Advice needed for a male friend about his wife

[LadyTambaOfTambaTown]

My male friend is 41 and has been married for 17 years. Him and his wife married at 18, he is six years older than her and already had a string of buisnesses. She was homeless and had nothing and he put her through law school and she has been a well established family lawyer for 10 years.

He frequently works abroad for up to a week at a time, home for a day or two and then flies off somewhere else.

anyhow, a few weeks ago he called me and said that he thought something was wrong with his dw. she seemed to have changed.

He works with internet/phone security so was able to check her emails/calls etc. She had been away for a week on holiday and usuing his contacts abroad he found out that she had spent the week with another man. Further digging revealed that she is currently seeing 3 other men

She's admitted to 2 of them. He intercepted an email from the bloke abroad confirming her arrangment to visit him again in 2 weeks.

She has said she wants a few months alone to see other men and have some space and in that time he is welcome to see other women. She has gone to stay with her family, leaving the children behind (2 young ds's) He flies to lanzerote on saturday for a week and then she will have the kids.

he doesnt know what to do. She has told everyone that they have seperated yet only told him a couple of days ago. Hes devestated.

He doesnt know whether to let her go and have her space and hope she comes back

To refuse and give her an ultimatium and risk losing her or keeping her and having her continue to cheat on him and resent him and feel trapped - pushing her further away

To finish it completely and ask for a divorce and risk losing his boys who he adores (shes a family lawyer remember!) he is worth millions so a pay out would lose him alot of money too.

His main concern are the children, his wife is an occassional alcaholic - binge drinks

He loves her and doesnt want to lose her but doesnt know what to do.

Any advice to give him? Hes been put on anti-ds and his work is suffering. I dont know what to tell him.

am not trying to pick a fight!

the feel of your post to me is that it is her fault, and he is not to blame at all. if he goes to court he is not going to have everyone agreeing with him so i thought i would post what i thought - i know it isnt exactly supportive but thats how i read it. sorry if i have caused offence.

if my partner read my emails to spy on me i would chuck him. yes, he has a reason to want to do it but i wouldnt care. i would find that a huge betrayal and i dont think i could get over it. i would consider it to be on a level with having an affair. its going behind the other persons back and shows there is no trust left. she is absolutely not in the right, but is clearly not happy in the relationship and is trying to get a life together. she hasnt gone the right way about it, but maybe she has been feeling differently for a long time. im not trying to defend her, i dont know either of them but i was surprised that everyone thought it was ok to read emails - it isnt imo.

keeping a roof over their head is great, but he can do that by paying maintenance. i was told by my solicitor that not being around will count against you in court, even if thats because you are working full time to keep a roof over their heads. that might be upsetting but its the truth, you wanted advice! if you just want support for him i will sod off, but i have been through court over my kids and it is a nasty process. the fact is that if he isnt around he probably wont get custody. my ex tried to paint me as a whore and a drunk, but couldnt answer the question 'why did you leave the kids with her?'. if he was going to use that as an argument it probably wouldnt be very effective, that was all.

good luck to both of them, and the kids. i really do hope they come to a compromise as it just sounds like a no win situation

I dont want to pick a fight either, but I guess cause ive had him on the phone in tears twice today I am upset for him and more than a little angry with his wife, but am trying to be impartial which is difficult because my underlying feelings are that i want to throttle her iyswim.

I know he isnt happy with how much hes having to work, he misses the kids and they miss him.

Hes just such a nice bloke, he really is and he found out when a friend of a friend called him to say he was sorry to hear the news that his wife was leaving him - she'd said nothing to him.

Checking emails isnt a great thing to do when its done in secret I guess (I read dhs all the time btw, and his texts and cant see a problem with it - its not snooping its taking an intrest in your other half ) but he had just found out his wife was the village bike so i think its totally understandable.

PS - dont see how reading an email is on par with having an affiar though... (3 affairs actually ) that might by why i find it difficult to have much sympathy for her - she didnt meet a man and fall in love (sometimes that happens and theres not alot you can do about it) but she is sleeping around, and not discretly. I hope for his sake shes been usuing precautions!

i think tbh if someone told me my husband was having an affair i would check email and phone. However because ur friend works in that enviorment it may be construde as over stepping the mark for privavcy and all that. However his wife for what ever reason is playing away and not thinking in a family sense. Contacting a solictor would be a good thing and someting that i thought off contacting one out of the area so it doesnt become common knowledge to his wife.

how often do we see posts on here saying that a poster suspects their partner is having an affair and the mn advice is to check their phone/emails? And then to dump the bastard once they have the evidence? Sorry but while for the most part I do agree that a partner shouldn't necessarily be reading his dw's emails/texts, I also think that it shouldn't really matter, i.e. the wife shouldn't be sending the types of emails/texts that are inappropriate for her dh to read.

she is clearly a bitch of the highest order, and you have no need to be impartial, if he was my friend i wouldnt be either! she obviously shouldnt have been sleeping around and shouldnt have told people she was leaving him. maybe she will want to go back to him after some time away, but if i was him i would question whether i wanted her back. she is clearly not happy and doing something about it. could he ever be happy with her after this?

i thought he was checking emails before he found out, afterwards i can understand but still think it lowers him. and afaic any betrayal of trust is unforgivable. whether its having an affair or reading emails sneakily to check up on what she was doing. however i am aware that i do not speak for everyone on this subject!

i am serious about the working away thing tho - if he thinks it is going to end up in court he probably ought to see if he can do something about it.

sorry giglinggoblin but I think that you are just totally wrong on this one. If he was routinely spying on her for no reason then that would be one thing, but how can you possibly say it is a betrayal of trust when she has been deceiving him in the most basic way possible? There is no trust to betray in this situation. It's gone. I had to discover my husband was having an affair by reading his e-mails. I felt terrible doing it, but he had been swearing blind that the relationship was platonic, and essentially I needed proof. Which I found in spades. My dh did feel upset about me looking, but you know there shouldn't have been anything to find.

I agree with nick, your friend needs to know where he stands. To be honest if they spend so much time apart then the relationship has probably been weak for a while. A separation may be a good thing. Clearly they can't go on as they are, and the atmosphere must be horrible for the children.

You cannot possibly compare reading emails to having an affair. One is an invasion of privacy the other a complete betrayal. Found out my dd's dad had an affair when I found a letter from another woman. My dd was 6 weeks old. Devastated is not the word. No way you can compare the two-- even he would agree to that!

Tamba I'm sorry about your mate. To be honest sounds like the marriage is over {sad]

He didn't 'just' read her emails though (and I'd agree that reading someone's emails is a huge invasion of privacy, although can see the temptation). Tamba said: 'He works with internet/phone security so was able to check her emails/calls etc. She had been away for a week on holiday and using his contacts abroad he found out that she had spent the week with another man. Further digging revealed that she is currently seeing 3 other men '

That's a lot of snooping using specialist knowledge. Not just opening a hotmail window someone hasn't shut down properly.

In fact, he should be very careful about admitting how he found out about the affair. Don't know what the situation is in Ireland, but in this country he could have been breaking data protection laws.

if you notice, i said i am aware that i do not speak for everyone on this subject! to me this sort of invassion of privacy would be just as bad as having an affair, possibly even worse - i could live with the knowledge dp had done something with someone else which did not involve me, i could not live wondering if he is still spying on me. it is a personal thing, and while you may not agree with me you cannot say i am wrong

the fact is, if i had to go as far as reading his emails to find out if he had an affair the relationship would be over one way or another. either because he had an affair or because the trust had broken down so much that one of us had to go behind the others back like this.

im sorry i posted as i didnt want to offend or upset tamba any more, i just thought that i had a very different opinion to everyone else and it can sometimes be helpful to see things from another point of view. if tamba doesnt want her friend to see what i wrote she doesnt have to show him.

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Can you talk to him about the amount of time he has to spend away from his boys?

I don't know about the divorce laws being different in Ireland, sorry