Inappropriate Texting

[hubbyconf]

Six weeks ago I got into bed next to my sleeping DW and found a mobile phone in her hand. It wasn?t her usual mobile. I had never seen it before. My heart sank. My stomach turned over. I instantly knew that she had been seeing someone else.

I gently prized it out of her hand and took it downstairs to see if I could find out who it was. It was full of the kind of texts a husband never wants to read about his wife but it was clear from their tone and familiarity that it had been going on for some time.

I went back upstairs, woke her up, and confronted her about it. She initially said she had never seen the phone before (hilarious I know!). She eventually admitted it was someone she used to work for. This is someone that I have never met but I knew that he had been in my house and even met my children within the last 6 months. She vehemently denied that anything physical had happened and that it was all just fantasy and an ?escape?. I do know that she was supposed to meet him in Glasgow for a business overnight stay but she backed out of it and didn?t go.

I was naturally devastated, threw the phone back at her (not literally) and went to sleep on the sofa. During a totally sleepless night I then checked her computer (something I had never done before ? I am not a suspicious person, more fool me) and found that she had been taking naked and suggestive pictures of herself and sending them to him. Once she even did this from the bathroom when we were on a romantic weekend away.

After much talking and soul searching over the past weeks we agreed to try and get over it and get past it and move on with our relationship. We have 3 beautiful and very demanding children of 7, 5 and 3. I work 9 to 5 and she works from home. I try to help out where I can with the children. I take them to school, I cook for them, I help with the housework (not one of her strong points!) and I try to make sure I take her to dinner or away as often as feasible. I do sometimes get grumpy (don?t we all?) and I know I can be hard to live with sometimes.

The problem is now that our relationship is just so hard. We try to be nice to each other but every little fight blows up into a massive fall out. We just don?t seem to be able to keep it on an even keel. The kids are very hard work at the moment and as soon as the stress levels escalate we just go to pieces very quickly.

My question is; well I guess I have a few actually. Am I being naive in believing that nothing happened between them and believing that it is now totally finished and over? Is it possible to get over something like this and get back to ?normal?? Do you think that having made a step towards another person she will always be looking now for someone else to continue that path with?

Sorry I know this is supposed to be a board for Mum?s but I would just love to hear an opinion from a female perspective. All I can get from my mates is ?I cant believe you didn?t find him and beat him up!?

I dont think people lie to themselves countingto10 - not in this situation at any rate. They lie because they dont want their partner to know the full truth as they know that if they DID know the full truth then they might not be particularly happy about it.

FWIW Bbird1 I think that the affair as such is not the problem. The problem (or problems whatever they may be) is the problem.

How the OP's DW went about trying to solve it has made things far worse. Lying is part of the bigger picture here. So is reluctance to talk honestly and openly. That said, it doesn't absolve anybody of their responsibility for their actions.

I suspect your scepticism about counselling and counsellors stems either from a bad experience of your own or a belief perhaps that this method of understanding distress is borne of some well intentioned 'do-gooding '.

Counselling or therapy, if is done well, is by no means an easy route out of a situation. It's bloody hard work. No counsellor worth their salt will try and do-good. They will be clear that they are not there to fix a relationship which is beyond fixing, and if it can be fixed it is the work that a couple do which will make things better, not what the counsellor does.

It's good to see a male perspective here. I'm glad you didn't do what the OP's mates suggested and tell him to go and punch the OM on the nose!

There is another painful possibility which is that your wife doesn't know how she feels about you or is no longer interested in you and doesn't know how to deal with that. So she looks elsewhere for excitement. As WWIFN explained to me once, that this would be almost like a punitive emotional affair. That your wife might be deliberately withdrawing from you this way so that you react badly (badly meaning reacting to her withdrawal) and then she can blame your reactive 'bad' behaviour as justification for her affair.

I share this theory because I've kinda been there. I've been struggling with my relationship for years, I turned to an ex for emotional attention and realised that this making matters worse with my partner, thus making feel justified in the emotional investment in another man.

Now I'm in counseling both on my own and we are seeing a counselour together as well. For some of us women, it's very very hard to be 'the bad guy' and terminate a relationship, especially when from the outside it may not seem so bad iyswim.

So I'm curious if you feel like your wife still loves you? She may have been looking for an out but then when she got found out she got cold feet.

Also perhaps there is a genuine desire for more variety in a sexual way. Is this something you can talk about? Would she be able to be honest with you if she had desires she hadn't expressed to you yet? Are you open minded in that regard? (For very sex-positive relationship advice read anything by Dan Savage)

Sometimes people don't, as LifeMovesOn says, know the reason why they had an affair, particularly if there are no problems in the marital relationship. I know that sounds disingenuous, but I was an OW in a happy marriage, and if my DH had found out about my affair (which he still does not know about) then I would not, at the time that my affair was happening, have been able to give him a rational and reasonable explanation as to why I did it, beyond that of fantasy and escapism that the OPs DW has given him.

As WWIFN says "when infidelity is swept under the carpet there is every chance that it will happen again." Although I worked hard at my marriage after my first affair I hadn't realised that I have a vulnerability to infidelity and I only discovered this through talking to a counsellor after I had a second EA. I don't think I was lying to myself about what made me give myself permission to have an affair - I just didn't know. I had the means (mobile phone/internet) and the opportunity (meetings/working away from home) but I didn't know what my motivation was. Having tried (and failed) to find a cause in my marriage it was counselling that made me see that the problem was in me.

OP your DW needs to be honest with herself before she can be honest with you. She needs to know why she gave herself permission to have an affair (emotional or otherwise). She needs to reset her own boundaries and not have them imposed by you, a counsellor, society or anyone else. She needs to respect herself again, and to respect you, to realise that this is a MASSIVE deal, and that you deserve to know the whole unvarnished truth.

And you both need to realise that 'normal' has changed and things can never go back completely to the way they were. But you can rebuild your relationship with more trust, honesty, openness and understanding. But you have to do this together. You can't build a future without dealing with the here and now, and you, OP, can't do this on your own.

Sugarfreetea - my scepticism about counselling is that it over-complicates issues and would be doing so here. Counsellers have a vested interest in making out there is more to these situations than meets the eye - after all, it keeps them employment.
She had an affair, she got caught, end of. What do they need to understand? She had the affair because she fancied this other guy and thought she could get away with? Please enlighten me if I am missing some point here. Please also explain to me what counselling could bring to the table that a lengthy, open and frank discussion between the pair of them couldnt.

bbird1 - I hope sugarfreetea doesn't mind if I butt in and answer some of your points from my own experience. I had an affair because I fancied the other guy and I did get away with it, in the sense that my DH doesn't know about it. But we all meet people we fancy every day, but we don't all text/send dirty pics/jump into bed with them. However, some of us are more vulnerable to doing just that, and I learned, through counselling, that I am one of those people. I went to counselling because I nearly had a breakdown when I realised that I was contemplating shagging another married man, just six months after my previous affair had ended. I'm not a slapper, I'm a 50+ large lady with grown-up DCs who has been married for well over 20 years, with a loving and supportive DH and a responsible job.

I couldn't have that lengthy, open and frank discussion with my DH because he didn't know about my affair, but also because I needed someone outside of my family and friends to talk me through the reasons why I had started giving myself permission to shag other men. My counsellor helped me to come to my own conclusions about why I had done this - not with fancy textbook explanations, but by getting me to talk about my life, my experiences and my own 'moral code' so that I could see what had happened to me, and to work out ways for me to fix it.

The OPs DW needs to realise how important it is for her to be honest with herself about why she had this affair, and for me counselling helped me achieve that.

I find these threads quite perplexing in a way. Here we have a couple who have been together since age 14 and have never had any other sexual partners (if we are to believe the OP - the posts do sound a bit like they are written by a journalist....apologies for my scepticism if completely genuine.) The responses follow the usual pattern - the miscreant must mend their ways etc. But, while I am sympathetic to anyone suffering from the pain of infidelity, you could look at the situation from an entirely different perspective. Is it really "normal" for a couple to meet at the age of 14, never have any other sexual partners or even entertain the idea?

I would imagine that it quite an unusual scenario and in fact I only know ONE couple who are still together (in their mid-late 40s) who got together as teenagers. Every single other couple who I know who got together in their teens, or married very young, are now either divorced or have reached arrangements whereby monogamy is not necessarily the cement that holds the relationship together. For instance in the case of the one couple I mentioned I would be amazed if the husband did not have other sexual relationships, and I think his wife would be amazed to! Despite the views that are commonly expressed on MN, not everyone views infidelity as a deal breaker. I certainly wouldn't - there are other things I would find much worse and in any case I enjoy family life too much to throw it all away just because my partner was to have a fling with someone else which would probably be mostly to do with boredom/ego-boost/a bit of excitement.

Perhaps the "problem" is the monogamy expectation which a lot of people struggle with - hence the affairs, divorces etc. I am quite upfront about my situation - I am monogamous because it is expected of me and I am a very low risk person who just wants an easy life. It has got nothing to do with my morality - I am rather cowardly so couldn't be bothered with the hassle of juggling more than one relationship or sneaking around. I suppose the open marriage thing could be an option, but it is considered quite "out there" so not sure if there would be enough like-minded people around. However, I do understand the frustration of trying to shoe-horn oneself into lifelong monogamy and can understand why people don't necessarily want to.

I'm just not sure that the endless analysis of the motives of why someone strayed is that useful really, I presume that every case is slightly different - they did it because they wanted to, for whatever reason, and they were prepared to take the risk that goes with this type of situation.

Bbird, why should it overcomplicate issues? It's also possible that it gives people a chance to see things a bit differently and a small difference can make a huge impact for the better.

I think you are taking a polarised (possibly male oriented) view about this. (sorry) It's neither the case that counselling complicates things nor is it that no-counselling simplifies the issues. IMHO the value of counselling probably lies somewhere in between the two positions. And it's not what the counsellor does, its what the couple/individual does with it that makes the difference.

Sometimes people just can't resolve issues without someone else's help. Whether that person has the title counsellor or therapist may be beside the point, but my guess from the OP's post is that the people near to he and his DW will only take up positions 'for' and 'against' one or other of them. That in itself will complicate matters more as they try and work this one through.

Why do you think that people post here? Why do you? I do it because my situation, not a million miles away from the OP, has been helped enormously by the infinite perspectives that are out there, counselling or otherwise.

People take what they need/want from counselling and dump the rest. and that's the way it should be, IME.

Tadpoles - I'm a coward too; in my case because I chose not to tell my DH about my affairs. But I had to find out what my motives were for me so that I could stop it happening again. I presume that there are many OM and OW who 'shag and leave' without analysing what their motives were, but they don't post on a support site like this one. My affairs had a profound effect on my sense of self, and I had to find out why I did it in order to reset my boundaries and remove myself from situations where I would be vulnerable to being unfaithful again.

In the OPs DWs case she needs to examine her motives in order for them to either repair their relationship, or indeed to end it.

Can I be perfectly honest? You sound lovely, but quite passive. You've accepted your wife's explanation (honestly, with the sexy piccies, the planned meet-ups and the coming around to your own home, the chances of it not being physical must be very slim) and now don't dare push it. My guess is that you are terrified she will say she's not happy and leave if you do, you seem to have some difficulties asserting your rights in this situation, the right not to be made into a complete mug!

As you say, we all get the odd bit of attention, we all have idle thoughts when our paths cross with an attractive colleague or stranger, but your wife was prepared to jeopardize your relationship to pursue this. I have the funny feeling that their relationship may not even be over, she certainly seem evasive about access to phones/mobiles- are you absolutely sure it is over.

Plus, her reason, which at least is quite honest 'excitement', has not gone away. Life can be quite dull with lots of domesticity and the same partner for years. So, what's going to be her response the next time she feels bored and someone pays her attention?

I think you are understanding to the point that she has lost respect for you, or at least lost any fear that you may leave her for having an affair. She is minimising the biggest thing to hit your relationship in 21 years. As long as you both pretend it was just a tiny thing that is totally understandable, then I don't think you will get that bottom-line honesty from her, and there may be more of this story to run, unfortunately.

tadpoles i agree, monogamy may be upheld as the 'ideal' structure to build and maintain solid communities and no, for some people it just doesn't fit, so when they 'stray' they are vilified.

I also think that it's possible for people to change their belief system about what is right for them and that's fine too. I can't imagine how awful it is to be in a situation whereby you are living a lie, as it were. Better to nail your flag to whatever mast, I think and to hell with what other's say. But you have to start with honesty about it. This is why there are so many threads with the same themes running through them I think. People lie for all sorts of reasons - to protect themselves, to protect others, because they can, because they choose to.....anywhichway, I hope for the OP's sake all this isn't befuddling his mind so that's it from me for now.

I hope you're in a better place today hubbyconf

Thanks for all the posts and thanks for the support Sugarfeetea. So many things that I need to respond to but cant do it all individually so Ill just give an overview of where I am at. (although I will say I take the assertion from tadpoles that I am a journalist as a compliment!! - Im not incidentally!)

The first thing to say, which I obviously didn?t make clear, is that when I found out I moved out the next day. And I moved out with the intention of not coming back. I stayed away for two weeks. During which time she wore me down. She convinced me that we could make it work and that she still loved me. And to be honest I believe/believed her. I have known her a very long time, more than half our lives so I know when she really means something. So we have had the "long serious chats" that people are referring to. I don?t feel that this has been swept under the carpet but I do feel that we are now trying to move forward and finding it very difficult.

The second thing to say is that everyone seems to think she is still being very secretive about stuff. She is not. I am just not pursuing any information from her because I don?t believe anything is still going on. She leaves her mobile phone lying out all the time (I pay for it anyway so see her bills) and her e-mail account is often left open on the computer. She ended it with him and agreed that she would not contact him ever again, nor him contact her. He is married too so I suspect he was as frightened as she was when they were "rumbled".

As for counselling, I am still undecided on that issue. I had some counselling/ talking therapy when I went into a severe depression/anxiety around the time my first child was born and I know that it helped me enormously. (I didn?t want to take the drugs the doctors were handing out so I chose that route instead). My concern with couples counselling is exactly what was aired early on in this thread which is that someone will try and pin a reason on why it happened, even if there isn?t one specifically. I do know that if I said we should go to counselling she would go. She seems to want to do what she can to make it work too.

I am not scared to bring the topic up, and I certainly don?t see myself as passive, however I do know that we are not going to get anywhere if every time we get into a minor domestic I throw the atomic bomb at her and bring up her affair.

Thanks again for all your replies. All of your prespectives are very helpful to me to see the bigger picture!

Do you think it would help for you and your DW to get more space/time together? I don't mean a romantic week end - I don't think you can timetable romance! But simply enjoying each other's company and I suppose building a bit more trust between you two again. I think children can be a terrible wear and tear on a relationship.
If your DW is on board about rebuilding, you need to start spending more time together without the home and children grinding you both down. Is that possible, do you think? I think unless you make more time for each other, you will never know whether this affair (and I suspect it was physical) is really over and she really has put it behind her and is truly sorry.

Sugarfreetea - in answer to your question, I post here and look on this site generally because I work from home and nosing into other peoples' lives greatly relieves the boredom

LOL bbird1! 'Nuff said.

TBF bbird1 that is fairly, hilariously honest!!

Just caught up with this. I'd have had to have undergone a resurrection if I was Shirley Glass Eurostar, but I'm glad that I'm able to at least represent her work, with the caveats I mentioned downthread.....

Hubby I do think Eurostar's main point is worth pursuing and is what I alluded to in one of my posts - that this affair possibly has links to your wife meeting her life partner so early. This is what I meant by the needs not being able to be met in the marriage. I think that curiosity is worth pursuing, because it might not have gone away.

I completely understand that you are not driving the transparency and therefore your wife is carrying on as normal. It sounds as though you are shadow-boxing eachother a bit; she won't talk if you don't ask any questions and you are afraid to ask too many. I understand your fear about raising the issue of the affair in every unrelated disagreement, but I would suggest that the reason you are having these apparently unrelated skirmishes is precisely because of the affair, but it seems somehow "safer" to believe that they are about other things.

I'm so pleased to see ILMT on this thread, whose testimony will help you so very much, as she is an incredibly self-aware, generous poster who has been able to illustrate the concept of individual and lifestyle vulnerabilities so pertinently, through her own story.

Because likewise, one of the issues your wife will need to explore too is how she was able to not only give herself permission to betray you, but also how she was able to square intruding on the OM's marriage.

I would also add that your wife's understanding of her affair will not be instantaneous - true understanding of her thought processes can take some time, but I reiterate that she needs to understand this even more than you, because she is the only person who can prevent this happening again. She might benefit from her own solo counselling, but with a challenging therapist who understands infidelity.

Finally, bear in mind that you might be in crisis mode at the moment. Those early weeks are really quite energising and the most urgent and important issues seem to be about hanging onto the marriage and keeping a semblance of normality. Be aware that after the drama and crisis has passed, many people hit a kind of wall, when depression and overwhelming sadness can overtake the betrayed partner. These are the realities that the posters who seek to minimise infidelity and its effects never seem to take into account, but forewarned is forearmed.

Really, my overwhelming message to you hubby is that you both need to understand why this happened and what steps you can both take to minimise or eradicate the vulnerabilities.

My perspective on affairs is always the same. Good people can do bad things for a while and having a secret affair does not have to define a person, as long as that person realises that to have an affair, it is necessary to deceive, lie and hurt so many other people. The collateral damage after one's own selfish actions can be enormous.

In this sense, having an affair of any kind is not just about finding monogamy constricting or the very human failing of falling prey to temptation, but for a time, a person who perhaps in the past has always put a high premium on being honest, ethical and truthful, must abandon those values. Monogamy is therefore not the only casualty of an affair; the very essence of a person's former character is altered. The true measure of a person is whether she learns from the experience and what she learns about herself. The person who minimises it and never really learns from the experience is at greater risk of it happening again and her character remains forever altered.

on the point earlier "Please also explain to me what counselling could bring to the table that a lengthy, open and frank discussion between the pair of them couldnt".

Quite possibly nothing but there are a hell of a lot of couples out there who cannot have that discussion without someone to guide them through it. The growth of counselling has very much been through demand, the vested interests are relatively low, many counsellors spend years training and seeing clients for free and paying out of their own money for the courses. It's clinical psychologists and psychiatrists who are sponsored through their training as a rule. It's something that people want and find useful. The fact that OP said that he doesn't want to think about the possibility that his DW had sex with someone else and has not responded to posts that bring up the subject that she might be trying to deal with strong sexual desires, urges and fantasies is leading me to think that he wouldn't find it at all easy to have such conversations and as such a counsellor might be a helpful guide through the maze. Sure OP could kick out DW now and say, you're out, I will find someone else but there's nothing to say he won't repeat the pattern of being with someone who is unfaithful and more exploration can help - or of course can help for an amicable break up because divorcing when you have 3 children is a painful process for all concerned.

Sorry to talk about you in 3rd person OP. Suppose the question here is, is DW thinking, why the hell did I risk my marriage for that I will never do it again and thank god he forgave me or is she kidding herself and will take another opportunity to do it again.

Thanks Eurostar for answering my question. I see where you are coming from but your post illustrates why myself and many view the counselling profession with so much cynicism. Take your quote below:

"but there's nothing to say he won't repeat the pattern of being with someone who is unfaithful and more exploration can help"

Can help who, exactly? I mean, how can you repeat a pattern of being with somebody who is unfaithful? Who knows who is going to be faithful and who isnt? Are you saying he may have sub-consciously sought this woman out? This is just over-analyisng, surely. In fact, like so much else in the counselling world, it is nothing more than a wild hunch.

You mention the growth of counselling being through demand. Well, I am sure you are right. We all like to be listened to, we all like to be indulged and made to feel our problems are important. Whether or not such a process makes a jot of positive difference in the grand scheme of things...well I doubt it very much.

there's nothing wrong with hunches, 'wild' or otherwise. there is no singular reality here, but many possible realities any of which may fit - and your hunch about the counselling world is but one of these, bbird.

Sorry, have been away for a few days with the kids so didnt have chance to repy in detail to any posts.

To whenwillifeelnormal

"Be aware that after the drama and crisis has passed, many people hit a kind of wall, when depression and overwhelming sadness can overtake the betrayed partner."

Nail, head, hit, hard!! I just feel terribly low and lifeless.

Yes, that's understandable. However, don't confuse this. Most people recovering from infidelity report roller-coaster type emotions in the early weeks and months; a few good days followed by some bad ones. The "wall" I was describing normally hits you much later on - months into the process. At that point even in the best of circumstances, there seems to be a pointlessness to life and it seems as though you will never feel pure, unadulterated (what a word,eh?) joy again in life. As you are also someone who has had depression in the past, I really think you'd benefit from some solo therapy before it gets to that point.

What are you particularly struggling with today hubby?

I am back at work today after a short family break, which was very tense and difficult. I know that she is going out with her girlfriends tonight and I know that I have a long night on my own to think about stuff and ponder whats happened.

I have spent most of the weekend away planning what would happen should I leave - in a practical sense and its made me feel very trapped because I realise there isnt really much of an alternative. I watched my parents divorce when I was about 12 so I know the practical outcomes.

I think your point about the drama and energy of the initial few days is a very pertinent one as I know that there is a part of me that is considering leaving in order to recreate that "drama". Sounds weird I know. I had been considering going back into therapy but I am sure you can understand it isnt something that fills me with glee as I know how hard it can be.

Thank you once again for being so, so helpful to me.

Are you being honest with her about how low you feel? What have you been talking about in relation to the affair and your relationship now, since you last posted?

I have this overwhelming sense with your wife that nothing much has changed for her. She's having a night out tonight and yet you are feeling very low. Now either she doesn't know how bad you're feeling, or she's being spectacularly insensitive.

I can partly understand why, if the last few days have been very tense, your wife needs a break from the hurt and pain, but is she feeling it too? Does she yet realise the enormity of her actions? Downthread, it sounded like she was minimising it and that you were also trying to do that. But it's impossible, because this was a big deal.

I think this is where the inner spirit kicks back. You've been doing all the rational, logical stuff about understanding how things like this can happen and trying to look at the bigger picture of not throwing away a generally happy relationship for a few months of madness.....but that grief doesn't go away easily and transcends all the rational thoughts.

Are you someone who needs to give himself permission to feel hurt and lost? Do you find it hard to tell anyone just how bereaved you're feeling? Are you holding back on telling your wife just how damaged you feel?