I'm new here. And I'm desperate for advice. My husband of 5 years thinks I'm cheating on him. We've been together for over 10. It all started a couple of months ago when I told him I was going to work over time. I called him 3 times that day to make sure he would pick up our son. When 3:00 came along, I wanted to double check with the foreman that it was still okay. (Because the owner is the one who said that if we need to work OT to catch up that would be fine.) The foreman said I could finish up tomorrow. I would of asked the owner again but he was in a meeting. So I decided since I didn't have to be in a hurry I would go to Dunkin Donouts for coffee. Well my husband saw me going the opposite direction. I called him immediatley to tell him what was going on and he accused me of going somewhere else and to my BF's. I went back to work crying and asked the foreman to call him and explain, but he wouldn't answer. We got into a huge fight that night and he said he didn't trust me. Well things seem to have gotten better over the week and I just let it go. Well it happen again. I went to a Bret Michaels concert with a friend, because he wouldn't go. And now I'm being accused of being a "meat monkey". Just because I'm obsessed with Bret Michaels. I was a big fan when I was 16 and always wanted to meet him. Plus music is my great escape from my depression. I understand that maybe my obsession with famous people may bother him, but I come home to him all the time. I love him and would never cheat on him. I took that vow seriously. I come from a home that never cheated on each other so I share the same values. His mother cheated on his father. Which I brought up. I also told him that if he needs to leave, then go. I'm tired of being accused of things I didn't do. He likes to play head games with me. Like it's alright for him to go buy a $10,000 quad runner, but if I want to buy a $200 camera I get in trouble. We both work. I also collect disability. I have a major case of Scoliosis and my body is tilted. So who the ****** would want me to begin with. I also suggested marriage counseling, but he won't have anything to do with it. He always thinks he's right. And I'm always depressed at this point. Enough to call out of work today. Sometimes I just want it over with. But I know if he does say the words, I'll have an emotional break down. He's hurt me more than once in our years together. I trust him. Maybe I shouldn't. Please help me...

My wife and I are having similar problems. I'm actually went to councelling this past Monday to try and find some way to move past it. I am in the role of the "suspicious husband".

I watched "indecent proposal" last night. Probably not the best movie to watch when you are having trust issues. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> But I related to the suspicious husband and there were times where I just cried and cried and cried about how sad it all was-- the pain brought on by mistrust. The husband was making his wife miserable with accusations, questioning her constantly... really distroying their relationship. But then again, I understood how once the seed is planted that something may be going on, it's very hard to just tell yourself to stop imagining things.

My wife has a very hectic life. She has weird and unpredictable work hours. Most nights she teaches tennis from 6pm to 10pm. Two nights ago, she met her boss for dinner at about 6pm and he kept her there till 9pm. Last night she was in charge of her office moving so the movers came and she over-saw that. She didn't get off work till 12:30midnight. Other things... she claimed she was going to play in a tennis tournament with her boss. So I asked if I could watch. But the day of, she said that the tournament had been cancelled due to all the rain from the hurricane.

So as you can see, there are quite a few red flags popping up for me. However, many of her "odd" stories in the past have been validated as accurate later so... I am talking with the councellor to try and understand if I'm an untrusting, paranoid person and that's the problem or if her actions are strange and causing me to doubt her. Whatever the truth is, the counselor and I are working to try to figure out how to break the cycle of distrust-- wether that means that she make more of an effort to not have such a caotic schedule/life or wether it means that I have to just give myself a pep talk and stop being soo suspicious and trust her no matter what.

I want to talk more about what a slippery slope it is. The sad thing is that short of a video camera monitoring you all day, there's nothing that you can really do to 100% assure him that you are being good. My wife has a cell phone and says "call me any time if you want to check up on me". But a cell phone doesn't mean jack. She could be in bed with someone and her cell phone rings. Stops, answers it, talks to me, and then goes back to having the affair. I'm exaggerating but you see what I mean? Calling her on her cell only servs to annoy her and remind her that I don't trust her and at the same time it has no value of validating what she's doing. At the end of the day, it does come down to trust. If there is no affair going on, tell him that very clearly and at some point he just has to accept that and stop being suspicious.

But at the same time you can make the patterns of your life more predictable so that he has to wonder less. For example, saying you're going to go to Jenny's house and changing your mind on the way there and going to Beth's house instead will raise flags. My wife does that all the time. "Oh, we decided not to play tennis and talked about work over dinner instead" or "Oh, we went to this place instead of the one I told you we were going to go to". So changed plan raise red flags, changing clothes often raises red flags, taking showers at strange times raise red flags. My wife does all of these things. You can chalk them up to her being a clean freik and trying to look nice for her job and I do my best to self-talk that I'm reading into things but every time she does one of those "classic red flag" things is just makes my wheels turn. It's sad.

What do you mean by hurt you? I hope you don't mean physically. If so, I REALLY worry about you. I have read that voilence stems from control. If he's a controlling person to begin with, this situation is a dangerous one for you. Luckily, I am not that controlling of a person. I want my fears extinguished but I have little interest in controlling my wife. I want her to feel free and not repressed.

Assuming and hoping that you husband has never physically hurt you, then I would sit him down and say "I don't want you to say a word; just listen to what I have to say. Look, I know that you think I'm having an affair or some kind of slut or something but I'm not. I have never cheated on you and I love you very much. Your suspicious behavior is destroying our relationship. I will be understand that it's hard for you to trust. There will be moments where you "fall" and think that I am up to no good; I expect that. But for us, I need you to pick yourself back up and trust me. I need you to seek out help in the form of councelling or a friend that you trust-- by yourself or together... whatever you would find best. I will work with you to make my life transparent and ease your fears or red flags or wrong signals that you might be getting from me. But at the end of the day, it's going to come down to your trusting me before things can get better. PLEASE, do this for us. Make things better for us again.

I didn't read all the way through but read enough to maybe wonder if its him thats cheating? SOMETIMES not ALL the time but the one doing the accussing of something is sometimes the one doing it. Its called transferring or projecting. They project their feelings of guilt over onto another for the things they have done.

Now, I'm not saying this is the case at all, but its highly possible. Has he always been like this or is this something he recently started doing? It could be too that people who are very insecure do things like that as well. Theres also something called paranoia or delysional jealousy. That is when a person has convinced themselves that their partner is either cheating or will cheat.

They will even go to great links to find or come up with eveidence to suporrt the way they feel. However, in most cases they come up empty handed because theres nothing to find. Its just a way of an overly insecure person to convince themselves if something isn't already happening, it will eventually. Those are just a few things I wanted to throw out there. Maybe its one of them.


Joe

I disagree with the idea that he's probably cheating.

My wife was going to a counselor. I was convinced she was lying to me at times because she tells white lies to just about every person that she knows. And the counselor threw out the theory that maybe I'm the liar and because I lie I worry that she's doing the same thing. I thought that was hog wash.

And that's sort of the saying goes for when people say "if you are affraid of gays that much, maybe you are a repressed gay yourself". No, that's simply not true. If I dislike handling my garbage can, it doesn't mean I secretly want to be a garbage man. Just makes no logical sense. In my opion, those sorts of sayings are just ways to "turn the tables" where accuser becomes accused.

I didn't say that was the case with the orginal poster. I said it was possible. Even if he is not the one cheating, chances are theres some form of insecurity going on, on his part or something to make him feel the way he does.

I went back and saw where she said she was tired of being accussed of things she has not done, and that he likes to play head games. This is a form of insecurity/control. He probably feels the need to do this to "keep her' so to speak, because he may be afraid of losing her for whatever reason. Basically people like that need not only marriage counseling but indivual counseling as well. There are choices to be made, people either choose to continue their behavior or they get help and try to get to the root of why something is happening. It wont be easy, nope, but hopefully they will start somewhere.


Joe

I wanted to follow up. Another crazy thing happened last night. I got a call from my wife at about 6pm. I had a college class to attend. I asked her what her plans were and she said she was done with work and was probably going to go to sleep. We were already not getting long.

So I get done with my college class and return home around 8:15pm. I get out of my car and see to the right of me what looks like my wife's boss's SUV with it's lights on. With the lights I couldn't see in; wasn't even sure if it was his car or not. So I go into my house and my wife isn't there. I begin to prepare some boiling water for spegetti for dinner but of course I'm bothered by the possibility that my wife's boss and my wife are in that car. I can only see his headlights from my window. I'm peaking through the blinds. About 10 minutes later my wife walks around the front of his car and towards the house. My heart sank. I wanted to believe that I was wrong. I had hoped mybe she was out with her girl friend Arin. I felt like I had just caught her in bed with him. I was soo hurt and disgusted... here I am really making an effort to trust and this!!!

As soon as she walked through the door I told her she was disgusting. That I hated her. Here I am working on trust and I come home to this!! She was very upset and atament that it was nothing. That he had been out of town and call her up on short notice and wanted to meet her for dinner at a Thia restaurant to go over the work for the next day. Knowing that it would take hours and how weird it would look if she went to dinner with him when she told me that she was going to be at home sleeping, she asked him to drop by and give her the work. And that he was assigning her the next day's work in his car. Their office's roof did indeed cave in due to the hurricanes so they have no office. So she offered that up that his car was their office. I said "Why not meet at a well-lit place with other people around?!!! Meeting your boss in his car and talking for well over 10 minutes is weird and messed up!! That is not normal! No self respecting married woman does that!!" I was furious. Anyway, she says that I'm reading into things and presuming things... that her job is just crazy. That her work hours are from 8am to 8pm and that she is "on call" all the time. She works for a law firm.

I demanded that she quit her job at the law firm or that it was over between us. For one, if there were anything going on, now if I ever see him with her, I know for sure it is an affair. Secondly, if things are like she says it is, he is a weirdo to be setting up meetings with a female employee in the evenings over dinner, having her give him tennis lessons at night. He has his reasons like he's a busy lawyer during the day and night is the only time he can work on his game. Part of me just wonders if this guy is working his way towards seducing her and she's too naive to see it? He's supposedly in his 50s so it's hard to imagine that my wife would be attracted to a guy that old. Am I over-reacting by demanding she quit her job? It doesn't feel like I am. Things seem SOO WEIRD and disfunctional!! Is she not doing things that raise massive red flags for me? I actually know that I have some insecurity problems but I just can't think that sitting in a parking lot with your boss for 10 minutes to talk about work is normal. I feel like she is doing things to merit my distrust.

Yeah, there's some major LB'ing going on there. I doubt it will get you the results you want.

Nothing kept you from going over there and seeing if it was your W, and you'd know for sure, but instead, you want to function on innuendo and suspicion, because apparently it feeds some weird need you have...

There's lots of woulda/coulda/shoulda, but int he end, it's what really happened that counts.

Thanks for your response.

I think the thing that holds me back is not know what the truth is and trying to maintain the balance of having questions answered and yet not being inappropriate and pushing her away (if she is innocent). Like you say, the only thing that really matters is what really happened. But I don't know. The only thing I do know is she is inconsistant with what she says is going to happen and what does happen.

That was one of the questions I asked the councelor. Does being in love and having trust mean that you trust the person 100% and ignore any red flags that pop up? She said no.

My wife and I are going to go to councelling on Monday to talk more about this. She swears up and down that nothing is going on with her boss and that she really likes her job. I want to believe her and do to a large extent. I don't want to crush opportunities or wholesome things in her life which are making her happy. I'm curious to hear what the councelor has to say.