in this state of uncertainty. I started to look at phone records and it appears that she would text him thousands of times in a short number of days while she was at this conference and after. She later admitted to hanging out with him at least 3 nights. I didn't mention I knew about the texts. She then told me that when she left for this conference she was so deeply depressed that she felt like killing herself and she poured her heart out to this random guy. She obviously has some attraction for this person but I still don't know how they met. This guy is married and lives far away. However I have seen that she does text him and I believe she sends him messenger messages during the day. I don't know if this guys wife has any idea of all of this activity and I don't believe I will ever know if they slept together. I do know that looking at her text records, she would text him into the wee hours of the morning and start again right way very early sending thousands of texts. I remained silent about all of this. She seemed to be dealing with a midlife crisis of sorts and now this guy she is attracted to is now complicating things more for us and our family. I quietly watch and my wife would go home from work "sick" and sit and text this guy. I would come home and she would be as nice as can be to me. I didn't let her know that I know. We went on a family vacation for a couple days. I would say at this point the relationship seems more like we are just being nice to each other then like anything that felt more normal like it did before our trip. Then as a little more time passed and we were doing what I would say is trying to work on our relationship, she comes home and wants me to watch the kids while she lays down because she has a headache. All this time I am now depressed and experiencing anxiety with all these things going on. I couldn't sleep and I decided to check her text records and I see she would sneak away while we were on our trip and send this guy messages when she was in the bathroom and a couple other times. I also saw that when she needed to lay down, she texted him from the other room for an hour. I had always known that they were messaging each other and I also know logically me wanting her to stop doesn't mean she will want to stop. But now I was mad. I called her out on it. She denied it and said I was crazy. I told her I can show her. She insisted she was messaging a girl friend. Shortly after that she admitted to it and said she wouldn't lie about it anymore. THis is a very sore spot for me. I don't know a tactful way to make whatever texting relationship she has go away. All of these things have happened in the last couple weeks.
So we went to counseling and I brought up how she has been isolated and not participating at all with the family and how she said she was so depressed and met some guy and has been carrying on an emotional affair at best. My wife goes to counseling to separately. She is putting forth a lot of effort not to not sit on her phone all day and night and will carry on a conversation with me. SHe helps with house things again and started to buy groceries. She added another anti-depressant to her med regimen. We seems to be connecting to some degree. We have had sex on occasion. I am still hurt by her saying she isn't attracted to me anymore. We had a date night and talked about our relationship and it sounds like after much deliberation she wants to stay in the marriage with me. I am still at a loss how we ever got to this point because I have always treated her well and feel like this person she met has more then contributed to our problems. So I have been tollerant of her still texting this person. After I called her out, she no longer sends texts from her phone to him but I believe she uses a messenger program. When I asked her if she still sends them she says yes but not everyday. I feel like whatever this relationship is that she has with this random guy, so needs to go away for us to work on our marriage. I don't know any tactful way to make this happen. I am looking for advice. I can't express how deeply this hurts to think your spouse has some brand new super close relationship with some random guys she seems to be attracted to. This is a problem that bothers me all the time. I also know for certain she is on social media all day at work and can easily message this guy all the time. I also notice her checking her facebook messenger often and I can only believe it is to message this person.
Fast forward to the present. She had informed me she was going to have a girls trip this weekend. Her and her girlfriend would go to a big city from Thursday through Monday. I don't feel like I have any say in anything at all at this point because anytime I say anything I get blasted so I just didn't say much at all. It is very difficult to trust my wife now because she is prone to lie or exaggerate all the time. She had recently denied and lied about keeping in touch with this guy. I don't know if she is meeting him there now or what. I do know that she has 2 phones with her. Seeing her without a phone in her hand and texting is something you almost never see. It appears to me that she is leaving her normal phone in her purse because she appears to be off social media for many hours at a time and i can only believe she is binging on sending this person texts from her work phone while she is out of town like she did last time. I am completely helpless right now and it deeply bothers me that this relationship she has continues. I know that this person is into atheism and tattoos and one of the first thing my wife did is get a tattoo when she returned from her trip. I do computer forensics and I was able to get info on this person as to where he works, lives, his wifes name, and I even found several ways to contact this guys wife. I see him and his wife post in an anteism forum. I can't recall her ever really mentioning wanting a tattoo before. It seems like she has aligned herself with this person. This new trip also brings back very recent memories of the last trip she went on. I had no idea in the world that she was so deeply depressed. I don't really know where to go from here. I think she genuinely wants to work on our marriage. I don't know if it's more because she knows she has some very good things or she just really doesn't want to go through a divorce financially and deal with child custody. I am willing to do whatever it would take to work on our marriage because I think the effort is well spent compared to going through a divorce. It would kill me not to be able to spend everyday with my kids and put them to bed each night. They are the most important thing to me in the whole world. in the past I thought we had a happy marriage and I don't see why we can't have that again. So now I feel hurt that my wife is continuing this relationship but I don't want to try to force her to stop. I don't know if she cares how much it bothers me and I feel that it has to go away eventually to get to a point where we feel like things can be closer to normal. Sorry to rant but I have been going through hell for the past 3 months. Any advice is much appreciated, especially to get rid of this emotional affair she is having. I am trying to get my life back to normal but I have become depressed over all of this and feel like I need to be on guard for whatever antics my wife tries next.