Hello,

I am a 28-year-old husband, and have been married for 6 years now. I have three children and am very happily married. My marriage has been very good for the most part the last few years, but was very rocky at the start. My wife already had a child from another man when we were married. I worked through that and determined that I loved her enough to overlook it and accept the challenge of starting off with a child. It took some time for me to look past her sexual permissiveness in high school, since I was a virgin. Two years into the marriage she left me for a short time. I found out that she had actually had 10 sexual partners, not the two she had revealed during our dating and early marriage. Two of them were during our engagement. Then she came home, but I met someone by chance through email who had a similar situation with her husband...and we of course hit it off. We talked on the phone and through email, and I went to her house one night and had some passionate kissing.

Recently my wife was visiting her parents in her home town where all her previous relationships took place. She got caught up in memories with her former lover and they shared a passionate kiss. Needless to say, there's been a breaking of trust on both sides. We love each other very much and God has helped us through a tremendous amount.

This brings me to my dilema. Again by chance, I met a lady in a chat room one day when work was very slow. We have hit it off quite well and what started as a friendship became fairly strong feelings for each other. The odd thing is, I still go home happy to see my wife and love her more than ever. The other girl is overseas and I'll never meet her in person, but I really like her and enjoy chatting with her, and care about her. I started feeling guilty about this because my wife didn't know about it. So, I talked with my wife about it and she felt very uncomfortable with the whole thing. She felt it was wrong for me to have female friends outside of the marriage. I then told the other girl this and decided to end the relatinship with her to respect my wife's feelings. However...my feelings for this woman were strong enough that I recently chatted with her again. My wife had told me to "talk to whoever you want to, but if something happens it's not on my head."

My question is: Is it wrong for me to have any kind of relationship outside of the marriage with another woman (especially with one I've never met and will never meet), so long as I am committed to my wife and my family.

loving_husband,

Don't take this too harshly, but,

1. Yes it is wrong to have a woman friend regardless. It is against your wifes' wishes.

2. STAY OUT OF THE CHAT ROOMS!

JMHO

DU

From a wife's point of view, yes it is wrong. If it's going to cause problems in your marriage, then it's wrong. You stated that you have strong feelings for this other woman and you talked to her against your wife's wishes and this is wrong. It sounds to me that if you can justify it then you feel it is OK. It is wrong in my opinion but you need to ask yourself what is more important to you...your marriage or something else. Until you've been on the other side it may seem harmless to you.

If you read a lot of the other posts, you will find this sort of thing has been the beginning of the end for many of us.

Think about what is really important to you. Maybe some of your EN's are not being met by your wife, even tho you love her. Read the info on the site and see if she will read with you. It doesn't sound like too much damage has been done yet and you two could get a better understanding of meeting each other's needs and stop this before it gets too far gone.
Free

If you are a 'loving husband,' you will stay totally away from other women and chat rooms.

Remember, this is a marriage BUILDERS site. Nobody here will tell you to continue contact with this other woman. That's how affairs start.

loving_husband,

I'm going to bring up some things for you to think about....

Would you chat with this person online if your wife was in the same room? Would the conversation be any different if that were to happen? Or would you edit what you typed, knowing that your wife could see everything?

You don't have to even see this woman to be involved in an A. It's called an emotional affair, and there seems to be some feelings involved on your part if you are finding it hard to respect your wife's feelings about this and still chat with her.

I think what you need to do is look at what chatting with this woman is giving you--it's obvious that she is filling some need of yours. Does she make you feel good about yourself? Does she boost your ego? Does it make you happier to talk to someone "brand new"? I noticed that this started when you said things were slow at work. Has everyday life become boring for you? Are things monotonous?

Take what you find from this and determine what needs are being met by this woman. AND THEN ADDRESS THIS WITH YOUR WIFE AND LET HER FILL THOSE NEEDS.

I can't say this strongly enough. By talking with this OW and and slowly getting feelings for her, you are indeed having an A--you are giving something of yourself that you promised you should only be giving to your wife--your heart.

Can you have female friends outside the marriage? I think it's possible. But when you start to hide aspects of that relationship from your wife, or when you start sharing thoughts and feelings with another and stop doing the same with your wife, well, that just leads to trouble.

You said you started feeeling guilty about your chats and that that was what lead you to tell your wife. Well, to me that means that a huge part of you knows that what you are doing is wrong and incredibly hurtful to your wife and your marriage. Stop it now before it goes any further or before you find another who is a lot closer in proximity to you.

my 2 cents
H2M