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!?

Err. . . we havent spoken about it at all. (I am sure you guessed that, hence the question :) ) We had my MIL with us so it was never a very good time and yes I realise I am making excuses.

I have the same overwhelming sense. You are right. She wants to sweep this under the carpet, put it down to experience and move on. And in a way that is exactly what I want to do to, so I guess thats why I am just going along with it. I have been very moody and techy and I assume she just thinks I am being very moody and techy. How do you bring up that you are still feeling utterly devastated a good 2 months later, without going over the whole thing again?

Generally I find it easy to talk to the people I love and trust (Mum, Brother, Best Mate etc) but find it and have always found it very difficult to talk to her about it. Presumably because I feel I always have to appear strong and in control.

She appears very happy at the moment, other than bickering with me she seems quite chipper. Which is either an act to try and carry on as normal or she is happy to have got away with it! Either way it doesnt appear to be helping me a whole lot!

Well, this approach just isn't going to work. I'm also amazed that your wife appears to be very happy and chipper at the moment. This really hasn't hit home at all. And I don't agree she thinks you're "just being moody and tetchy". She had an affair that only ended when she got discovered - I'm sure she doesn't think you're behaving this way for any other reason than that.

Why do you feel you have to be strong and in control with your wife? Why can't you show your vulnerability and hurt to her?

You want to save this marriage, but you're not going to have a good one if you can't talk about the thing that is causing you more pain and anguish than you have ever felt in your entire life. A good marriage isn't about playing roles either - having to be strong and in control. You're a human being in enormous pain right now - you need to take that risk of showing this to your wife.

Does this also mean that she's not asking you how you are feeling and isn't being sensitive to the pain she must know you're experiencing?

A truly sorry person isn't happy and chipper either. It doesn't sound like she feels she was damaged at all by her actions and if she only feels relief that she got away with it, rather than relief that she is finally living an honest life, then what's to stop this resuming once the dust has settled, or happening again with someone else?

Hubbyconf - I'm sorry to hear that you are feeling so low. Unlike WWIFN I can't speak from the experience of being a betrayed partner, but I can speak from the experience of being the betrayer, and I have to tell you that I was utterly devastated when I finally realised what I had risked and how much I could have hurt the ones I love by having my affairs, and this was without my DH being aware that I had cheated on him. If my DH had known, and had wanted the marriage to continue, I would have walked over hot coals to prove how sorry I was, and how much I love him.

I think that your DW thinks that she has got away with it, and my worry is that it will happen again if she doesn't take a long hard look at why she cheated. I notice that you said in a previous post that you have access to her mobile phone bills and PC. But in your first post you said that the mobile with the texts on it was not her usual mobile. Do you think that the affair could still be carrying on behind your back?

I think that she is showing a huge lack of respect for you and how you are feeling, but I also think that maybe you aren't respecting yourself too much at the moment, either. You need to tell her in no uncertain words how what she has done is affecting you, and don't let her sweep it under the carpet any more.

I take on board everything you are saying and I know that I need to discuss how I feel with her, its just hard to actually START talking.

I also know that I am not helping things. I am giving mixed signals to her in the sense that, and I am ashamed to admit this, I really want to stop sleeping with her for a bit but I cant help myself. Its difficult for her to understand, i am sure, how I can be all moody one minute and then being all nice to her so i can get in her knickers. I know I am going to get flamed on her for saying that and I really wish I could alter my behaviour in that regard.

Why would you get flamed for that? Lots of people recovering from an affair find that their libido shoots through the roof. There are complex reasons for this incidentally but it is a recognised effect after discovery. In the most positive circumstances, good sex can feel like a safe harbour from the storm raging elsewhere and it can feel like the only thing that is good and true, in the midst of all the pain and hurt.

However, if you feel you that intimacy is messing with your emotions and could be damaging you, then it's perfectly reasonable to step away from that for a time. As long as you are doing this to protect yourself and not for punitive reasons, follow your instincts about this.

The fact that you are finding it so difficult to start the conversation suggests that there are longstanding communication difficulties in your marriage. But I would add that it isn't just your responsibility to talk about this - your wife should be starting conversations too.

I would like to echo what WWIFN says about post-affair libido and how it can re-create a sense of what was lost in the marriage while the affair was going on.

Exactly that happened after i discovered my STBXH's first affair. Re-connecting with our intimacy felt, for a while, like it could save us.

Eventually though, as these things do, RL began to intrude and it just wasn't possible to repair the damage without addressing the affair.

Unfortunately we (He) still didn't and it cost us our marriage after he embarked on a second affair.

There's no shame in your desire for your wife. It's perfectly understandable IMO. But I fear that other work must be done as well if you are both to properly heal what has been broken by this.

Good luck OP.

She is out of order, not just for having the affair (which at the very least was an "emotional affair" and probably a physical one too), but also for trying to minimise it and expecting you to brush it under the carpet and be cheerful after such a short time. Disrespectful and selfish.

You seem frightened. It sounds like she has all the power in the relationship and knows it. Are you scared that unless you accept everything she will leave you (and take the kids?)

hubbyconf: I don't have a lot to add here, just a couple of observations. You read to me as both empathetic and analytical. You are attempting to see her side of things as well as your own and searching for answers in an intelligent, reasoned way. This is a great thing, and normally I'd be cheering you on. However, in this instance, I wonder if it is forcing you to second-guess yourself into inaction. You know you are likely to be unfair to her if you let yourself have free rein, and you may well be overcompensating for that.

A counsellor you both trust could help you, hubbyconf, simply by being a referee. That would give you the chance to be as selfish as your self-image will allow, safe in the knowledge that someone is looking out for and trying to balance your and your wife's interests.

That's my two cents, anyway.

Thats pretty perceptive MostlySHD, and thank you for your feedback. I've just taken the Relate Evaluation Insight Test thingy and I come out as an analytical observer!

So anyway I tried talking to her last night. I told her how hurt I was and how I was struggling to deal with it and how sad I felt. She reacted as I thought she might; on the attack. She still feels its not that big a deal in the general scheme of things, as nothing physical happened. She also was very quick to say I should leave as clearly we are never going to get past this. I tried to keep the situation calm and we talked for a good few hours.

It transpires she went to see a councillor in September last year to see how she could "cope with my behaviour". She was said she felt she didn?t know how to deal with me when I get annoyed about the washing up or the bin not being taken out or whatever. I know I can be difficult sometimes but I truly believe that she went to the councillor (probably unknowingly) to get justification for having her emotional affair. I think she expected them to say "oh that must be terrible for you, I don?t know how you put up with that!" Thankfully, it would appear, the councillor remained objective and she only went the once. This tells me either she wasn?t that upset about my behaviour or she didn?t get the justification she wanted. Either way it has put her off counselling now and she is reluctant (not necessarily unwilling) to go to see one together.

I do feel better for talking, a bit. But in a way it has raised more questions than it has answered. I do believe it is over, and I do believe it wasnt physical, I also believe that she is very sorry for whats happened. I just feel very dissapointed that she didnt see/chose not to see how hard I was trying for us last year and focused purely on the moments when I was upset/frustrated. I am also concerned by how quick she is to give up and say we are never going to get through it.

I'm not sure what you meant by the term "trying so hard for us last year" - what was going on? I also noticed you mentioned your wife's lack of domestic skills in your earlier posts and now it transpires that she went for counselling about your attitude if she had failed to do certain tasks. Although I agree that the counselling clearly wasn't about this at all, what is obvious is that your wife had started to give herself some justifications for what she was about to do (assuming she had started contact with the OM by then).

I wonder what your wife's story would be if she came on here to post? Might she say that despite the fact that you both work, your leisure time was greater than hers? That you were pedantic about housework getting done and assumed it was her responsibility? That communication was poor between you and there was embarrassment about talking about important matters such as feelings and sexual fantasies? That her sexual needs had changed over the years and having had only one partner, she was now wondering about alternatives, but lacked the courage to discuss her feelings with you? That she was considering an affair, the ultimately most passive-aggressive way to express dissatisfactions in a relationship and especially so if a person has lacked the moral courage to own their thoughts and feelings?

There's an imbalance of power present here and as ever, the sexual politics are relevant. Reverse the sexes for a moment and imagine that it was you having had an emotional affair during which there had been sexually graphic communication and you'd brought the woman to your house and allowed her to meet your children. You'd only confessed once you'd been found out and since then, had insisted it was "nothing". You'd carried on with your life as normal once it became clear that your wife was going to stay with you and ignored the obvious signs in her demeanour that she was having trouble getting past this and coping. Then when she took a risk and raised it with you and told you how hurt she still was, you went on the attack and said she would have to leave and lose daily contact with her children.

What do you think Mumnsnetters' advice would be to that woman? What would you advise a female friend in this situation, or your sister?

What would parting mean for you, in a practical sense? Does your wife assume that if you left, she would become the primary carer? Is that what you would want, or is it possible to part and share the parenting?

Try to analyse what's keeping you there. How much of it is to do with your love for your wife and your relationship and how much of it is to do with the children, the fear of failure?

It sounds as though your wife feels she holds all the cards here and that imbalance of power, whether it is perceived or real, is a terrible dynamic for a relationship. I think the single thing you need to focus on is how much respect your wife has for you - her actions seem acutely disrespectful, as reported here.

Try to think what you need to do to balance up the power here and reclaim your self-respect and dignity.

Not so perceptive. You write like I think about relationship issues (nothing on this scale), and I almost invariably end up arguing myself in circles instead of doing something. I'm in the fortunate position of only having minor niggles that I can afford to ignore. You do not seem to have that luxury.

I don't really feel qualified to advise on what you should do next, beyond suggesting that you consider seeing a counsellor yourself if she won't go.

I will add one further observation on your last sentence. Is she quick to give up, or is she using attack as the best form of defence? Given that you have already walked out once and come back, does she think you'll fold rather than call her? I am not criticising - can't say as I'd have done different - merely noting that there are other interpretations of her behaviour that are (slightly) less pessimistic.

Lots of things to think about in those two posts and not sure where to begin!

First off, Ill revert to type and defend her. I should probably say that she has pretty major self esteem issues. I have perhaps potrayed her on her as dominant and uncarring but in reality she is very unsure of herself and often is very down on herself. She went through a period, whilst having the children, of being very dower and just became a shrinking wall flower. Not bothering with herself and not wanting people to look at her. (please dont think I am critisicing her, just trying to give an overview of where she is emotionally.) About 2 years after our youngest was born she lost a lot of weight, through a combination of dental work and breast feeding and she slowly emerged as more confident, better dressed and generally a bit mroe at ease with herself. She has always had a hang up about her teeth, so with my encoragement, she was very happy to get them sorted and finally allow herself to smile in photos! She is almost unrecognisable from 3 years ago both in the way she looks and the increase in confidence. I think she clearly found the increase in attention she was getting exciting and I believe fundamentaly thats how she ended up in this situation. However I also believe her old frailties of low self esteem and that passive aggressive streak remained under the surface.

I think there is the possibility, and this is what she said, that she wants me to leave because she cant bear what she has done to me and wanted to give me an easy exit option. Perhaps I am clutching at straws.

With regards to the domestic arrangements, this is a tricky one. Whilst she does work, she works part time. And I would say her leisure time is much greater than mine. (well maybe not MUCH greater, but certainly she has more.) She probably works one and a half to two days a week. The children are all at nursery, school, childcare full time except for one day a week when the youngest is at home. I have tried on many occasions to get us to draw up a list of "who does what" so that we can get things more organised but she simply sees this as pointless or unimportant. This is something that I have tried very hard to get sorted but to no avail. So what tends to happen is sometimes things get done and sometimes they dont and so on a saturday I spend most of the day doing all the things that havent been done in the week. And eventually I get frustrated with this and it boils over. Not always at the time but it gets stored up and then comes out the next time there is a "domestic" issue. I dont feel I am unreasonable as I am quite happy to do my fair share, I just get very frustrated when it isnt clear what my responsibilities are. I certainly do not feel that it is all her responsibility I just want a clear and agreed division of labour. (I know that probably makes me sound very anal!)

I feel I was trying very hard last year in the sense that I knew something wasnt right so I was doing my absolute best to try and take the pressure of her. I organised weekends away for her. We went out to dinner whenever we could. I would look after the kids at the weekend so she could go into town or spend time with friends or whatever. In short I was spoiling her and I realise in hindsight that was a mistake.

Haven't posted so far but have been reading.
HC - you are getting the best possible advice on the EA etc from WWIFN and others.
But your last few posts have left me feeling a bit uneasy.
I suspect that your DW has had depression (perhaps you mentioned this) -
'She went through a period, whilst having the children, of being very dower and just became a shrinking wall flower. Not bothering with herself and not wanting people to look at her. (please dont think I am critisicing her, just trying to give an overview of where she is emotionally.)'

While depression can arise for the first time after having children it is much more common (PND) for those that have had depressive episodes before. Has she had therapy for this? Were you very supportive of her during this time? I appreciate that it can be difficult to live with someone that is depressed, but lack of support can drag the whole process out and an 'episode' can last for years. During my own depression I found myself getting crushes on other men, I now realise that this was simply a form of escapism for me.

You seem to brush off the 'domestic' issues - When I was depressed I found housework (or rather work really of any kind really) nigh on impossible to accomplish. To be told I needed to buck up and get the cleaning done didn't help at all. My H also finds it irritating that housework needs to be done at the weekends, but with several children (and no cleaner) it's simply part of family life. I found him moaning about it very upsetting (I can't stress this enough). He did it (as did I) but moaned. He now understands that this attitude is very very unsupportive - and he might as well do nothing if he is going to moan.
I found it a bit off that you dismissed her discussion around same with her counselor as simple looking for an excuse for her EA. You simply do not know what she was thinking.

You also seem to be very closed to discussing your free time (cycling) - are you like this with your DW? You say she plays tennis so that cancels out the cycling for you really does it? Do you think this is completely fair? Does she think this is completely fair?

I think it's sometimes very difficult to convey on here the nuances and power struggles in a relationship, but your last post gives us more clues about what might be going on here.

About the power struggles regarding domestic work and childcare, if you've been truthful about your DCs' ages, is your 3 year old really at nursery all day four days a week? Assuming your other DCs are at the same school, that means two fairly lengthy round trips in a day, possibly taking an hour each trip. That leaves about 4 hours "free time" in a day, four days a week. If your wife also works up to two days a week, in reality that leaves 8 hours a week when your wife is "free". If she is doing household stuff in that time, that doesn't leave much for her, apart from when you come in and can take over. I remember it being pretty impossible to get much done around the house when my DCs were 5 and under, so I don't count the time when the DCs are there as being available to do very much beyond prepare a simple meal or bung some clothes in the washing machine.

You perhaps wouldn't be surprised at how many affairs occur after a person's self-image has improved, either through weight loss or cosmetic dentistry. The fact that your wife undertook both of these things is significant - her self-image and esteem would have soared. What sometimes happens then is that because she had spent years not thinking of herself as an attractive woman, she didn't develop the nouse to notice if someone found her attractive, or the skills to bat a person off. Also, if you've been together since you were 14, she probably never learned how to flirt or how to communicate that she was/wasn't interested in someone. I imagine that when her old boss started communicating his attraction, this blind-sided her somewhat, caught her off balance and then surprised her in how much she was in fact enjoying the attention and the reflected image of herself as a sexually desirable woman.

Lots of affairs are not about deep feelings for the affair partner, but are about the image of oneself reflected back by that person. The addiction is to those feelings about oneself, not the other person. One of the best questions to ask someone after an affair is what roles she enjoyed enacting in the other relationship.

I think your great strength is that you can see how she allowed this to happen and of course you can see that after a day full of playing the role of sexual siren with magical powers to entice a married man, coming back to you and complaints about the bin not being put out, would have exposed the contrast in roles and perceptions of herself. Such is the unfairness of affairs - of course if your wife had thought about it, no doubt her OM went home to his wife and heard complaints about how badly he was treating her, but in the midst of an affair, the protagonists never stop and think about these wholly unfair contrasts, or that if they were married to eachother there would be similar power struggles.

What now though? I'm getting no sense of your wife convincing you that she loves and wants you, or that she is fighting for you and your marriage. It would be comforting to think that her motives for letting you go are entirely altruistic and based on your continued pain if you stay with her, but I'd be surprised.

I now think that some relationships counselling would be very beneficial, mainly because you seem to have difficulty communicating with eachother and your wife doesn't seem to be absorbing the enormity of her actions and the devastation and pain caused by them. A good therapist will not minimise emotional infidelity and will not start from the presumption that your wife's affair was caused by marital discord. S/he will take a holistic approach to this and explore all the vulnerabilities. It's worth screening counsellors too. I read that your wife is reluctant to go to counselling, but it doesn't sound like you're going to be able to get through this on your own as a couple and in any case, your wife should be willing to do anything to help.

Good god how did you get to be so wise!!! :)

"You perhaps wouldn't be surprised at how many affairs occur after a person's self-image has improved, either through weight loss or cosmetic dentistry. The fact that your wife undertook both of these things is significant - her self-image and esteem would have soared. What sometimes happens then is that because she had spent years not thinking of herself as an attractive woman, she didn't develop the nouse to notice if someone found her attractive, or the skills to bat a person off. Also, if you've been together since you were 14, she probably never learned how to flirt or how to communicate that she was/wasn't interested in someone. I imagine that when her old boss started communicating his attraction, this blind-sided her somewhat, caught her off balance and then surprised her in how much she was in fact enjoying the attention and the reflected image of herself as a sexually desirable woman."

Is simply the best summary of the situation I could have hoped for. Thank you, and again, you have hit the nail squarely on the head.

I am not, I dont think, trying to "brush off" the domestic issues. I feel I am doing quite the opposite in trying to get things more organised and structured so that all the burden doesn?t fall on one or other of us.

My youngest does indeed go to nursery 4 full days a week. My middle DC goes to the school at the end of our road and the nursery is some 2 minutes further on from that. She takes those two and I take our eldest to school every day, his school is 3 mins from our house. She then picks all up at 3.45 in a trip which i guess takes 30 mins. She does one of her work days when the youngest is at home, my mother, more often than not has her for a several hours during that day.

I dont have a go at her for not taking the bin out. I take the bin out. We argue because I consistently ask her not to overfill the bin because when I take the top off it goes all over the floor. I don?t have a go at her for not doing the washing up. I do the washing up. Always. We argue because I ask her not to leave dirty things in the sink as I have to unload the sink first and then wash everything up. I feel that she is not respecting or listening to me when she does these things and I get annoyed.

She has 3 evenings a week sometimes four when she goes out to play tennis from 6.30 onwards. I put at least 2 of the children to bed every night and more often than not I put all of them to bed, particularly on the tennis nights.

I wasn?t meaning to appear closed about my cycling. And my reluctance to talk about domestic issues is because it?s always, I am afraid, very easy to misunderstand or misinterpret other peoples domestic arrangements. And yes I do feel the cycling/tennis balance is fair. And I would add so did she until she needed something to throw at me! Having said that I take on board that it needs taking seriously.

I agree that some relationship counselling IS a good idea but it?s the problem of finding a "good" therapist. Because my biggest fear of all is that they WILL start from the position that the affair was caused by some marital discord. The "chores" (as the Americans would call them) and cycling being two examples where even on here, people have assumed they are a contributory factors. (I am not denying that they might be, and actually it would be easier for me if they were cause that sort of thing is easily changed or sorted)

Got to post and run as I'm at work but just wanted to say that when I went for counselling I went in with the attitude that there was something wrong with me. The counsellor didn't just focus on that, but also asked me about my marriage and helped me realise that there were some things that needed sorting out in my relationship with my husband. What I am trying to say is that, if you get a good counsellor (and I was fortunate that I did) then they will explore all the 'reasons' for the affair, and not just the ones that you or your DW put on the table at the start of your sessions.

Sorry she didn't respond well when you talked.

I think you should get some legal advice.

Legal advice so that if she leaves (or makes it impossible for you to stay in the relationship) you will be better prepared, eg custody issues.

I don't think this is about division of labour either - and I take your point completely hubby about dissatisfactions being raised after the event.

However, what I do think perhaps needs exploring is this:

You say your wife spent up to four nights a week playing tennis. You've said that you spent a lot of time cycling. It might occur to a counsellor that you had both been spending lots of time away from eachother and s/he might express curiosity about why that was? There's a balance to be struck between a couple having their individual passions and interests, which is healthy. Four nights a week however, suggests avoidance.

You are also right that when infidelity occurs in a marriage that is basically sound, fixing the niggles that beset every long term relationship is the easy part. Fixing the other vulnerabilities I've mentioned is far more difficult. A good therapist will realise this, but as Teddy says, s/he would start with an open mind and not assume that the vulnerabilities are all in one place. What I would say however is that IME, it is impossible for infidelity to occur and there not be an an individual vulnerability within the person practising it.