Handling a wife's emotional affair or maybe the EA of my wife's friend toward my wife

iheartlife · 06-27-2012, 10:17 AM

danielria, you will want to open up your own thread.

What you can do is open up a second tab in your web browser, go to the talk about marriage forum, and then I'd choose the Coping with Infidelity forum.

Then, keeping this thread open that we are in right now, I'd copy the text you just typed up. Then I'd go back to the other tab (Coping with Infidelity forum) and in the upper left, just above "Threads in Forum" you will see a button that says "new thread." Click that and then paste the text you copied.

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To answer your question more directly, get the book Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass. It's an excellent, excellent book that explains emotional affairs like no other because Glass was a nationally recognized researcher in infidelity and her book summarized her knowledge and learning.

What you are seeing is that your wife has become infatuated with her ex. She is experiencing it as "love" because the emotion is that sensation of falling in love. It is very powerful and she will continue to contact him unless you draw a line in the sand.

You are saying you did not listen to her when she was expressing a deeply felt wish. That obviously is a tough thing and now she's gone (very inappropriately, in a very selfish way) to get that need fulfilled outside of marriage. There are likely things that you will need to do to improve the communications between you, and that will almost surely require good-quality pro-marriage counseling.

However, that cannot happen before she fully ends contact with this man. That would involve her writing a No Contact message that you supervise and oversee the sending (there are formats on the forum). That is creating a definitive break and ending ritual of their contact, an acknowledgment that it's inappropriate and it has to end FOREVER with no "but you'll always be in my heart"s or "I'm still thinking of you no matter what happens" etc. That just keeps the door open to contact him again and again.

Until she ends it with him (and you will need to continue to verify it for a bit, because infatuation is so strong), you have 3 people in the marriage and counseling and changing won't work.

PRelationships · 09-27-2012, 04:32 AM

One of the greatest marital problems I would have to say is no communication or the lack of it. Many times we talk but we do not listen. We do selectively listening, that is, we only take in what we want to hear. Why? Maybe because we think it is not important. Or the issue is too massive to handle. So we pretend its not there or its not so serious. We hide underneath the pillow hoping the problem will go away. Well, the reality is, its not going to go away.

If you seriously want to get your wife back, you will have to take action straight away. It begins with your thoughts. From my experience, many marriages which seem doomed, actually survived. I believe marriages can be salvaged. If you really love your wife, you could consider putting your wife's needs above others. It says to her, she is important and valued.

Commit to each other by making a decision in advance that in the event of problems arising in the marriage, you will make reconciliation your priority.

Spend time with each other. You mentioned that you both are too busy. Well, healthy relationships take time to grow, so spend time doing things together. Go on dates again, make it fun! Play and laugh together...

Hope my suggestions can help you in some way. Do get help though if you are at a lost on what to do because it can be really overwhelming..

WillK · 09-27-2012, 11:13 PM

Out of all the stories like mine, why does this new poster choose my thread from nearly 5 months ago to jump in?