Husband will be coming home this Tuesday night after being gone 2 weeks. He was visiting our one and only child that moved to another state.

Here is a little background. We've been married 34 years and our one and only was born in our 14th year of marriage. We were pretty close as a family once our son came, sharing a lot of recreational interests with our child, going to historic places, acting in plays, music (even had a family Bluegrass Band). My devotion was 100% to my family with no outside career or close friends. On the surface from the outside things seemed pretty good.

Son and husband started working together a few years ago. Even when home from work they continued talking. I was basically ignored. I tried to talk to my husband about this, but he just said that our son was the most important thing in his life and that I should stop trying to control them.

Husband has visited our son once a month for the past 9 months. When he is home, I never know what will set him yelling, fussing, belittling, calling me names and making fun of me and my family. No physical abuse, just emotional and verbal with no visible wounds.

He had already pulled his physical love away from me 6 years ago. To my knowledge, I don�t think there has been an affair. No indications that there is another woman.

Overview of this past year upheavals-
~He shut down his small business of 25 years.
~His mother sent him a certified letter dismissing him from being the Executor of her Will. Her reason: She thought he was pulling away from the family.
~Our son moved to another state.

He has told me several times that he is going to leave me. We come from very conservative backgrounds with no divorces in our family.

I feel hopeless, barely able to function. I�ve prayed and asked for direction to see what I can do to help make our marriage work. The Lord directed my steps to find Marriage Builders videos online. (wish I had heard about them YEARS ago) and I�ve listened to several days of the radio broadcast.

My heart is encouraged, HOWEVER, I feel so OVERWHELMED that I don�t know WHERE to start or HOW to mention this to my husband. I don�t want to set him off and have him shut down on even trying to work on saving our marriage.

I have never written on a forum like this and I'm afraid to write private issues on a public forum, but I really need help. I have no friends or family that I am able to share my situation with.

Thank you.

What have you done to confirm this?

Except for him traveling to see our son, we never spent time apart. I don't think he would have had time.

Prisca, What do you suggest that I do to confirm? Do I just confront and ask him? I think that would anger him.

Do not confront him, instead privately snoop. Your story screams of an affair

I can look at his gmail and facebook page. All other emails that I know of come on both our computers. He rarely writes or receives any messages.

I will look at his phone when he gets home. He does keep it with him 24/7.

Any suggestions?

Can you check online phone records to check if it shows any unknown numbers that he has alot of contact with?

How long has he been clutching his cell phone 24/7 ?

Put a Voice Activated Digital Mini-Recorder, (VAR), under the drivers seat of his car that he uses most, attached with velcro.

When he is asleep, you need to intall a cell phone spyware on it.

The phone being attached to him like an extra limb just screams a Secret Second Life, (SSL), and affair.

LTL

As bizarre are this sounds, I feel that my husband�s Emotional Affair is with our SON. Is this possible? Has anyone heard of this before?

I have felt this for a while and even mentioned to my husband that he and our son seem like a newlywed couple. This started before our son moved out of state. They talk MANY times during the day, text and my husband watches our son�s activities on FB.

Our son says that his Dad is his best friend. I thought that was sweet. I encouraged their closeness until they started to ignore and mostly shun me. Looking back I would say them distancing from me started about 2 years ago.

As I have mentioned, since our son moved 9 months ago, my husband has made monthly trips out to visit. I�ve gone on 3 of those trips� preplanned family trip.

During my birthday month, my husband was with our son for 3 weeks that included my birthday. I didn�t get a birthday card from either of them. This was the first year that I didn�t receive a Mother�s Day card. My husband did bring in 12 beautiful roses that he got for me when I asked him to buy a card for us to send to his mom. I thought that he had mailed the card because I never saw it, but 2 weeks later he threw a bag at me and said, "Here are the cards you wanted me to buy."

He is a good Dad and I appreciate that he started to change his focus about 5 years ago from being a workaholic to being a devoted Dad to our only child. I had been the one instigating all of our family together time, promoting and doing almost exclusively only what they would enjoy. We did everything together and had some wonderful adventures. I feel now that I am intruding when I go ahead and include myself. (they roll their eyes a lot)

It hurts because I am not only losing my husband, but also our son. I devoted my life to them. What happened? Had anyone told me this train wreck could happen in our family, I would never, in a million years, believed them!

I�m heartbroken and I feel utterly hopeless. I have no one to turn to ~~ someone please help!


[font:Arial Black][/font]

Thanks BrainHurts for your response.

He has Straight Talk since Sept. Looks like I can only get records if I have a court order. I can look at his phone late tonight when he gets home.

I did copy the numbers from his previous phone log before he cancelled. He asked me to do this because his phone broke and he wanted to know calls he had missed.

LearnedTooLate,

The clutching 24/7 started when our son moved away and husband took our son's old smartphone.

I appreciate your advice and I will try to locate a VAR and install spyware.

What are the best VAR brands or spyware programs?

It sounds like your son may be an affair enabler. He could have been passing messages all along, and now is facilitating physical contact with the OW.

mrEureka,
OH MY, that thought never entered my wildest imagination. I am so naive!

I had that same thought too, but I didn't want to just jump to wild assumptions.

But, keep your eyes and ears open.

The only way to find out for sure is to snoop.

LTL

LTL,
Hard to see the whole picture when I am using all my energies just to function. I HATE snooping. It goes against the core of my personality, but I see that I have to snoop.

I will not have access to anything that belongs to son until August, by then I should know from checking my husband's logs,etc.

OROH,

If your son has a wife or girlfriend, that could be the OW.

It could be one sided, the girl sees your H as someone to talk to while your H sees it as more.

This happened to me when I was 16 with a woman who was in her late 20's, I met her need for conversation and it just happened, although at the time I was too inexperienced to know better.

Gamma

Gamma, I appreciate you sharing your experience and I can see that could be a problem.

No girlfriend for our son, but I will remember that for later.

Our son has just met a gal and they have a lot in common and will probably start dating soon. H actually had opportunity to meet this gal at a public function with our son, but H said to me on the phone, "No, I not going to this event and meet her without you being here."

I had posted last night "Overwhelmed ~~How and Where to Begin" and the response was that my H was having an affair with AW. Hadn't occurred to me.

Husband is on his way home from 2 weeks visiting our son. He was in a talkative mood, so we've talked several times on the phone.

Our son started house sitting this week for some folks that will be out of town for 3 weeks. Out of the blue H told me that he had our son text him the Woman next door phone number just in case H couldn't get in touch with our son.

At first I didn't say anything, but then I asked if Woman was married and he said that she was. I said then why didn't you get her husband's number?

He got upset and told me that we were NOT going to START on something so STUPID as him having her phone number. I then named several male friends of our son at his new home and asked if he has their phone numbers. First he said that he didn't and then he said that he thought that he did.

I probably should have just snooped first instead of asking.

Anyway he always gets very upset if he is ever questioned. We did talk after that and I didn't bring up the AW# again.

I need some folks that have installed spy things on phones to please tell me what you have used. I can look on his phone when he is in the shower---he sleeps with the phone on the night stand and is a pretty light sleeper.

Thanks!

Check out this one: http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2805367#Post2805367

and look into flexispy.com

I would get one that has a built in GPS if you can. If you can't then you will want to install a GPS.

And stop asking him!! He will only further underground if true.

Thanks MelodyLane for your advice and information. I'll do my homework.