Talk About Marriage banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

I'm tired of wondering

11K views 55 replies 19 participants last post by  SunCMars 
#1 ·
Hi everyone, I'll try to make this as concise as possible.

Wife and I are in our late 20's, been married for 8 yrs and have a 6 year old. Shortly after our son was born, my wife became a SAHM. I work full time and go to school to support the family. A couple of years ago we moved into our home (rental). We have a great relationship and I love her unconditionally.

My wife started babysitting about a year ago to earn some extra money for the family, shortly after our son started going to school. She's been diagnosed with anxiety and depression and takes medication, but has confided to me that she doesn't think she can enter the workforce again. So she babysits during the day while I work.

My wife is what you would call "420" friendly. She likes to smoke and although I do not, I don't mind if she does it responsibly, after I get home and after our son goes to bed.

We live next door to our landlord, who is confined to a wheelchair and is in bad health. His brother, who is an absolute loser of a man stays with him and is his caretaker. This man has never had a job, is in his mid 50's and takes care of my landlord for room and board. This man also likes to smoke weed.

My wife and this man (caretaker) have developed a friendship over the past couple of years, where she will go over to his house and smoke with him. I've allowed this (stupidly) because I have never seen this man as a threat to our marriage. He has the mental capacity of a 12 year old it seems.

Over the course of the last few years, he has bought her gifts (small things here and there) and will do things like check our mail and bring it to our home. I started to get a little aggravated about it because I could see that his intentions were starting to come off as strange. She friended him on Facebook and he was sending her messages constantly. Nothing bad, just videos and funny pictures, but the volume was staggering (20+ overnight).

I finally had about enough and told her that I felt like he was not behaving in a way that was supportive of our marriage and I didn't want her hanging around him anymore. She says the reason she even goes to see him is because she's been around kids all day and just wants to get out of the house for a while during the week and relax. She swears he has never acted inappropriate towards her, and that she would never give him the impression that that kind of behavior would be acceptable. She however, doesn't feel like there's anything wrong with her behavior and has not stopped going over despite my request.

He calls her just about every night, sometimes twice a night to try and get her to come over to his house. Since I voiced my objections, she will now ignore his calls. He has stopped sending Facebook messages almost completely, and does not give her gifts anymore. I am afraid that there is at least a EA going on, and my objections have just driven this underground. I can't honestly believe that she could ever be attracted to this guy. He is basically a functioning homeless person, but I guess anything is possible.

My gut has been screaming for a while now. She doesn't act differently, doesn't dress up to see this guy. Our sex life is the same as it's always been. However I have been reading a lot about "distancing" psychological techniques and the way to make someone feel not as likely of a threat, and I believe she is doing this subconsciously. "He's a loser" " I hate him" etc. She now has been claiming that by going over she is "keeping the peace" by being nice to our landlord and checking on him to make sure he's ok. I don't know if I'm overly paranoid (my last relationship ended in a PA so I'm hyper sensitive and don't want to be played again) but I don't want to accuse my wife of something she hasn't done. I've VARed the house, no contact during the day while I'm gone. No texts, he doesn't even own a cell phone.


She knows how I feel about this and will be OVERLY nice to me if she wants to go over when I get home. I don't know if I should go too, but I don't like the guy one bit and it would be very awkward and they would obviously know what I was doing. I also don't want him in my house. The other day I overheard her talking to a girlfriend and she admitted that she thinks he has a crush on her, but laughed it off to her girlfriend. Any advice would be appreciated. I love my wife but if I confirm anything is going on I'm gone. 100%
 
See less See more
#3 ·
@Keke24 would you have sexual tension with someone who is 25 years older than you? That's the part that had kept me from blowing up. If this guy was 30 I would have never allowed this. But he seems strange (like a burnout) who on the surface doesn't seem harmful. It would be helpful to have a female perspective.
 
#4 ·
#6 ·
You are a bit naive.

He's a man without much, he'll take it if he can get it.

She is also a bit naive and her boundaries are problematic for a wife and mother.

25+ years or not she's getting something from a male figure in her life other than you.

Why isn't she getting her release time with you?
 
#8 ·
How about moving?
 
#9 ·
FSU,

Your gut is going off for a reason, my guess is that this dude is making attempts to breach your Ws defenses and will succeed to some measure if he has not already.

OM-3 with my W was 85 years old, and as my W put it disgusting, I never met him although I went looking before he died. So why did my W drive him places, go into his apartment, become accepted by his family, make statements to me that cheaters make and accept gifts from him?

I think the answer is that he was meeting my Ws needs in ways I was not, when I was not there, he gave her admiration, he gave her unconditional acceptance, he flattered her in ways he had refined over the years. I not sure if my W complained about our marriage to OM-3 but it would not surprise me as that is part of the progression in conversation that OM become good at.

Tamat
 
#12 ·
Then tell your wife the smoking with him is over.

And have Andy talk to the guy. :D
 
#13 ·
@Andy1001 I get you. I have debated this more than once. I have an MMA background and I could hurt this guy if given the opportunity. He is deathly scared of me, doesn't speak to me whatsoever. If I were to do that, it most certainly would end with us having to move, something I'm not financially able to do.
 
#17 ·
"Accidents" happen all the time.Ok I'm not really suggesting you hurt him but you need to take some sort of action.Go over there and tell him that if he ever let's your wife inside his house again you will take certain actions to ensure her safety.Like breaking both his legs.
 
#14 ·
I think the thing that bothers me is that I've made it an issue and instead of taking my feelings into account, my W thinks it's no big deal. I don't know (other than a D untimatum) what would convince her that I am seriously upset about it.
 
#18 ·
Probably because she does not see him as any threat to you. She is laughing about him to her girlfriend, remember?
 
#25 ·
FSU,

You wrote, I'm doing all I can to keep us comfortable while finishing school.

The OM knows this as well, you or I might not do something like this to someone elses wife out of compassion for her children, husband or even her general state of well being, but this OM is an opportunist.

People may mock you for seeing this guy as a threat, but most of the people who will mock you have no understanding of how powerful emotional affairs are and will not be there for you when your marriage falls apart.

Tamat
 
#26 ·
First off, thank you everyone for your responses. It helps to be able to vent. I truly do not believe this man has any quality that a woman my age would be looking for. He has no job, no financial resources, he is not good looking, and could not provide anything even coming close to what I could. I have sat her down before and asked her to just understand where I'm coming from. She seems to think she's entitled to a break from her stressful day, and this is how she chooses to spend it.

Onto the next issue, we pay for her "recreation". I would never allow her to get things for free or to pay for it "some other way". He doesn't seem to have many? friends, so perhaps he does enjoy the company of someone else who he can smoke with. Unfortunately that person is my wife. I will be sitting her down again to discuss my issue. I'm getting to the point where this is turning into a deal breaker for me. Am I wrong in assuming that a spouse should respect the others boundaries?
 
#27 ·
Of course you are not wrong.

Is she an addict? Is that why you don't think she will listen if you lay down the law?
 
#31 ·
You are not wrong to want your relationship with your wife to be safe. Hope she feels the same about it.

I know that everyone is discounting the weed dude, but remember, he does not have to be enough for a long term relationship.

A wrongly spent 5 mins will be more than enough to wreak your marriage.

Good luck.
 
#34 ·
@FSU, your DW is quite a bit immature, if you have to explain this more than twice.

Ask her how she would feel if you spent so much time getting high with some other woman because you needed to relax?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Primrose and jld
#37 ·
I have raised the issue to her before and her response was of course that she trusts me and wouldn't be upset. I honestly could never believe that. The truth is that she would flip.

My wife is an amazing mother and caregiver. I would never disparage her in that regard. She takes medication to treat serious issues but that does not affect her ability to care for our son or the children she watches. She works her butt off, she just simply doesn't feel like she is at a place now where she can be in a traditional working environment.

As I said before, my previous relationship ended in a PA that I found out about and devistated me. I don't believe I have ever been able to trust anyone 100% since. I don't know that I ever will. I have always been paranoid since. I want to trust my wife to do what she says, but I always hear "trust your gut" and I'm torn between Wondering if this is something I should really be concerned about or if I'm just projecting the potential issues from my past.
 
#39 ·
If your wife is involved in a car accident and is drug tested she will fail the test.If your child is with her he may be removed to foster care and then you will really know what heartache is.
Let me tell you something about cannabis that a lot of people don't know.In Dublin,Ireland,there is a prison called mountjoy.A few years ago there was an epidemic of heroin in the prison and nobody seemed to understand how it happened so quickly.What transpired was the prison had brought in a system of drug testing and had by law to give twenty four hours notice to the prisoners.The problem was cannabis can take weeks in certain cases to leave the human body.Heroin on the other hand takes only hours so someone going to prison who liked to get high started using heroin whereas before all they ever did was smoke weed.
I use this example to show you that just because your wife only smokes pot at night when you are looking after your son it will be in her system for weeks and if she is tested for any reason she will fail.And then your troubles will really begin.
 
#41 ·
FSU,

You asked me, @TAMAT,How did you resolve your situation? How did you finally get her to admit what was going on?

I told my W that I wasn't going to put up with it anymore, I also told my W that OM-3s kids and grandkids would be held accountable if anything was going on or had gone on.

Had I done nothing I believe the resolution would have been to keep doing things with OM-3 and for her to become almost a sister or some sort of step-mother to OM-3s daughters.

I had sleepless nights and nightmares while this was going on and I destroyed the gifts he had given her as a way of getting rid of his influence.

In the end she told OM-3 his attentions towards her were inappropriate, and she said he apologized. After my W cooled things off with him he became very depressed and died a short while after. My W wanted to see him when he was dying but I told her she could not go without me so she did not go.

I still trigger when one of his daughters sees my W when we are out and hugs my W, I would guess that his daughters had become hardened to his cheating on their mom when he was younger and saw what went on with my W and OM-3 as nothing.

I'm not sure what my W feels about that time in her life she avoids talking about it, but perhaps I should ask her how she would feel sitting at home while I was out with a woman 40 years younger than me.

Tamat
 
#47 ·
This girl is a stoner.She smokes weed every day and her husband is supposedly paying for it.She is unemployable in any job that requires drug testing and she has made it clear to her husband that his boundaries mean nothing to her.She is responsible for the care of her own child and other children,probably while high.
She is quite the prize.
 
#49 ·
I have to speak up on this topic- cannabis is gaining more respect in the medical community. Even the National Institutes of Health reported that their studies in mice showed that cannabis has the ability to shrink cancerous tumors and kill cancer cells while preserving healthy ones.

There is also non-psychoactive CBD, a compound in cannabis that doesn't produce a high. There is evidence in peer-reviewed studies that CBD can benefit a lot of people who are currently suffering side-effects while on pharmaceuticals. Some drug tests can also detect CBD and this is a major obsticle for people like truck drivers, who suffer from industry-related ailments like insomnia, etc. who could greatly benefit from CBD/cannabis supplementation.

There is also evidence that small doses of THC (psychoactive) help teens and young adults with symptoms of ADHD. One doctor in Santa Barbara who formerly worked in the Federal Drug and Substance Abuse program for 20 years recommends it to teens in his practice with ADHD with great results in improving their performance in school, and life. He says the stigma surrounding cannabis is a problem and that many teens and young adults who use cannabis are in fact self-medicating.

All of this to say that for many people, including moms with PPD, children with autism, ADHD, or seizures, cannabis can be life-changing and with FAR fewer health risks than pharmaceuticals.

I apologize if this seems like a threadjack, but I wanted to speak up because I don't want the OP to think negatively of his wife for using cannabis, unless she is a chronic user and is using it in an unsafe way around her child. I think the OP's issue here is her inappropriate boundaries around men, not the fact that she uses cannabis.
 
#48 ·
She doesn't act differently, doesn't dress up to see this guy. Our sex life is the same as it's always been.
We all know the old guy wants to do ALL KINDS of naughty things to her. He's 50 and male. But he wants to do that with ALL females he knows between 18 and 55 that aren't...unappealing. He doesn't act on it with ANY of them, I'd say.

My gut, for what it's worth in this case, believes her. She just likes hanging with him. And I'm not saying hanging with another person that much outside of her marriage is healthy, necessarily. But the OP did. He was hunky-dory with it until he got paranoid about a sexual/emotional connection.
 
#51 ·
This is all true information. The problem lies in her using prescription drugs for anxiety and depression while she is smoking cannabis. She smokes every day and if we were talking about alcohol she would be classed as an alcoholic. We can all look up reports about the benefits of cannabis. If she is using illegal cannabis and working around children I would prefer to err on the side of caution.
 
#52 ·
I once dated a married women and when I inquired about her husband she said don't worry about him because I blew him last night and been giving him all the sex he wants. You should not have to wonder about your spouse. Odds are that if she is making excuses for her behavior rather than quelling your concerns, she is cheating. I would have a problem even if she was not cheating but behaving in a way that makes me believe she is cheating. I do not need to see proof to know what I feel and whether she is cheating or not, she is making you feel uncomfortable and refuses to do anything about it. If it sounds like cheating, looks like cheating and feels like cheating, it is cheating. I know that when I had an girlfriend that I first showed my wife more attention and then started to distance myself from her. All of her faults all of a sudden became a big deal. I was distancing her to get rid of the guilt feelings I have. It is far more easier to cheat on someone you feel you no longer love than one you still love.

Don't worry about us though, we ended up in a non monogamous marriage not because of me, but because my wife came out as bisexual and wanted her girlfriend to move in with us. Her girlfriend was with us for 30 years and that is a lot more time than I spent with a handful of one night stands.
 
#54 ·
Ok.Am I completely in the wrong in being concerned about some pothead being left in charge of young children.Is this now considered acceptable behaviour for a parent.I would like all the drug apologists on this forum to consider this.
She is a stoner with no behavioural boundaries who is left in charge of her own child and someone else's children and she is being excused because she neede some adult conversation.
WTF.
 
#55 · (Edited)
None of us are excusing her behavior and boundaries. I just don't want to villainise her for using cannabis, since I know women who have had success with cannabis to treat conditions that can be very difficult in a marriage/family (depression, anxiety, pain, PPD, bi-polar, etc.). So I wanted to point it out, that just because she might not pass a drug test due to cannabis, that doesn't make her automatically unfit as a wife and mother. Similar to how prescribed opiate use or A/D or ADHD meds wouldn't- unless she's abusing it, in which the OP can add that to the list of his issues with his wife.

And no, I don't think that drinking a glass or two of wine a night would raise a red flag for me either. Many doctors recommend that. A bottle? Yes, that would be an issue.

ETA* Cannabis is now legal in most states, including ours. So that might make a difference to how you feel about the OP's wife using it.
 
#56 ·
This I could never understand,

She is your wife.

This other guy is a man. Slow witted, un-employed, whatever. He poses a threat.

Stop talking to your wife. Just stop it.

Go talk to this Dude. Tell him, in no uncertain terms, to:

"Stay the EF away from my wife".

Tell him: "I do not like you. I have no use for you, you are nothing to me".

Get your own GD women!

Stare at him for ten seconds and ask him if he has any questions.

If he says that [the wife] wants to talk to me. I am not forcing anything with her.

Tell him, "That was before, you WILL listen to Me, now. My wife is off limits! Raise your voice, Bring down the rafters.

I cannot recommend getting in his face if he persists, but that would be my next move.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top