# Help me turn this around ...



## ka5367 (Nov 9, 2009)

First my wife conviences the counselor that I am a bully, I berate her, that I manipulate and control her, and that I get my way with everything. Now, I fell like the cuckold husband who had to agree in front of the counselor that he'd let his wife have lunch dates with other men and have an emotional email affair with a guy she met in a bar, etc. I have now also had to agree to allow her to not pick up the house and allow her to leave her laundry laying around, etc. I am the one giving in to everything here.

Last night was icing on the cake. It was supposed to be girls night out but she didnt come home until just before midnight. I suppose that is okay, but the restaurant she and her girlfriend were supposed to be at closed at 10pm. By 11pm I am both worried and mad so I decide to check her text messages… at 9:45 she is sending a text message to the girlfriend she is supposed to be out to dinner with. Something doesn’t add up.

When she gets home she doesn’t say a word… just goes to bed. I ask her why she is not talkative and she gets mad and says she is tired and worn out and just wants to go to sleep. Frankly, I thought she should tell me about her evening – because something obviously didn’t go as planned (I can tell.) At some point in the evening I now think she is not with her friend like I assume she is supposed to be – that’s all I know and by now I am steaming mad and I can't sleep all night.

In the morning, she is awake earlier than normal and downstairs working on the computer. Hmmm? When I come downstairs she still doesn’t say much to me – she just walks past me and decides to go back to bed. So I grab her phone and check the text message she sent to her friend at 9:45... “Are they there yet?” is the message! WTF… Where the hell was my wife and who is “they”? 

So, now I go upstairs and ask her if she is going to tell me about her evening. She says “We just went out to dinner, why?” I explain that the restaurant closed at 10 and paused. She didnt seem bothered by that at all and offered no explaination. 

When I pressed her for who she was with after dinner, she got mad I was pressing for details and she says her friend Julie. I ask if she was with Julie why was she texting Julie? I press her for more details and nothing. I finall demand, who were you with. And then she admits they met her firend Julie's husband and her old boss for drinks at a bar. 

I don’t think she is lying about where she went or who she was with. I just feel like when she doesn’t tell me the whole story she is hiding something from me and I consider that worse than lying to my face. Am I wrong?

Ultimately, we ended up getting in a big fight and she says that I shouldnt jump to conclusions, that I could have simply assumed that they went to her girlfriends house to relax and have another drink. 

But... she didn’t go there and I did jump to a conclusion. In fact, my conclusion was right! I could see that she was texting her friend at 9:45 - so I obviously assumed they werent together (and I was right.) Yet, the next morning, my wife insisted on saying she was at dinner with her friend all night and she was not volunteering any other information! To me that is lying or worse than lying!

So she gets mad at me because I am insecure and says she doesn’t want to put up with this crap any more. She says she wants her privacy and wants to be able to come and go as she pleases without being questioned. She says she is tired of me making aqusations and jumping to conclusions that she is out screwing around on me. She says she wants me to quit checking her text messages and that she wants a divorce. 

I never imply that she is out screwing around. I really do believe she is not that way. (Yes, I know everyone is going to tell my I am naive. Lets not open that can of worms here.) However, if she isn’t doing anything wrong - then there should be nothing wrong if I happen to review our joint cell phone bill and see who she is textxing. And if the text messages don’t add up to what she is telling me, I ought to have cause to question things – no? 

I am so tired of hearing about divorce. How do I get her to stop throwing that statement around like it’s a baseball?

Bottom line is she says she is just afraid to tell me what she is doing because she doesn’t know how I will react. My thing is, I really wouldn’t care what she was doing as long as I knew about it! But she doesn’t believe that to be true – she just thinks I am prying into her private life. 

Well – in marriage, dont you sort of need to submit to some sort of openness of your schedule with your spouse. While I admit, my reactions may seem controlling and invading to her and I need to tone them down, how do I get her to see I am not being unreasonable in what I expect from a wife?

I am changing, I am making every change she asks for. I am giving her the love and attention she wants and she still doesnt appreciate it. I am giving her all the freedom she is asking for, I just expect honesty in return. 

All I f***ing want is for my wife to love me – I am tired of waiting for that !!!

I cant take it anymore. How do I turn this around?


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## Mal74 (Dec 24, 2009)

It sounds like a really tough situation, and it does sound like your wife is intent on maintaining a life separate from yours and separate from the marriage, in a sense. I'm not sure what's going on with your counselor but it seems like your experience there is not yielding sustainable solutions. I might start by considering a new counselor.

I think I might also suggest to you that you create some boundaries of your own. Waiting for your wife to love you seems, to my eye, unlikely to work. Perhaps you might get more mileage out of all of this by loving yourself enough to say, "here is what I want in our marriage, here is what I am willing to do to have this in our marriage, and here is what I expect from you. If you are not going to participate in the marriage in a way that works for both of us, then we are not staying married."

I'm not really suggesting that you threaten divorce here (though I realize it probably reads like that), but instead, that you establish your parameters and then stick to them. You can do this in a positive and "appreciative" way - in other words, by creating a positive view of your future together.

I'm fumbling around with this. Sorry. The thing is, I think you will get farther by taking more of a leadership position here, rather than waiting for her to love you, and hoping that by giving in to more of her selfishness, you will somehow turn that selfishness around.


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## ka5367 (Nov 9, 2009)

In looking back at this a day later. When she didnt arrive home on time, should I have checked her text messages or called her to ask if she was okay?

It all innocent, and I have verified everything down to the text message (that I incorrectly interpreted.) 

She has a fear of calling me and asking or telling me that they are doing something different than planned because in the past I question why she needs to be at a bar that late at night on a work night. 

I have a fear that she is just lying to me. This all started when she was afraid to tell me she was doing lunch witha guy friend of our and was screwed up even more when some guy in a bar bought her a drink and they traded email addresses.

I am reading to much into email and text messages that I shouldnt be reading in the first place...

First, she was going on lunch dates with another male friend of ours – I don’t care how she wants to justify it, she was doing this behind my back and not telling me. She'll be emailing back and forth with him and say she has to go to becasue she has to get ready to go out to dinner with me and figure out something to wear and he’ll reply back “Something ‘hot’ I hope!” and she’ll say “Of course.” But why the hell are they even talking like this much? I know this is both in their nature and she’s fun spirited like this, but when I felt like she loved me things like this didn’t bother me. Now it just feels a bit inappropriate to me for some reason and I wish it didn’t.

Second, some guy bought her a drink in a bar – which I don’t have a problem with. Frankly, that’s good for a woman’s self-esteem. But she traded email addresses with the guy and secretly emailed him a few dozen times before she bothered to tell me it was going on. Six months later they are still communicating. The conversations are very emotional and share intimate details about my wife’s relationship and state of affairs of our marriage (and as he shares info about his separation and divorce.) It is NOT appropriate in my opinion to be sharing this stuff with another man, much less continuing the email relationship when she knows it bothers me. As an example of what upsets me about this is she will text me and tell me ‘she loves me and wants to be with me and needs me to believe it’ yet the very next day she will email this guy and tell him she doesn’t like me or is not happy with me and doesn’t think she ever will like me or be happy with me, etc. Sounds like she’s lying to someone! But in reality stepping back she is saying something totally different to me than she is to him, right?

How do I get over this fear, insecurity and stop reading things into email messages that I shouldnt be reading in the first place (or should I) ???


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## jitterbug (Feb 13, 2010)

Your W is involved in an emotional affair with the guy she's been emailing.The defining elements are there.......the secrecy
(she kept this hidden from you for awhile, correct?)

as well as the sharing of intimate, personal details about their relationships.They're creating a "nobody understands me like you do" dynamic.........and it undermines the primary relationship.It also uses up time and energy that could be better invested in repairing your marriage.

It leaves you feeling like you're left out in the cold, with your nose pressed up against the glass. (I've experienced it myself)

I'd like to recommend reading _Not Just Friends_ by Shirley Glass...it's a very comprehensive study about the dynamics of emotional affairs---how they can start---how much damage they can do---and how to recover a marriage or life partnership
afterwards.

reading that helped me to see that what I was feeling was normal, and that not all opposite sex friendships are harmless.

I also see your W's unwillingness to be forthcoming as a red flag.
It may be a stubborn rebelliousness, her way of asserting her autonomy...........

.....but it could be a sign that she's being unfaithful....her defensiveness and blame-shifting are classic signs of someone with a guilty conscience. It may be a good idea to keep your eyes open for awhile.


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## ka5367 (Nov 9, 2009)

I've had my 'eyes open' for 6 months or more; I have been intercepting all Internet traffic/communications and tracking her every move ouside the house. As a former investigator, I can find no evidence of her actually physically cheating and I trust her enough to know she wouldnt. Its just the independence thing about her and inconsistencies in the info she provides thats killing me. We didnt used to be like this until recently and I just want my insecurities to stop!


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## jitterbug (Feb 13, 2010)

I'm so sorry you're going through this.

But I don't think your insecurities will stop, until she's willing to be an open book with you.If she's being evasive, secretive,then insecurity is a natural reaction. Please don't beat yourself up for feeling that way.

Even if you've not encountered any evidence of her cheating physically........

.she _is_ cheating emotionally, which can be just as devastating, and damaging.Perhaps even more so.

When I found out that my SO was discussing our relationship with a woman who I didn't even know, I felt enormously betrayed. Realizing that he was complaining about me behind my back, _but __couldn't __have __a __heart_-_to_-_heart __with __me_, was crushing.It was like being sucker-punched.In the heart.What really infuriated me was that he was telling me, "everything's fine...' to my face, and saying the opposite behind my back.

I'm guessing that's what you're feeling right now, after reading her email exchanges with her "friend".

Maybe you could try the "shoe-on-the-other-foot" tactic.

Ask your wife how she would feel if you formed a friendship with another woman, and discussed all of your marital issues with her.

Sometimes people don't consider how their actions affect others, until they imagine the same thing happening to them.

For the record, I'm not against opposite sex friendships, but have learned after my experience, that friends should be a friend of the marriage....if not, there can be trouble, in many forms.

The litmus test I use now is the "dinner test".
Any man that I'm friends with, or any woman my SO is friends with , should be able to come and have dinner with my SO and myself......without there being any tension, or discomfort, for any of the individuals.

If your W insists that her frienship with this guy is innocent, ask her if she'll have him over for dinner with both of you.


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## ka5367 (Nov 9, 2009)

jitterbug said:


> The litmus test I use now is the "dinner test".


I think you are dead on with your comments - thanks! I also think any of these guys she would invite over for dinner. So i think I am overreacting based on that test. But it still doesnt feel good and all the tension it has caused between us.


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## OneMarriedGuy (Apr 5, 2010)

Quote:
Originally Posted by jitterbug View Post
The litmus test I use now is the "dinner test".

Well, in theory that on works... But if he is uncomfortable and his wife an "friend" are just fine how does that work? Is he then overbearing, jealous and controlling? Or are the wife and "friend" simply oblivious to the marital boundaries? Quite frankly I think I could see it going both ways.

ka5367
Wow, there are SO many variables in this. I guess the thing that amazes me the most is that a marriage counselor would encourage "wife have lunch dates with other men and have an emotional email affair with a guy she met in a bar,"

There are good attorneys and bad attorneys, good carpenters and bad carpenters, there have to be good counselors and bad as well ... which do you feel this one is? On the other hand I will play devils advocate here... If they thought that without doing this that your wife would have immediately bolted leaving no chance for reconciliation then maybe it was a way to buy time and hopefully work that part out when other areas started getting better.

At any rate you have a complicated situation, that hits way close to home for me. I don't have any real good answers. I can tell you that while my wife was certainly having an emotional affair, I do believe it went no further. Also that we are working at making things better and they have gotten much better. At the same time she still has her myspace and twitter all protected and private and has her private chats and flirts but ... cant fix in 9 months that which was rotting away for 9 years.

Best of luck


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## turnera (Jan 22, 2010)

WHY does she feel she needs to have a separate life from you?

Are you categorically stating that those things you first spoke of do not happen, that you don't try to control things, that you don't berate her, etc.?

Somewhere in your marriage, she decided she no longer trusts you. That usually means that something happened in YOUR 50% of the marriage to make her believe that. Are you addressing this at all?


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## larniegrl (Oct 7, 2009)

I don't agree with you wife's behavior...just had to state that first.

However, reading the situations and your own "insecurities"...it really paints you as being controlling. I can empathize with why you are checking the e-mails/phone records...but the confronting her about the issue (ie waking her up, following her around, interrogating the issues) only to discover that you didn't have the whole story to begin with. If this has happened more than once...it be something driving her away. I'm not condoning her behavior, just offering another perspective. 

You need to make some serious boundaries in your marriage. You sounds like you are on an emotional rollercoaster. I know the feeling of being second to your mate. It is a HORRIBLE place to be in, but you are not helping anything with this behavior. Discover what you want out of your marriage...it might be good for you to speak to a counselor alone about this issue...about you. 

She has to compromise too. I have never liked the idea that married individuals having close friends of the opposite sex. I know that some people can do it, but the majority of those relationships seem to turn into something more. 

There has to be a balance, but she will never open up to you...if she knows you will continue to react like this.


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