Please read and comment on my proposed letter to OM wife. I have not sent yet and will wait for some feedback. Warning, it's long.
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Thanks for taking your time.
Just_Friends_NOT
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Dear XXXXXXX,
My name is XXXXX. This may be difficult to understand or read, but I will try to explain as honestly and as fair as possible. I am not aware if you know about my wife, XXXXX so I will tell you some history. Your husband and my wife went to University of XXXXXX and lived in XXXXX dorm. About 2 years ago my wife was doing some Internet searches for her job and one of your husband's published papers came back. She e-mailed him about the paper and to update him about how she has been doing. I remember her telling me about this and I didn't feel negative about it. Actually, I
always enjoy hearing about friends from the past and how they are doing. I think
they continued to e-mail more frequently as time went on. Then your husband invited her to start Yahoo Instant Messaging. I helped my wife install the program on our home computer, thinking nothing of it. Shortly after that, I noticed changes within our relationship, she would get up after I was asleep and Instant Message with your husband until 2:00am (our time). She also became very short tempered with me and our children. She really started to remove herself from me in certain ways. I looked into the log file for Instant Messaging and found out they would IM multiple times through out the day too. I was also able to see some content of the messages. My wife actually IM'd your husband to call her at our home phone or her cell phone a couple times. He called her on her cell phone on 4/9/04 at ~12:00 for about an hour. They have also been sending pictures
through e-mail. All of these things progressively building more and more upon each other and she was covering things up along the way. I confronted her on 4/9.04 and she
said they were "Just friends", she was lonely and she did want me to get upset about her relationship with your husband. I then did something that I regret, I was able to read her Yahoo e-mail and work e-mail account messages sent to your husband. She told him about me confronting her and was very negative towards me to your husband. His comments back to her were also negative towards me. She said she would leave me if I kept "snooping" on her. She said her privacy was violated. I agree to a certain extent, but feel that if I
didn't have a notion, I would not have done the things mentioned above. She then wrote in another e-mail that she still had his cell phone number and to e-mail her at her work address instead of her Yahoo account. He has a Yahoo e-mail account and was receiving e-mail's to this account, as well. I think his cell phone number might be XXX-XXX-XXXX. I want to also let you know, none of the e-mails or IM content displayed "romantic" content from either of them. A lot of "How's your day going so far", "how far along are you in the book I recommended", and "Did you get the pictures I sent". It looks like they even had little nick names. I asked my wife the other night if she is still in contact with your husband and she said, 'No". I promised her I would not disrespect her privacy by "snooping" anymore and I haven't since.
Your husband may have shared these things with you and that is great to have a relationship that involves open communication and honesty. I need to work hard with my wife to address these things within our marriage and We are currently in marriage counseling.
I don't know your husband at all and I am sure he is a wonderful person, but I feel these
things have caused a rift in my marriage. Since all of this happened, I am aware that
I need to address some thing about myself and my past. I am working on this and want
to make changes. I am also aware I have not been meeting my wife's emotional needs and I am making changes. Right now you’re probably saying, "This guy is a real psycho." and I can see this whole e-mail as being a complete shock. I'm sorry if it has caused you
any pain. I just felt you had a right to know, if you didn't know already. I almost
regret composing and sending this e-mail, but to me it feels like the right thing to do.
I also didn't want any negative connotation. I am aware that sending this e-mail may also jeopardize my marriage even further and it's intent is not to seek revenge, control my wife or ruin your marriage. If you want to show this to your husband I can completely
understand and I can't stop you.
I am not looking for sympathy, but the past 2 months have been just horrible and I would like to convey how affected I have been. I have lost over 30 lbs. (but I am gaining it back slowly), I am on anti-depressants (they have helped), I wasn't sleeping about a month ago (better now), and my career has suffered. Things are improving.
I am not trying to preach to you, but here is a web link that explains some of the things I have started to believe in. I hope you find some of the content valuable.
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/If you want to know anything else, you are welcome to respond (I am not expecting you to).
Thank you for reading my e-mail.
XXXXXXXX
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Thanks for taking your time.
Just_Friends_NOT
