Is my husband having an emotional affair?

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

He was this distant way before I even cheated.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

There was no "home" for me to move back to. I'm an orphan.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

Thank you. That is good food for thought.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

Misogyny has no place in this post. If you wanted to rag on me for being a New Yorker, or short, or a shitty wife, that's fine. But don't denigrate an entire gender here.

Please save that for /r/douchebags, thanks.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

Try being celibate for 3 years while married in your early-20s (5 years where I can count on both hands the number of times we had sex), and then get back to me on that.

Yes, cheating is wrong and terrible, and I have learned my lesson, but try being in my shoes for a bit. I have never ever cheated before this relationship and never will again, but I was unemployed in a foreign country, with no income of my own, and had no friends or family to rely on for emotional/any kind of support. Not making excuses, but I did avoid cheating for 3 years under these circumstances and tried my best to retain some dignity and respect in this relationship.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

If you must know, we had arranged for couples' therapy to happen before -any- cheating began. But my husband's work-schedule made it difficult, so he couldn't make it.

Please refrain from making any judgement until you yourself have been in a similar situation.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

Right, because acting like a child and making no effort to try to keep things civil between -adults- when there is a moderated split is such a bad thing.

Did you read any of my grievances and reasoning behind this? I -want- to leave him alone, but under the circumstances, we cannot at the moment, so all I ask is that my husband act like an adult and stick to the things we agreed to, for our mutual safety and benefit.

Your comment, sir, enables and gives "men" permission to treat and continue to treat their wives like shit.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

Also, for the record, I am NOT still speaking with that man, and it's very clear in the post that I'm not.

throwawayaday9 · 3 months

No offense, but are you part of the ForeverAlone crew?

If you are, I'd like to personally thank you for single-handily convincing my husband to end a marriage when you have NO idea what I/we've been through for the past 5 years. I was once ignored by him when I had a mini-stroke. I was constantly put-down and even "corrected" on use of my vocabulary constantly (what spouse, who supposedly loves his wife, does that?)

I have a hundred other stories that are much worse than that, and you have no idea the SHIT I've been through in this relationship. So at the risk of sounding like the rest of your immature friends (if you are indeed a member of that group that speaks to him), I will refrain from posting them here. I will however say, LEAVE MY HUSBAND ALONE. LET US SORT IT OUT BETWEEN US AND OUR THERAPIST.

P.S. If you're that little homewrecker, your post makes all the more sense.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

I kind of feel like in a way that someone (possibly even the ForeverAlone girl) told him to end it with me, and to go to the therapist as a sort of "safety net", so that he could break up with me without me being infuriated with him.

The first two sessions seemed promising (this was earlier on in the month), and I was feeling encouraged about this, but then he immediately changed his tune and after I guess he felt "safe" at the therapists' (btw, I'm way smaller than he is, and he nearly has 100 pounds on me, I don't know why he would ever feel "threatened" by me) enough to tell me directly that he didn't want to be in a relationship anymore.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

I agree with this 100%, changeyou.

I personally don't want him to do it -at all- until I move out (if he has no desire to reconcile, although, he did before talking to this very particular group on ForeverAlone), as I feel like it would just makes things escalate to a point where it might get very bad (e.i. Police being called, shouting matches, insomnia ((I haven't been sleeping very well because of this))).

Even if we're not together, we are still legally married and living together, so we have to "put things off" until we're living separately. He claims that these people just give him "emotional support", but why not post on a forum thread instead of chat/text? (Like I'm doing here) Also, why not just go to a relationship site (they might have some online experts/non-single people there going through a similar thing) if he wants people to listen to his problems?

It's very hard to "keep the peace" around here because of it, and I'm afraid of it getting to the point where one of us is physically hurt or worse.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

One major problem has been communication between us, mostly from what I feel is lack of communication on my husband's part.

He's the kind of guy that's perfectly fine just sitting in silence on the couch when hes upset or depressed, watching tv and drinking a beer. I grew up with parents that encouraged me to be very open with my thoughts and feelings, especially if I was feeling depressed or upset about something. I was taught it was very unhealthy to "hold things in". I don't think my husband's family was that way at all. He very rarely tells me about what's actually bothering him, and claims when he gives me cryptic one-sentence responses, that I'm not "listening" to him when I ask him to elaborate on them. I think maybe the lack of sex was a symptom of that? Although, at the time, I had no idea because my husband never said why he stopped having sex with me.

After the sex became very rare, I would go online and cyber with other guys. I admit that it was wrong, but again, I felt so frustrated at getting "I don't know" whenever I asked why he didn't want to have sex with me, that I felt trapped. I'm not a mind-reader, so I'm the type of woman that likes to ask her partner lots of questions, get to the bottom of things, and solve them.

When he told me the first time that the cybering bothered him, I told him exactly why I was doing it, and I -stopped-. I had hoped that this meant that he would have held up his part of the bargain and have sex with me, since as his wife, I felt like his sex-withdrawl from me was even a form of sexual abuse. He never got any better, so I went right back to cybering and told him exactly why I was doing it. He wasn't letting me help him with his problem and he didn't care about my needs and feelings in return. (He always claims that I never care about -his- feelings. How can I if he never tells me them?? It's not like I don't ask in a caring and concerned manner)

evilinthishouse · 3 months

Hey all, just wanted to give a bit of an update.

So at our last therapy session, I make it very clear that the -only- request I have from my husband (to keep things civil at our house for the time being), is that he refrains from speaking to the same people on ForeverAlone. I also think he's speaking to a particular girl he met on there, but I told the therapist it was fine that he talked to those people as long as he did it outside of the house, as it would just cause arguments between us.

Other than the man I had an affair with, I had not spoken to any other people online or in chatrooms (save for old friends I have on MSN). (I wanted to make sure this relationship was over before possibly meeting someone new.) We make this agreement in front of the therapist and left it at that.

Tonight, my husband was in his room, on his cellphone, on some sort of reddit IRC chat with those same ForeverAlone people. (Or so he tells me, I didn't actually see the screen) He tried hiding it from me very quickly, and when I confronted him about it, and reminded him of our agreement calmly, he freaked out, admitted it, and became enraged. I've never seen him so angry before in our entire relationship. Again, I just calmly reminded him of what we agreed to at the therapist and he changes it around and says, "Oh, we agreed that I could do it, -as long as it's behind closed doors-." Wtf? I was very specific about it not being in the house, but now he claims that it's not "what we agreed to" and that he's not doing anything wrong by doing this, he's merely getting "emotional support" from the ForeverAlone people, screams at me to leave his room, and types something to the chat, logging from it in secret. Surely if he wasn't doing anything wrong (in terms of the agreement/possibly something else), why did he hide it from me and then try to get me to do something else?

HappyNappy · 3 months

I felt the exact same way, and I'm not gonna lie, it's freaking hard and painful to end a relationship like this. (But!) Eventually, your body, heart, mind, and spirit will just say, "Enough is enough." If he really cared about you, he wouldn't have lied to you in the first place. Confront him. Give him an ultimatum. Say you'll leave if he doesn't make up -his- mind about what to do about the friend-vs-girlfriend situation. They are not nice friends if they will talk badly about someone's girlfriend for no apparent reason. They should respect you, as his family should (Unless you did something terrible to them, I see no reason why they should treat you badly). If he gives you an answer that is simply unacceptable to you, then just ask if that's what he really wants. If it is, you'll see him for the "real" person he is, which will upset you enough not to continue anymore with this douche.

Find a guy that has the same priorities as yourself.

HappyNappy · 3 months

Once an SO lies, it's hard keeping the relationship intact, especially since trust is such a key component in a healthy relationship.

I had an ex that did the same thing your boyfriend did. He lied about little things all of the time, but once I found out about them, my feelings towards him had changed. We started fighting all of the time because of it. We were on/off-again almost every month for a year.

After the last time we got back together, he was still ditching me to hang out with his douchebag friends (not all of his friends are assholes, just a few, which he were afraid of "upsetting"). Hell, he even got mad at me because he blamed me for "making his friend pissed off at him". I was just stunned and how little he actually cared about me, and while I was always the one that ended it, I told him to end it and left for good.

I think eventually you'll just get tired of it and realize that it's not worth all the heart/headache. Just think about ending it with this guy ASAP.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

Yes.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

I think she may have felt really betrayed and even frightened by the lies, almost to a point where she wanted to make sure that she didn't see you again. Or even hell, that you might have even compromised her safety; how can she exactly feel safe around a guy that she couldn't trust?

Look at it from her perspective: Here's a guy, who she thought she knew, who she had a very close and intimate relationship with, who has lied to her. A lot. In her mind, she's thinking the worst of you:

"Okay, here's a guy that lied to me about being a virgin (kind of a big deal) just so that he could sleep with me (what she could be thinking) and talk to all of his friends on Facebook about it. What a creeper..."

Yes, a restraining order might sound extreme, but when you're in a bad emotional state and there has been an abuse of trust, people sometimes just snap. I once had a boyfriend who did this to me, and I felt so hurt and betrayed, that a restraining order might have even been an option because I had no idea what this guy was about anymore (and I didn't want to find out).

I think the best thing here is to just make sure that it's totally ended and -clearly- ended. No weird, "we're together, sorta, kinda.." BS. That's going to make anyone crazy. Just stay away from her (for good), and learn about the value of honesty and it's role in a relationship. This will make your next relationship a hell of a lot better.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

When a guy lies to a girl in a relationship (even if it was about something minor, like the Facebook thing), it can really make a girl question everything a guy does. As insane and deranged as it must sound, you have to remember that you did in fact -lie- to her on -many different occasions-. Sure, they were stupid mistakes, but she's going to start to question "What else?" you've said or done might be a lie (cheating, etc.).

This can make people feel a bit paranoid over time, and thus, lapse into random anger outbursts and arguments. This relationship was doomed from the start if basic trust was not established. Trust me, I've been in a similar relationship, and once a tiny lie was exposed, the rest just poured out, and we never ever recovered from it.

Moral of the story: Don't lie to your SO.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

You were right on the money with this, PenisChrist. Our therapist today cleared up her role in our now-separation by telling me that she was going to make sure that the split went as smoothly as possible. I have never gone to couples' therapy before, and along with feeling infuriated last night at our argument, I was unclear on the purpose at this point.

throwawife · 3 months

she has the maturity of a 12 year old.

This.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

You're right, and I still feel incredibly guilty and broken up about cheating on him. I'm not the "cheating" type (or so I thought) and I absolutely abhor it. There's not a day that goes by that I don't feel horrible about it. I wish I could say it was because I was in a foreign country at the time (we lived in Europe) with no job, no friends/family, I felt trapped, etc., but those are just weak excuses, I suppose.

I have learned my lesson about ending it quickly if things start to sour like this, instead of dragging out the marriage and eventually just making things worse for myself.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

During our first session of therapy, I did tell our therapist the initial reasons for why I was unhappy with our marriage, which included the lack-of-intimacy thing.

I really wish I would have been "braver" in the beginning of our marriage, and just left that first year. But stupid, naive me wanted to try to make the marriage work, despite having a gut feeling that something wasn't right...

evilinthishouse · 3 months

Thanks for the advice so far, everyone. I just got back from the session, and I finally told my husband to stop pussy-footing around and admit with me that our relationship is FUBAR. The therapist is trying to now focus on getting us "safely" seperated without any more arguments or issues.

It's getting pretty hard for me to try to keep focused on the task at hand (e.i. trying to figure out where to live, possibly getting a job in a new city, starting from scratch, etc). I feel really, really depressed at the moment knowing that right now, my husband is probably cybering with some Redditors in his office...

It's a very hard process to go through at the moment, and I'm trying my best not to fall apart. It's a bit difficult having to deal with this all in a new city (I'm admittedly not very social) and not having any friends to speak to about this.

In any case, please keep the suggestions coming. It makes me feel at least a bit better hearing outside opinions on this. I've been in a cloud of delusion for so long...

ThrowAway81077 · 3 months

Not only is her behavior doing this, but it seems like she really does have a lot of underlying psychological issues that she needs to sort out before being in -any- healthy relationship. I personally hope that she gets better, but it's not your responsibility now. Unless you're a licensed therapist or she is willing to get help, it's just going to annoy and piss -both- of you off.

evilinthishouse · 3 months

Sorry, I didn't clarify in the post. I did actually tell him, "If you don't fuck me, I will go out and fuck someone else." I told him this many times in fact, but he just chose to ignore me.

evilinthishouse

TROPHY CASE

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