Hi Folks,

Last summer my wife and I moved our family from Manhattan to Austin, TX to allow me to accept a major job promotion. We have been together for 15 yrs and have always had a very affectionate, soul-mate type relationship full of mutual admiration and fun. We very much love each other.

But ever since we moved, my wife has been very volatile over a WIDE variety of subjects, but the most common one is my fidelity. She has accused me of having an affair with one of our closest female friends (who lives in NY), which I think is absolutely crazy. The "evidence" my wife cites is comprised solely of a day our friend was supposedly "flirting" with me before we moved, a housewarming gift that my wife interpreted as romantic towards me (I didn't see it that way), and a warm birthday card I received from the friend (again, it did not seem out of the ordinary to me).

Our friend has been almost a surrogate mother to our kids, is close with all our other close friends, and is a very genuine, good person. I have told her that my wife is upset with her about the "flirting" incident, but I'm a little embarrassed to tell her the full extent of the problem. My wife is asking me to cut all contact with this friend, which seems so extreme to me, especially since I know nothing has happened between the friend and I. I feel my wife is reacting to the stress of moving to a new state, new friends, new job, new routine, and is "inventing" problems to explain away her stress. But I'm no psychotherapist and I fear her problems are more than I can help her with. The past few weeks my wife has started "secretly" going through my work files, computer and checking my cell phone in the middle of the night (I've actually seen her). I honestly believe in no secrets in a marriage, and none of this stuff is hidden, but it just feels unhealthy to have my wife sneaking around looking through all my stuff in the middle of the night.

I have 2 questions: 1) How can I convince my wife that there is nothing going on, and 2) Is it fair for me to ask my wife to stop secretly going through my personal belongings, or will that just fuel the fire?

Thanks, Christopher

Your W is very concerned about this friend, and it seems she is correct in her concern that there could be a problem if this friend was flirting with you. That is completely inappropriate and disrespectful to your wife. I don't "flirt" with my girlfriends as that is not the act of a "friend," but of a pursuer.

The problem is likely aggravated by your a) denial that there is a problem and b) your disrespect of her feelings. Putting your "friendship" with this woman over your W's well being and security is extremely disrespectful and damaging to your marriage. This is very important to your wife, Chris, and no "friend" is worth ruining your marriage over.

Your W needs to be able to trust you to protect her from harm, and I don't think she believes that you are doing that.

The way that you reassure your W is to stop contact with this woman and tell your W she is perfectly welcome to look in any of your personal belongings because you have nothing to hide. She has a trust problem here, and as her husband, you should be finding ways to solve it by reassuring her, not doing things to aggravate it.

The rest of her anxiety is likely attributed to her recent major move. Hopefully you will realize this and do your best to make her feel better instead of worse.

EASY. Tell your wife that she should have no fear of competition from any other woman, and that not even the close friendship with this other woman has sufficient value to cause her concern. Cut off all contact with the other woman until and unless your wife welcomes it. Weclome her going through your personal belongings. She needs assurance.

What your are describing is a healthy reaction to your unhealthy and unwise willingness to give up a friendship which troubles her. By your actions your are telling her that you are willing to disregard her feelings in order to keep up a friendship with another woman.

I know all about my feelings being disregarded. It does make a woman crazy. By the time he was kissing her, he got ME into therapy because I was "psychotic". He was right. I sure wasn't thinking straight.

You may not know it yet, but she may be right. I recognized the danger long before my husband did. By the time my husband did, he moved the danger line from secret meetings to secret necking to secred oral sex... He violated his marriage vows. What he shared with another woman should have been special between us. Whatever lies ahead of us, good or bad, will have a deep scar from betrayal. And the betrayal started with disregard of my feelings, just like your betrayal may be starting that way.

Disregarded

I agree with Melodylane,
Wifes and husbands have a sixth sense when it comes to woman or men that are a threat to their marriage. There has only been two times in my lifetime that I have asked my xwh to cut all contact with a woman friend. Each time it turned out I was correct. The first one, I cut the friendship before anything happened, the second time we had too much unhappiness and years of indifference, mixed in with my neglecting my husband. If I had been more in tune I would have noticed before my husband fell in love with the other woman.
Your wife is telling you she is uncomfotable with this woman having a relationship with you.
Honor your wife's instinct, and end all contact. If the roles were reversed I'm sure your wife would do the same.

Your wife's feelings should be your priority, not your friend's.

Wow, I'm surprised by the replies I've gotten and find it hard to agree with you (especially since I have the unique perspective of knowing all the details and knowing what's truth or fiction). But I sure do appreciate the reponses and will take them to heart.

Thanks, Christopher

Chris,

It doesn't matter if you are right and your wife is wrong, that your friendship is nothing more than that.

What matters is that you are willing to continue a friendship which she perceives as a threat -- you are willing to discount her feelings because you are right.

My husband never thought he would have an affair. Arrogance. He didn't see it coming until it was too late and then he blamed me.
Cherished

chris,

Listen to what others are saying, and heed the warnings. But also realize that they are the words of those who have been betrayed or did some betraying. They are biased towards the "worst case scenario" because they lived that senario. There is alot of discussion on a similar topic on a previous thread of mine here is the link

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...;page=3#2843510

I dont know how to paste links, so you might have to copy and paste.

In the end, my wife and I did a POJA, and decided that my continued friendship was ok as long as i was cautious and wary of any warning signs. The main difference is that my wife was never upset by my friendship with this other woman, I raised the question as an example, and got alot more than i had expected in the way of replies. I dont know the details of your friendship, but mine was more like family (her family took me in for 6 months before i joined the army), and i would no sooner break contact with her than i would my mother (provided of course there was NO REAL threat to the marriage, which there wasnt).

Your best bet in my opinion is to talk to your wife as lovingly as possible, and try to come to a mutually agreeable solution. POJA. If you can enthusiastically terminate this friendship for the good of your marriage, then by all means do so. Also, i dont know if you have already read any of Dr. Harley's books, but I highly reccommend His Needs/Her Needs. Make sure this friend isn't meeting any of your important EN's, as another preventative measure.

Chris,

This opinion also comes from one living the 'worst case' scenario, so treat it as such.

You do know truth from fiction as far as knowing that nothing has happened. Your wife sees the 'truth' of a woman showing an interest in you and imagines the 'worst case' of outcomes. She is trying to save herself from that possibility because she is afraid of losing you. Maybe your wife has always been insecure, and maybe she just knows how to read other women better than you do. Women tend to be better at reading unspoken 'language' than men are, so don't be too quick to discount her feelings.

I suggest first that you talk it over with her. Don't try to reassure verbally, that wont mean anything to her. Show her that there is nothing going on by allowing her to go through your things. Encourage it. It wont do either of you any harm, and should put her mind at ease.

If you are unable or unwilling to cut contact with the woman, then perhaps agree with your wife that you wont see or speak to that woman without your wife being present. In addition, always tell your wife every time you speak to or have any contact with the woman. Whatever you do, don't react to your wife's insecurities by being secretive or not telling her something, it will only make things worse. Also, go to lengths to show the world that your marriage is strong and impenatrable.

MB principal is to cut all contact for your wife's sake, and that is why you are hearing that from people here. I understand why you don't like the advice you are given here, as you are innocent. And it takes two to have an affair. Like Ray said, you are hearing advice from people consumed by betrayal. We don't want to see it ruin anyone else's life.

Hope you sort the problem out quickly.

Ray, the advice given above is exactly right and is "biased" towards good judgement and common sense. It is based not only on education and awareness, but on the professional, clinical opinion of Dr. Harley. He is a trained, professional, experienced psychologist. We have experience in this arena, Chris doesn't. Who best to consult, someone who has education and life experience in a specific area or someone who doesn't? When your car is broken down, do you consult the barber because the mechanic is "biased?"

So please don't dismiss folks as "biased" just because they have knowledge and experience about something.

Chris, we don't need to know any more information to have come to the unanimous conclusion that we did. Is there something that you perhaps withheld that would change the truth of what you told us? Namely, that your W is very upset about this friendship to the point that it is harming your marriage? Unless that has changed, I don't think we need any more information to know that you are jeopardizing your marriage and showing your W great disrespect over an alledged mere "friendship." We don't need to know any more information to understand that you are dismissing your W's feelings. At the expense of your marriage. That leads one to the logical conclusion that you should stop doing something if it harms your marriage.

chris
here's another thing...

if you came here and said that your wife was on a rampage accusing you of infidelity with anyone and everyone then people would say that she needs to look in to these issues and see how damaging they are...

but that's not the case..
in your case it is one person...

and you may be right that she is just stressed and using this issue for whatever reason.....

if that is the case most likely then this to shall pass...

so the question becomes in the realm of the bigger picture of a happy marriage in which you two remain happy together...

why power struggle this with her..
why are you willing to choose this battle...

is the pursuit of contact with this friend more important...

in other words...as we often question..

do you want to be right or do you want to be married...

my guess is that if you agree quietly and with action to decrease contact with this friend...that this will blow over and eventually all parties will most likely be able to come back together ....

but if you choose this hill to battle on..it feeds right in to her stress....and it becomes you and your insistance for contact that creates and keeps this issue alive...

lets get real

how often do YOU contact friend
how often do YOU iniate contact
how do you and friend communicate...phone calls IM emails..etc...

are you the sole iniator of keeping this friendship alive or is she or is/was your wife.........

I think this is a blip on the radar of marriage
I think your wife will give up this notion
IF
you concede to her wishes...
your married to a smart womean even in the throes of irrationalness we woman KNOW we are being irrational..but we are stubborn to admit it...

let it go...
let the contact diminish
hand over all contact to her and your wife...and you step out of it completely...

become blameless and agree to stop contact not in a way that validates the issue of infidelity....but that validates you hear what she is saying...and you do not want to be someone who causes her pain...so you will gladly do this for her..........
humble yourself...

OR
powerstruggle it in to the ground and in the end you may lose your wife and your friend....
ARK

Please, HONESTLY ask yourself these questions:

What is this friendship giving you that your W isn't? (What EN is this friend filling for you?)

Why do you hesitate cutting it off?

Also, it seems to me the SOURCE of the problem is really your friendship with your W. Your W has sensed a threat to your M due to a weakness within the M. She feels more vulnerable to an outside presence, because she doesn’t feel secure within the M. Fix the weakness—the source and you fix the problem.

MY advice: Respect your Ws territory and feelings. Cut off the friendship, focus on your M. (Use the tools on this website—they are terrific). Find out why W isn’t feeling secure in the friendship between you two—sounds to me like you are not fulfilling her ENs. Revisit the friend issue in six months.

P.S. IMHO, This friend IS crossing lines. It is totally inappropriate for another woman to give YOU a gift ( save: mother, sister, etc). Not okay, even if she is well intended…it is stepping into your Ws territory. I would guess you are filling needs for this woman. If she wants her needs met, her H should do it!

Chris,

You came here looking for advice and we are giving it based on our long experiences dealing with full blown affairs and all the way down to affairs that are in the process of becoming.We can spot tell tale signs and what troubles me is that this post,of not agreeing and then using the "you just don't understand fully since you do not know all the details" types of statements,etc is avoidance and instead of saying that your W comes first and you are doing what you need to to make her feel secure you are about to bail out aren't you? since we may not have given you the responses you were looking for.Hopefully I am wrong.

My WH did the same thing to me: made me feel insecure like I didn't know what I was talking about or that my feelings were unjustified.He always was a flirt and had an inappropriate tendency toward women and he basically blew me off.But my gut instinct or women's intuition,if you can call it that,was right on.Your W obviously is feeling something about your behavior and it's making her uncomfortable enough to start snooping.Perhaps like was mentioned,you just can't see yet what we all do.

Bottom line is that if you care about your W above all other's,you will do what is necessary to make her feel secure.If you were "soulmates" and had such a loving marriage then it seems a bit odd that she would accuse you, out of the blue, of something without there being at least SOME truth to it.


Keep in mind that one classic step toward an actual affair(A),emotional or otherwise, is denial of anything inappropriate going on in the marriage and then projecting that insecurity onto the spouse who is doing the questioning and then resentment and anger start to factor in and it becomes a game of "well,she is invading my privacy" and "how could she accuse me of this?" and then you start looking toward the OP(other person) for support and to commiserate and then it's all down hill from there.

The last thing you want to be doing now is blaming your W for feeling the way she does and then becoming angry about it.Right now you should be supportive and work toward helping to alleviate her fears.You can and will do this IF there is absolutely nothing going on.

O

I wasn't dismisssing anyone. I apologize if i came off that way. Thats why i opened my post the way i did: "heed the warnings." But without knowing the details, I am not going to TELL someone to terminate what could be a genuine friendship, over what could be unwarrented actions of childish jealousy. The flirting definetly should be put in check, and as you all advised me, boundaries erected, but it always seems that the first answer from this site is always the extreme, even when no transgression has occurred. I couldn't find it anywhere in the basic concepts or in HN/HN that one should meet a spouses demands (dare i say "selfish demands" ?) no matter the sacrifice, in fact it says the opposite, sacrifice is bad. You have to come to a MUTUALLY AGREEABLE solution otherwise one spouse feels slighted in the end. As i said in my posts, in my case, my friend was family, and unless she stepped way out of line (ie, flirted with me despite my telling her not to, or insulted my wife, or became a hazard to my marriage through her actions (not a percieved or imaginary threat based on one incident of "flirting")... etc), i would not break contact with her any sooner than I would my mother.
I was just trying to be the voice of moderation.

I'm a little perplexed. If this was a common female friend in NY, and you moved Texas, why are you keeping contact? I guess I have never been the one to keep contact with female friends when I have moved, it was always my wife who did that. I agree, it's dangerous to choose the friendship of a female friend over the feelings of your wife, especially since you have moved a great distance and can easily sever the relationship. It sounds to me the attachment might be greater than what is being admitted to.

ray,

Reread the first portion of chris's thread.A "soul mate" type of marriage,full of admiration and fun,very much loving each other.If so,then why is he keeping a long distance "friendship" with some other woman? Perhaps this is why she(W) is "volatile" and about this we have no idea what the W has to say,she is not here.

I would be very upset too if my H was keeping in touch with another woman even after we moved away.This other woman,who it sounds like isn;t married, should be in contact with men and women in her own little part of the world not with some other woman's husband miles away and I can tell you that if any of my friends were in the most remote way insecure about my relationship with their husband I would bow out rapidly and gracefully.There would be NO reason to keep up a friendship like that where it was risking their marriage or my own.

Friendships with the opposite sex are ALWAYS risky and we have a situation where the W is uncomfortable.Can you really come up with a proper and rational argument for keeping a long distance "friendship" going with the other woman friend if it's hurting the marriage??

O

The POJA says never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse.

It is not a selfish demand to ask a spouse to NOT do something. It is a selfish demand to require a spouse to DO something.

The wife is asking that the spouse NOT have contact. She is expecting consideration.

Cherished

Chris,

IMO most marriages can be helped by the principles as outlined on this website and in His Needs/Her Needs. I would suggest you spend more time with your wife and make sure you are meeting her most important emotional needs. Has your promotion come at the cost of family or couple time?

Also, you should NOT get defensive or try to limit access to email, voicemail, credit card receipts, etc. If you are totally transparent, your wife will in time understand you are trustworthy. If you try to restrict access, you will only fuel suspicion.

Talk with your wife calmly and lovingly about this situation and your marriage in general. Try to find out why she is uncomfortable and then do everything you can to help her get through this. I also suggest you talk to her about counseling. A third party may help each of you with these issues.

Chris,

I realize you have probably stopped reading here because you did not get the answer you wanted.

This is a Marriage BUILDERS site, and what you are describing in your marriage is a crack in the foundation. What we are suggesting is a repair to the foundation.

It is likely your wife sees more to this realtionship than you are seeing...she is reading into it, and likely so, that this woman has intentions that are more than "friendly" based on what contact she has seen from each of you. Trust your wife that she is seeing something that you may not be...

Trust our advice too that this situation is problematic...an opportunity for infidelity, if it is not already. The road to H3ll is paved...

Think this through with me...after getting more frustrated with your W, you relay this to your friend. She is concerned, you both talk about what you will do...you decide to keep things more discreet. You hide your contact more... You find you have an opportunity to visit NY and plan to see this woman...can't tell wife because she will be upset. You complain about your wife the entire time, the friend understands. You meet in a secretive place. The more unhappy you appear, the more likely you or her will eventually express your feelings for each other...and the rest is history and can be read all over this site.

You have a campfire in your backyard and you are dancing around it with a can of gasoline...your wife is asking you to step back, and you are saying it is SAFE....

Good luck with this, but the fact that you are NOT willing to give up this emootional affair means you have already crossed a line in your mind...