Possible affair, certainly something fishy

[sweetums55]

Hi,
I'm a 40yo man and would like an opinion from a ladies point of view because I think if I posted this on a man's forum the advice would be an overwhelming "get rid".
Sorry if it gets a bit too long.

Some background: married 15 years. DW and I have always been best friends. Neither of us have other close friends. I've never been one for "the lads" and she's never been one for "the girls". We are hardly in each others pockets though. Some ups and downs but generally happy.
A couple of years ago it seemed like her PMT was getting worse. She was being aggressive and abusive with me and the kids especially at time of the month.
Anyway, we had a bad argument and things were not good for a few months. Eventually she was diagnosed with depression, on citalopram and things were awful really. Sex once a month only when she could tell I was at my wits end from it.

About this time she started behaving oddly with a guy who goes to a sports club we go to. Things like:
Talking to him in preference to me when we are there (not major I know)
Insisting on going on a certain day she knows he goes, and going mad if I have something else on
Wanting to go on a particular day and when I talk her into going another day, next time we see this guy she says "I wasn't allowed to come the other day" then looking at me
Deleting her sent emails, her inbox emails and her deleted folder
Taking her phone everywhere with her when previously she never turned it on, and moaning about having no credit after topping up only 2 weeks previous

As a result this, she asked me to a recover a deleted email. While I was doing this, an email from the guy popped up where she had asked if he wanted her to come round and "keep him company". As it happened he'd said he was busy.

Things just went along till last January when I went on a night out to another town with friends. She was leaving the kids with parents because she had work the next day and going to the club - a whole evening by herself.
That evening I couldn't reach her by phone at home or mobile till nearly midnight.
We had it out after that I said I thought she was with him. She asked if I thought she was having an affair with him, I said yes. Her response "well I'm not".
A few chats after that:
He's just a friend
I'm not that type of person, etc.

Then I started seeing emails (her account was set up on my log in) which were ambigious but said things like:
You're in all aspects of my life
I wanted to come home with you and make you feel better
And arranging to go see him at his flat.

After this I told her I knew she had been to his flat. She said well I had to lie because you'd have gone mad if I'd told you but he's just a friend, etc.

This was in February/ Recently things have been pretty good. It's almost like they've got over each other. She doesn't try to go when he's there, never mentions him.

Until yesterday when I saw an email where she'd said:
I miss you, I've been trying not to bump into you, you are too tempting and the killer "if you need me I'm stuck here in the holding grid".

On the other hand, she's been happy recently, more like her old self.
We have been considering a move to a different country and she's very enthusiastic about it, looking at new homes all day.

I think she want to have her cake and eat it.
Any advice?

Sorry, missed the first reply.
I resent the implication I was controlling, abusive or anything else.
Normal situation: get into bed, kiss night night, turns into a longer kiss, stroking, cuddling, etc., progresses to sex.
Unusual situation: get into bed, kiss night night, she turns over very quickly and faces away. I do the same. But after days/weeks I might make the kiss longer and she just says "i'm not in the mood" or similar. I say "ok, night night". After more days weeks, we'll do the same and she'll say "sorry I just haven't been feeling like it lately" and I say "I noticed" or similar. Eventually I will say "is there something wrong?", "why?", "well you never seem to be in the mood these day", "I know, not sure why". At some point she has made the kiss last longer and initiated sex.

See? Is that personal enough for you?

I would think your self-esteem has suffered as a result of both sexual rejection, the aggressive/abusive behaviour you experienced and now the affair. Now you're getting a little nice behaviour and you're clinging onto it as hope that things have turned around.

There is such a thing as emotional bullying. When your confidence has been repeatedly knocked by an abusive and badly behaved partner there is often a temptation to try to 'be a better spouse' in order to get them back to being a nice partner again. Throw in a condition like depression and you'll get people telling you to 'be kind', 'make allowances', 'it's not her it's the illness talking'... and this only adds to the pressure to do and say nothing. All you earn with that strategy is contempt.

This is not necessarily a case for 'LTB' but, in your situation, you have to start being a lot more assertive and a lot less passive.

Have to love MN sometimes. This man says "She was being aggressive and abusive with me and the kids especially at time of the month." and the only thing people pick up on is the fact that he moaned about the lack of sex.

Really, she is abusive and more than likely cheating on you OP. Get rid, you would be better off without.

She's basically been flaunting an affair in your face and frankly you don't seem to mind that much. That will not make her want you more.

I actually don't think she's had an affair. I think she wanted to but he denied her.

However, I think she wanted to make it look like something had happened as I suspect he's knocked her back and she's feeling embarrassed. The fact she emailed him and said she wanted to come home and make him feel better and he said he was busy makes me think he either isn't interested OR something happened between them once and she got a bit obsessed and scared him off.

Sorry OP.

Are you absolutely sure that she's been having an affair? To me, it kind of sounds as if she has become fixated on this man and has possibly even been showing some stalkerish tendencies towards him. Just a hunch that I have, but it almost sounds as if he has been trying to give her the brush off for a while. Perhaps, he's even finally lost his temper and told her not to contact him?

I agree with your man friends

Get rid

What more is there to say. She has made, and is making, a fool of you.

She has quite clearly had some kind of affair with the guy, and would likely be doing so now if he gave the word. You need to gather all the hard evidence you can, and then discuss it with her assertively, if you can ever move forward together, as you seem to want to. But sort out plan B beforehand (solicitor, finances etc).

You don't want to be mid-way through an overseas house buy, then she runs off.

Good points greendoor and wickedwitch. I'm only absolutely sure that "something" has been going on, including deception, lying and secretive meetings.
It does seem to have been one sided.
Not sure about losing his temper, he's not aggressive at all. But I think he may have been stand off-ish then finally rebuffed her and told her she needs to back off.

I did consider confronting him about it. I see him reasonably often although not recently.
He makes polite conversation but seems a bit awkward but then he's like that anyway.
But I could never decide whether to say a) leave my wife alone b) if you want her just take her or c) so what's going on then?

I can't see what you'd get out of speaking to him to be honest.

If he has been rebuffing her advances he's presumably been doing it with the aim of keeping your marriage intact. He might think it's better not to say anything to you. So if you confront him he might feel obligated to downplay what's been going on.

It's between you and your wife and you need to deal with it between the two of you anyway, so would speaking to him really help?

Totally agree with you, eyebags63

I'd be at the end of my tether if I was being sexually rejected, too!

Only on MN.

OP you sound v nice, your wife, not so nice. Good luck

It sounds a bit like she is (or was) desperately throwing herself at him and he isnt interested. You say his messages to her were cold and there was nothing to indicate a relationship so possibly an infatuation on her part. Maybe he threatened to tell you which is why she finally let it go?

Even if nothing did happen, she is totally out of line and seems to have no respect for you whatsoever. You need to confront her and let her know you have seen the emails and tell her you want the truth about what was going on.

I would agree with honeycrest above and all the others that have said the same sort of thing.

One thing that nobody has picked up on yet is that she is deleting all of her emails.

If you want to see them even after she has deleted them then you need to install a keylogger. This is a simple piece of software that records every key that is pressed on the keyboard. Just google ''keylogger''.

You can also get keyloggers to install on mobile phones that run as an app in the background.

I never advocate confronting the 'other' person because what are they honestly going to say that is going to make this any better? Your relationship is with your DW and it's as plain as the nose on your face what her intentions were. If you don't believe her version of events, it means you find her untrustworthy. If you don't want to accept that she did anything wrong, I think you'd be foolish.

Personally, and I'm not telling you to do this, but if it was me I would speak the bloke.

I wouldn't 'confront' him as you've written above. No disrespect, but from what you've written here, it sounds as if it was your wife who did most of the running anyway. Yes, ok, if he got involved with a married woman that's out of order, but it sounds like he was the one who knocked it on the head, and I'm bothered by that 'I wasn't allowed to come' comment she made to him in front of you, also about the bit about being 'still stuck in the grid' - in the email.

You have no idea what shit she's told this guy about you. She could have spun him a line about all sorts - that you are controlling, manipulative, a bastard, the marrriage is dead other than in name only - the usual old BS that cheaters of both genders are wont to spin.

If it was me, I'd speak to him - I wouldn't be aggressive, or confrontational - but I would be very interested to hear his side of the story. I'm sure others here won't agree with me, but that is what I would do if I were in your shoes.

The fact that she's all happy and lovey dovey with you again, while writing to him 'if you ever need me I am still here' certainly does indicate that he's finished whatever was going on, and his curt responses show that he doesn't want to know, which is why your wife is back to playing happy families with you again. I wonder however, how long that situation would last if this bloke were to respond in a positive way to her correspondence?

Hear what you're saying Fontella, but if a relationship has reached the stage where one partner is having to check the veracity of the other partner's statements with what is, let's face it, a total stranger.... then surely it's dead in the water?

Probably it is dead in the water - that's not my call to make.

I'm just saying what I would do - and I would go and speak to the object of my partner's affections. I wouldn't 'confront' him. I'd just talk to him - because this whole things smacks to me of the OP's wife going after this bloke and he doesn't seem to have entirely welcomed the pursuit. He certainly appears to have been the one who brought it to an end .. and I would want to find out what went down.

That's just me. At the start of my post I made it clear 'I'm not telling you to do this'.

Just conveying what I would do if I found myself in the same circumstances.

OK so I did confront her last night.
She did admit that she was in the wrong, that it was a friendship where she got too close but "nothing happened".
If that's the case I guess it's because he wouldn't or maybe she just enjoyed the excitement of the kind you, let's face it, don't get after 15 years of marriage.
I said something did happen, if you're lying to me, being deceitful and being flirtatious with this guy then it's an affair whether sexual or not.
She said she wasn't sure whether I loved her. This all goes back to an argument we had 1.5 years ago where I said I hate her, which isn't what I said at all, but that's what she insists on remembering it as.

I did say if you don't love me, if you want to leave, if you can't be honest and trustworthy, if it's just over then now is the time to do it, I'm not going to force you to stay with me if you don't want to.
I didn't want to lay down the law about who or who she can't see (I hate controlling people) but I told her she's abused my good nature and she has to break contact with him.

She was very contrite. She says she does love me, she does want a future with me. I think she's upset that she has ruined what could have been an ok friendship with this guy. It's clear she did all the running.
She was annoyed that I looked at her email, I think she feels she has no privacy and I do feel bad for that.

I made it clear that I don't trust her now, which is sad, and if she wants to make it work she has to work to regain my trust and that if I discover in a month or 6 months that she is contacting him then that'll be it.

So here's hoping we can get past this.
Thanks for all your advice. Talking was the right thing to do.

About talking to the other guy, I wanted to make him aware that I knew what was going on.
It's awkward when he knows, I know, yet it's never mentioned.
I probably won't though.

Glad you asserted yourself. BTW.. privacy is important but, when someone is acting suspiciously and not telling the truth, they can't bleat too loudly if they get checked up on. Don't allow any guilt-tripping on that one.

So she is sort of justifying her behaviour because she's not sure you love her? It's funny how people in the wrong and having affairs (whether physical or emotional) turn it around to being someone else's fault that they're doing it.

Are you going to be able to trust her without feeling the need to check up on her?

"Are you going to be able to trust her without feeling the need to check up on her?".

I suppose like any affair trust will need to be regained a bit at a time.
She was right in saying she's "not the type" to do this, but she has, so I wouldn't expect anything like this to happen apart from with this one guy.
I told her she needs to earn it back and she knew it was true.

No-one's ever 'the type'... If you look at the thread running elsewhere on this board about how to successfully get away with an affair, one of the big common denominators is that the person is considered to be 'not the type' and very trustworthy.

BTW... have you defined what 'earn it back' looks like? It's a very tough road you've currently chosen and mistrust is a very difficult thing to live with. Most will tell you that it requires complete openness, full declaration of what happened, willingness to keep sharing those e-mails and texts (privacy goes hang...) probably counselling.

Although we have been best friends, she doesn't really do talking things out, she likes to avoid confrontation

Funny how it's often the person riding roughshod over their partner who feels like this.

She cheered up because she had started an emotional if not physical affair. Your wife has had her fun. She might have got it out of her system but the trust you had is long gone.

After the revelations in February you froze. Now as she seems to be in a new phase you are prepared to - literally - move on. I really hope she repays your stoical loyalty but I would think carefully about relocation.

I'd worry this upturn will be followed by a crash, is she still taking her medication?