Am I right to feel this way?

samatedge · 01-09-2013, 07:29 AM

My wife and i will be celebrating 16 years of marriage in Feb (20 years total). Our last few years have been very difficult. It started when the real estate market crashed and my income dropped 75%. I became depressed, had a near nervous breakdown. I fought to get my health back by working out and changing my eating habits drastically.

Then i began focusing on making changes in my business to regain the income I once had. This involved me working a lot of extra time which in the end lead tme to make a career change. I started a company with two male partners. Things didnt go as id hoped and my income continue to nose dive while i worked longer and longer hours.

My wife began getting very mad at me because i was working so much and not making any money. I began looking for a full time salaried job, where all of my adult life ive worked on commission. It took me several months to find something but I did. So i now have a full time job that pays a salary plus commission.

I now only work 40 hours per week and spend all of my free time with my kids and my wife.

During the rough patch we seperated until I noticed there were hundreds of calls going out and coming in to the same phone number on my wifes cell phone. I didnt recognize the phone number so i called it and it was another man.

Long story short, my wife had been having an EA with OM for over a year. After pouring over the phone recordsi was astonished how much time these two talked. On average they talked 40 hours per month, which ismore than an hour per day. My wife has multiple close girlfriends and the calls to OM were as much as all other calls combined.

So were reconciling. I moved in the home the day I discovered. Shes not had any contact with him since.

Now as were reconciling, my wife still insists on spending a night or two away from the home with her girlfriends. Saturday she went and spent the night at a girlfriends. I made sure to confirm thats where she was at.

If she doesnt spend the night, she has a pretty regular weekly get togetherf at a near by bar with the same girlfriend and another, both of whom are either recently divorced or in the process.

These sort of regular weekly meetings are of course in addition to other girls nights with other groups of women like book club, periodic girls weekends etc...she has a girls weekend planned for March.

We used to hang out with our couples friends all the time, including the two she sees regularly now. In fact one of the girls was my friend first all the way back to highschool. They became fast friends when i introducedd them....

Anyway, im feeling like there is no time leftover for us to go out on date nights. We have a hectic schedule like everyone else, 2 young kids etc...

Ive expressed my concerns to my wife and her response is sometthing like: "im not going to ditch my girlfriends!. They were there for me during the time you were gone working."

And im not asking her to give up her friends. I do have an issue with her spending so much time with recently divorced and now single friends all the time. Im asking that we get back to what we used to do which is to spend time together with our married friends, the wifes of whom, were also among the girls who were there for her when i was working so much.

The way i look at it, is there are seasons in life. Now is a time we should be focsing on us. Yet i also realize there are benefits to spending time apart. Ive never ever been jealous or controling but before i never had a reason to be concerned about her cheating. I literally get anxiety now when she hangs out with her friends because it was in this tye of setting where she met the OM.

Am i asking too much to ask her to do away with the regular girls nights out??
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samatedge · 01-09-2013, 09:45 AM

For some additional clarification. When I left my former career in March 2011 I was able to receive unemplyoment benefits and my wife gave me 6 months to get the business going. She understood full well that I was going to have to pour everything I had into getting the business going so she knew I was going to be working a lot.

She would've preferred that I go out and get 3 "whatever" kind of jobs, if necessary, rather than trying to get this business started but she supported me in doing so. The point I'm trying to make is - on one hand she says it was the time away from her and the kids that was the issue, but if I had gone out and gotten 3 "whatever" jobs I'd have been gone more because for much of the time I was running the business from home and I'd have had no flexibility in my schedule at all.

During those 6 months I looked for employment while trying to get the business giong. When the 6 months were done, I shifted my time and spent more time on looking for employment but still tried to make the business work.

I was in desperation mode and needed something to work - if I'd have gotten a job offer, I'd have taken it and let the business go.

It took me until August of 2012 to find a suitable full time job. In November 2012 I discovered that my wife had been having an affair since September, 2011 that I'm aware of. It could have started earlier but the phone records only went back that far. I have since requested the phone records that were not available online so we'll see how far back this went.

The emotional affair was physical at least one time. I grabbed her phone one night and listened to her voicemails and there were several on there from OM. All of the messages from him said he loved her.

One of the messages said "I loved how deeply we kissed last night. I'm so happy that you feel the same way....later in the message it talked about having her pinned against the wall with her hands in her pants and his fingers deep inside of her and how he imagined this was his co*ck. She insists there was only kissing.

During all of this time that I was trying to find work and start a business, that's all I did. I didn't work out, I didn't spend time with friends. I was either working or home. I was in desperation mode and was determined to fix our financial mess.

I was dealing with severe depression, anxiety, sleep apnea and high blood pressure - all that had developed because of this whole mess.

Up until this time in our lives, I'd provided for my family very well - earning 6 figures most years and we had what I and all of our friends thought was a model marriage. It wasn't perfect and I certainly have not been a perfect husband or father. But it was pretty damn good.

I'd like to get back to that point - but feel its difficult if my wife insists on continuing her weekly "girls night out". We need this time to mend our marriage and I want her to make that a priority.

Wiserforit · 01-10-2013, 07:59 PM

A wife getting angry at her husband for working so hard is like a husband getting angry for the wife keeping a tidy home, cooking wonderful meals and being an absolute **** every night in the bedroom.

Read up on the 180. She's a cake-eater. She should be busting her fanny to win her marriage back. Instead she is wearing the pants in this family and you are wearing an apron. That's why she doesn't have sufficient respect.

The answer to her friends "being there" for her while you were busting your butt for the family is to say fine - then they can support you. I'd be filling out the divorce papers, telling her to move out, preferably with one of those dear friends of hers to enjoy her new life with them.

You can't "nice" your way out of this. Cake-eaters only understand the cold hard reality of consequences.

Mavash. · 01-10-2013, 08:02 PM

I just pray you never get really sick. She's a fair weathered wife. Great as long as the money flows freely but bangs someone else the minute life doesn't go her way.

moxy · 01-10-2013, 08:14 PM

I agree w Mavash. Fair weather wife. You deserve better.

EleGirl · 01-10-2013, 08:16 PM

A wife who cannot truely support you for a year while you solve an income crisis is no wife at all.

Does your wife have a job outside the home?

The next time your wife tells you that she will not give up the friends who supported her while you were working all those hours .. you might want to bring up that you had no one supporting you while you fought to get some kind of income source going for your family.

It sounds like your major problem is that you agreed to reconcile your marriage with her hardly doing anything to win back your trust and work on your marriage.

It's time to make some serious decisions here. If you want to repair your marriage you have to be willing to lose it. She has to realize that you will not stay if she keeps up this nonsense.

A couple needs to spend a minimum of 15 hours a week together, just the two of them. If they don't the passion/love in the marriage will die. So you have to fight for getting that time. It's generally 1-2 hours every night after work (after kids go to bed) and then long dates on weekends. If she cannot give you that time then the marriage is over.

Also, do you really know what is going on when she's out with friends? You might want to start checking.

LastDance · 01-11-2013, 03:02 AM

I wouldn't like it myself if I was in your shoes. I'm also very old school in my thinking that married people have no business in a "singles" environment without their spouse with them. Couldn't she be equally supportive in a coffee shop as a bar? Or perhaps in one of her friend's home??

And I think I'd be pointing out priorities are way out of whack here. Hers and her friends. If they were so supportive while you were busting your ass working on getting your business up and running why are they not supporting getting her marriage up and running? And if she plays the "they need support because their marriages failed" I'd suggest they should then be extra supportive of their dear friend's marriage. Instead it appears they are encouraging her to do things that are damaging the marriage.

I have to agree with the advise given that you read up on the 180 to help her see the light because this lady appears to be in the dark on what she should be doing.