# She had an EA and now she doesn't trust ME??



## upstate_guy (Oct 28, 2010)

Once again had a painful conversation with W last night about the 3-month-long email/phone/text 'friendship' that she was carrying on with an ex boyfriend. She apologizes for the fact that it hurt me and has cut off all contact with him since I discovered it but she still maintains that she didn't do anything wrong. She got very upset when I asked her last night if there had been any further contact between her and him since she sent the "no contact" email. (There hasn't been and she resented the fact that I could even think it was possible.)

She tells me that she was only seeking friendship and had no romantic feelings for OM. I don't think the 'purely platonic' feeling was mutual as he kept asking for her to send pictures of herself and mentioned how nice it would be to meet up for food and drinks the next time she was in town (7 hours away.) I want to trust her that she really wasn't looking for anything romantic but I feel like she still crossed boundaries of what is acceptable for a married woman to be doing.

Maybe I did screw things up by dwelling on it and imagining worst-case scenarios. Still, I was genuinely hurt when I discovered it, and feel like I am lucky I caught it when I did because it would probably still be going on today (and possibly escalating to a more romantic EA or possibly PA). I just tried to be honest with her about what my feelings were about her actions.

My wife is now upset with ME because she says that "I made up a situation in my head that didn't really exist and let that cause me to doubt her faithfulness". She says that she thought we had a rock-solid trust between us and now I have shaken that because I showed that I would let something that was all "in my head" affect me in that way. I think this is pretty unfair because I _did_ always have complete trust in her prior to this incident and she was the one that took the actions that made me feel otherwise. It's also causing her to not be as open to working on our relationship now because she needs to find a way to 'forgive me' first. We had been making some progress prior to last night's blowup.

So, did I screw up or is she just trying to deflect everything onto me? She seems to truly believe that her intentions were innocent, she says she would never cheat on me and just wanted a friend, and feels that I am being out of line in having my feelings hurt and having feelings of doubt based on the fact that she tracked down an Ex online and carried on a 3 month correspondance with him.


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## louiswin (Nov 4, 2010)

My wife had done something similar with a male co-worker recently. You have done the best thing by putting a stop to this before it escalated into something more. In your situation, there was a reason why this friend was her boyfriend in the past. I'm not sure if she wanted to relive those romantic feelings or not, but the fact that he was her ex boy-friend should fly all kinds of red flags. Don't beat yourself up on something that every husband should do in that situation.


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## SadSamIAm (Oct 29, 2010)

You were right to ask her to stop. She might not have done anything wrong, but I think it was playing with fire. 

Now that she says it is over, you need to not bring it up. You may not trust her and you may be suspicious, but don't let her know. Give it time, keep your eyes open and eventually you may come to trust her again. 

She might expect you to trust her absolutely, but we all know that is very difficult when something like this has happened (suspicious behavior). Give her a break and give it time. 

If you continue to dwell on it, it will push her away.


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## cowboyfan (Nov 15, 2009)

Was she keeping this contact with the ex a secret from you, or is she saying this contact wasn't something she thought was worth mentioning?? Based on what this guy was asking/insinuating it seems like he definitely had bad intentions, and although your wife may NOT have had the same intentions if nothing else she needs to know better than to play that game. Same thing happened to me, unfortunately I didn't find out until it blossomed into something bigger.

But at the end of the day, if you're comfortable nothing happened, and you're talking to her about WHY she was carrying on with the ex and didn't think to mention it to you, then you do need to work on rebuilding the trust. Don't interrogate, but as stated above just remain observant and keep communication open with her to maximize your chances of working through it. Good luck!


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## cb45 (Oct 2, 2009)

to yer orig thread Q:

its called "projection" and is a smoke n mirror detour/tactic
to keep u off the trail or yer A-game.

pray for the best, but *prepare* for the worst is my advice.


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## upstate_guy (Oct 28, 2010)

Thanks everyone for your responses. I do believe that my wife didn't enter into this communication with her Ex because she was looking to cheat, though I do still have fears that he would have been able to steer her in that direction over time. I also believe that she didn't tell me because she really did just think it was a friendship with someone who 'understands her' and that it wasn't anything worth mentioning. 

Either way, I guess I'm lucky that I was able to find out and get her to end it before things took a turn for the worse, because even if her intentions were pure at the start, there are clearly many examples of other relationships that started out as nothing but grew over time into full blown EAs & PAs.

I really do want to be able to take her at her word and have full trust in her again, but it's hard because I spent a while assuming the worst about her carrying on with her Ex in this way. It seems that these nightmare scenarios in my head didn't have any basis in reality so I need to undo some of this damage that I've done to myself. I'll do my best to stop dwelling on it and bringing it up now because I've forgiven her and I'm trying to move on, and it does seem to be pushing her away whenever we talk about it.

I'm trying to focus more on what had happened to our relationship that created this environment where she felt that she needed to look outside of our marriage to have her emotional needs met, because I think that's where the real work needs to be done. Hopefully, if we're able to get our relationship back to where it should be and strengthen our bond, I'll be able to fulfill her needs while also putting my own mind at rest.


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## jessi (Feb 11, 2009)

Hi there, 
first of all I want to say stop beating yourself up for fighting for your marriage and your wife, that is your job to protect.....
I think you are being smart by asking her to live with boundaries that you just assumed already existed...tell her you are surprised at the way she thought about it and that she thought having a secret friendship was alright.....
Tell her it's not alright with you and that she can depend on you never crossing that line.....and you expect the same from her....
There are a lot of stories on this site that start with the same kind of story......we all sat back and ignored the situation or trusted our spouses and now a lot of us here are trying to survive our spouses having an affair.......it's a very painful thing to live through and try to work out.....
Consider yourself lucky that you stopped in time .........but by all means from now on you keep one eye open and you are aware of everything she does, I hope she is also transparent with all her correspondence so you can check if you like.....that way that feeling of mistrust will go away in time.
Don't be fooled like a lot of us were............


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## MrQuatto (Jul 7, 2010)

I agree with Jessi, but also keep in mind that there are also a lot of stories on these boards of spouses turning an accusation back on the accuser. In the long run, it turns out in many cases the accuser was correct, the accused simply deflected the situation back to avoid being questioned further. Did dyour W cheatr, I can't say and neither, I suspect, can you. It is simply gut feeling without hard evidence. As was said before, do not feel bad for fighting for your marriage. It may not be a bad idea to remind your W of that as well.

Q~


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## F-102 (Sep 15, 2010)

It's better that she's angry with you now, rather than later while you watch her lawyer and a judge tear every hard-earned dollar and material posession away from you after she left you for the OM! Too many of these stories always have the cheated-on spouse saying: "If only I saw the warning signs and put a stop to it." You did the right thing.
Yes, she is trying to deflect it on to you, because now she has to own up to her betrayal and you blew the whistle on her. Playtime is over!


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## pickil65 (Oct 15, 2015)

Wow! If she took the time to reach out to an EX yes, she is in the wrong, if it was simply a male co-worker or a new friend then I would say your over reacting but an EX that she took time to track down, yes she is the one who broke the trust, the only reason a ex should ever be involved is if there is children involved. But it sounds like there wasn't so she shoulda had no reason to contact him, and if he contacted her first then she should have said hey my ex emailed me isn't that weird or something, to see what you think.


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## kristin2349 (Sep 12, 2013)

pickil65 said:


> Wow! If she took the time to reach out to an EX yes, she is in the wrong, if it was simply a male co-worker or a new friend then I would say your over reacting but an EX that she took time to track down, yes she is the one who broke the trust, the only reason a ex should ever be involved is if there is children involved. But it sounds like there wasn't so she shoulda had no reason to contact him, and if he contacted her first then she should have said hey my ex emailed me isn't that weird or something, to see what you think.



5 year old Zombie thread...


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## HarryDoyle (Jan 19, 2013)

kristin2349 said:


> 5 year old Zombie thread...


* Hey it's almost Halloween, perfect time for a Zombie Thread! *


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## Sports Fan (Aug 21, 2014)

upstate_guy said:


> Once again had a painful conversation with W last night about the 3-month-long email/phone/text 'friendship' that she was carrying on with an ex boyfriend. She apologizes for the fact that it hurt me and has cut off all contact with him since I discovered it but she still maintains that she didn't do anything wrong. She got very upset when I asked her last night if there had been any further contact between her and him since she sent the "no contact" email. (There hasn't been and she resented the fact that I could even think it was possible.)
> 
> She tells me that she was only seeking friendship and had no romantic feelings for OM. I don't think the 'purely platonic' feeling was mutual as he kept asking for her to send pictures of herself and mentioned how nice it would be to meet up for food and drinks the next time she was in town (7 hours away.) I want to trust her that she really wasn't looking for anything romantic but I feel like she still crossed boundaries of what is acceptable for a married woman to be doing.
> 
> ...


You are definately 1000% in the right. She is trying to flip this all on you and deflect away from her foul behavour.

Do not fall for it. She did the wrong thing and it was only a matter of time before the so called innocent friendship developed into a PA.

All PA's start with friendships.

She doesn't get to be mad at you at all. 

There should be consequences for her actions. Instead you are allowing her to give you consequences for not trusting her.

It sounds like you really haven't offered up any real consquences since busting her hence why she is barking up now.

Offer up some real time consequences or else you will be in this situation again cause you failed to assert your boundaries the first time.


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## snerg (Apr 10, 2013)

More Brains.

Zombie threads rule.

I like how you can get sucked in and then offer advice on a 5 year old problem


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## Forest (Mar 29, 2014)

Dang. 

Was just getting warmed up on more "attention prostitute, sanctimonious...." routine.


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## the guy (Aug 3, 2010)

REALLY!!!!!

LOL....

I'M GOING TO TAKE A SHOT IN THE DARK HERE AND SAY......OP IS NO LONGER WITH WW AND MAY NOT NEED THE INPUT!

OR

OP and WW are back together and.....................NO LONGER NEED THE INPUT!!!!!!!!


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## the guy (Aug 3, 2010)

On a side note if someone wants to bring up a zombie thread let it be mine....at least I'm still around.


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## arbitrator (Feb 13, 2012)

upstate_guy said:


> Once again had a painful conversation with W last night about the 3-month-long email/phone/text 'friendship' that she was carrying on with an ex boyfriend. She apologizes for the fact that it hurt me and has cut off all contact with him since I discovered it but she still maintains that she didn't do anything wrong. She got very upset when I asked her last night if there had been any further contact between her and him since she sent the "no contact" email. (There hasn't been and she resented the fact that I could even think it was possible.)
> 
> She tells me that she was only seeking friendship and had no romantic feelings for OM. I don't think the 'purely platonic' feeling was mutual as he kept asking for her to send pictures of herself and mentioned how nice it would be to meet up for food and drinks the next time she was in town (7 hours away.) I want to trust her that she really wasn't looking for anything romantic but I feel like she still crossed boundaries of what is acceptable for a married woman to be doing.
> 
> ...


*Another apt name for your thread would also be  "How she has her cake and eats it too, then still blames me!"*
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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