I'm nauseous. And feeling things that I don't jive with who I think I am, wondering what my H's actions have done to my soul.
VG NF N'DTN 'DNYI
My H has had an on-again/off-again EA with a co-worker for years. He insists that they're just friends, and don't even hug. At one point, he tried to get me to be friends with her but the thought disgusted me and I refused. I found emails where she complained about her H, and he told her he loved me, but didn't know why. Crap like that. We went through infertility and despite my requests for confidentiality, he shared our business with her. He admitted it. Didn't see what the problem was. Said she was on our side and was wanting us to have a baby. All I know is that whenever I came across her--we work in the same profession--she was throwing our issues in my face, once even taunting me by rubbing her belly and asking me, sarcastically, if I was pregnant. My husband doesn't believe she's capable of such cruelty. If she ran me over with her car, he'd ask me why I was on the sidewalk.

We went through counseling five years ago, and she came up a lot. The counselor believed me when I said she was taunting me, and felt she had a crush on my H but that he loves me, not her. She said that my husband should keep being her friend because it met his need to be a hero and that I should keep my mouth shut about it. So I took her bad advice.

Shortly thereafter, she lost a baby during her eighth month of pregnancy and stopped talking to everyone at work--including my H--and had to go through heavy-duty therapy. My H withdrew from me, seething with resentment. I was preoccupied with moving past mourning our infertility and starting the adoption process.

Finally, one day I had a legitimate reason to go in his email box; I needed to find an email from a mutual friend. He stood there helping me log in. I saw an email from her with a suspicious subject. Once done with the business, I slipped out of the room and practically ran to my computer to look at it. It was a long email where they were rekindling their friendship and he was comparing their relationship to a certain EA-glorifying Bill Murray/Scarlett Johanssen movie--even including a review. He told her that no one understood him the way she does.

I. was. livid.

But I calmly confronted him. He said he told her in person that of course I understand him, but he was describing what their friendship meant to him. He said he resented me for breaking up their friendship. I reminded him that she lost a baby and had stopped talking to him. I asked him to tell me what I'd said about their "friendship" over the past several months. He had nothing to say, because there had been nothing. He said he had a right to be her "friend" and I was just going to have to deal with it.

If we hadn't adopted our child just six months earlier, I would have packed my bags.

That was about two years ago, and until a few months ago, I left it alone. I think lurking on this site this summer, and reading about the all too familiar, prompted me to finally just lay it out there. Of course, he denied everything. But I learned a lot from this site, and I articulated, clearly, how his actions were impacting me. I've done so in the past, through tears, but it's been like he's impervious to my feelings, determined to cling to their "friendship" and his "right" to have it. For the first time, I could tell that he sensed my sorrow in his responses to me. That he really didn't get what was so wrong with him sharing emotions with her that belong to me, and for the first time, a light was going on.

After this conversation, our pastor did a sermon on EAs (!!!) and used some tools from MB! Though my H was angry at first, and curled up in fetal position when we got home from church, after that we made progress in our marriage. I could sense the change. I also became more introspective about the things about me that would leave the door open to an affair. I became more attentive, and he responded. He refused to go to counseling with me, saying maybe he'd go if I went a few times on my own first. I saw a woman who told me stories about her male friends, and their personal relationship business, and it dawned on me that she was as bad as the OW. She refused to use the word emotional affair, or had never heard of the term. But, despite "firing" her after one session, I learned some things from her anyways in the area of communication. My H came home from work every day, happy and relieved to be home. I am still not comfortable with our marriage, and I hate that he works with the OW, but there has been movement in a positive direction.

But over the past couple of weeks, he has seemed withdrawn and depressed. Yet, not as in the past. In contrast, he's been completely present. He has been overprotective of me, extra attentive regarding my safety, and wanting to know if I'm OK. This is the opposite of how he's been our whole marriage. I seriously could be two hours late from work and he wouldn't have checked on me.

I've been asking him how he is, trying to show him my love and concern for his well-being, asking why he doesn't seem happy when leaving for work anymore. He's said he's OK. Finally, the other night, quite out of the blue, we started talking about baby names. As a joke, I said the OW's name. He got jittery. So, I broke the code of silence and asked how she was.

That was when he told me that he thinks she might have cancer. She's lost a ton of weight, though eating healthy. She has pain in her pelvis, and they're about to do a CAT-scan. I could tell how nervous he was as he was telling me. He has shown less visible concern for his own family members with health issues, about which he is matter of fact. I asked how her H feels about it, and he said he's worried (BTW, they have two kids). Apparently, she's been acting unconcerned. He kept asking me questions as though I'm a health expert. I tried to reassure him that it could be anything. I told him that I felt bad that he'd had to keep this all inside, that he didn't have anyone to talk to about it. He denied that he was as bothered as he visibly was.

So, here I sit with my feelings in the middle of the night. How many times did I hope that she'd move away, find another job, decide to stay at home with her kids, tell my H she hates him, fall in love with her husband again. Anything. Just go away.

And now she's sick, with something. I don't want her to die. I cried like a baby when she lost hers. I don't want her to suffer. What has caused her to cling to my H is a devastating childhood that she decided he could help her overcome. Sure, when my H told her that I felt their relationship is an EA--against my wishes--she said her H didn't mind their friendship, and because she and my H didn't feel it was an EA, they just kept right on. And she's been callous toward me many a time, once telling me that she and my H were going out to lunch and it was their special time with a couple other co-workers and I wasn't invited. A few years ago, she sent my husband an email before we went on our anniversary camping trip, complaining that our trip interfered with them being able to email each other. When I was first getting to know her, she told me that she stole her H from another girl in HS and seemed quite proud of it. She's admitted that she'd create crisis at work so my H would come running--and did this one time years ago when we were trying to enjoy a vacation at home. I could go on, but what she's done is just so stupid, and my H always defends and enables her.

But despite all that, she's a person. One who I cannot deny that I want to go away. But not this way. Do you see my quandry? What do I do with these feelings? And if I found the guts to tell my H that he is to have no contact with her period...what kind of monster does that make me when she could be facing a life-threatening situation? She should not be leaning on him, but on her H. And since my H claims she is "in denial" what I am hoping is really happening is that she's sharing her feelings with her H, and not him.

And then there's the selfish little girl in me who feels like, dang, now she is really going to get all the attention.

So, I'm really cracking up here, not knowing what to do or how to feel....