3 weeks ago I discovered my wife has had an emotional affair (although she refuses to call it that).

Apparently regular visits (every 2 weeks) to a nightclub with her friends over a period of about 5 months saw a freindship develop with a man who sings in a band there and who was 'going through a messy divorce'.

This went on for months until the other night I caught her coming home in the back (!) of a van with him having been over an hour late!

She confessed to a one off physical act (not full sex)and said she they had grown close over the months and were good friends. She denied having and affair and claims that despite the progressive nature of thier contact they deliberatly did not exchange phone numbers!

I am devastated and humiliated and my confidence is at an all time low but I am strong for my family and my wife who I still love.

She says she is sorry, she says she still loves me and never loved him. Confusingly we are now sharing more feelings and physical relations than we have done for months. Its as if she has switched on her feelings for me again after deliberatly shutting them out for so long!

She says she has told him its over. She will stop going to the club for a while but then eventually return but have no contact with him. It seems he wasnt sure 'where it was all going' but he made it clear he 'wasnt ready for a commitment'

The irony is that I encouraged her to go out to this place because it was well run, local and 'safe'.

Should I be saying that she should never return to this place as he will nearly always be there?

Apparently she has known him months but things developed more quickly recently.

I am amazed her best friend never intervened. they seem to have a code of 'non interference' yet some of them are married too! I feel a little betrayed by her as well.

Any advice about how I should play this now would be helpfull.

Jet2112,
In your other post you neglected to share that the OM was a member of the band who performs at the nightclub where she has been going. Your wife had an A with this man.....EA, PA....it just didn't get to the full-blown act of sex because she was caught? I am not sure on the details, but that is for you to sort through. Your W must maintain NC with this man and the fact that he is a performer there means that she needs to avoid that place. She should not be going out with girlfriends presenting herself as available when she is married. There is obviously some weakness in her commitment and in your M.

She should maintain NC. This man is obviously a weakness for her. Perhaps she needs to think about why she allowed this to go as far as it did and evaluate her need to go out so often with her friends and not with you. I encourage you to take the ENs questionnaire in order to determine each other's needs and then work on building and strengthening your M. After her A, your communication is better and that is a good thing. But it sounds like you both need to work on affair-proofing your marriage. Dr. Harley has a book on that topic and it is an excellent read. Work hard to set limits on what is acceptable and what isn't. Read all of the information on this website for more information. (check out most popular links and links at the top of each page)

Take care and be blessed.
SS

If the roles were reversed how do you think your wife would be responding? It sounds like you are being way too soft on her. No consequences to her actions equals no motivation to change. She has humiliated you and your marriage and she is in negotiations with you to go back to the night club where he works but will not talk to him? Would your wife buy this crap from you if the roles were reversed and she saw you climbing of her van in front of your home late at night?

Apparently your wife believes she can humiliate you in such a way and you will continue to accept her going to the same club where the OM is who desacreted your marriage. My friend I think are still in denial. Clearly your wife continues to disrespect you just by asking to do this. If you do not respect yourself then who will?

Thanks for the advice guys.
The nightclub issue has always been a weakness in our relationship in that she has always loved to go to these places and I dont! I realised the potential for problems but the arguments it was causing ('you dont trust me', 'you are trying to control me') were causing too many problems and I thought oh well best let her go and she will respect me for it!
My wife is one of those women that seems to have instant appeal to men. She is blessed with great looks and a friendly personality, but deep down she is insecure and although she has never had an affair before she does need constant affirmation from men. She does like the attention and her body language is often wrong (if we talk to another male she will stand slightly closer to him than me!) She says she doesnt realise she is doing this but it caused no end of problems when we were younger.

Her best friend called her yesterday and asked her if she would be going back to the club at the end of the month and this sparked an immediate argument with her when I said I wasnt ready for that. She only backed down when I told her to think about what she was saying ie; she was putting one night out as being more important than our marriage.
Problem is she digs in and holds onto her point of view stubbornly. In this case she had to back down but was not happy. She will probably start another campaign to get out nearer the time.

An added dimmension to this is that she admitted that her best friend whom she goes to the club with is attracted to the OM 's friend. Her own marriage has gone stale. Thats why she never stepped in to help steer my wife away from the situation. She can see no wrong in what my wife (or her)is doing and is trying to get my wife to go back there.

I do need to keep my self respect. I have been badly let down and its only thanks to the marriage builders website and people like yourselves that I have been able to educate myself enough to understand the situation and not blame myself entirely - though if I had tried a bit harder to put my wife first in my life then this may not have happened.

Thanks for responding guys. I really have few people I can open up to on this one and I thank you.

Heres the other confusing thing for me; how can she just switch all her feelings back on for me like this after having quite deliberatly shutting me out for so long.

Before I found out, she was almost cruel in the way she did it and eventually even refused to say she loved me yet now the affair has been exposed she is literally all over me and keeps saying she wants to move on and put it all behind her.

I am worried she is actually frightened of how strong her feelings for him got. She tries to make out that they were just good friends and it just went too far but I know she formed a much stronger attachment.

He will always be a threat. He has a natural attraction to women to the extent that on one of the first nights my wife met him she flirted with this guy to stop another of her (unmarried and single) friends from going after him.

Perhaps the affair pre dated this and was actually going on for a lot longer hence her actions? Maybe a woman reading this can tell me; are there men out there that are so irresistable that women will risk all and behave in this way??

I cant imagine ever doing this however attractive the woman.

It also makes me sick to think that it was at a time when my wife and I had only recently been out together for the first time in years and had had a really great time together yet this still happened!

Why don't you just go to the club with her from now on? She really has no business at a place like this anyhow. Married people should not frequent bars "trolling", IMHO.

Also, you may want to consider flagging the wife's BFH of her crush on the other band member.

She has made it clear she does not want me to go. I tried to in the past several times but she just says its 'her' time when shes there and now she also feels embarrassed because everyone there would know that I had probably found out not to mention the likelyhood of me confronting the OM.

I know I have to break the spell. I know she can never go back there again but its not going to be easy and I am not going to break this news to her just yet. (we have a holiday booked. The first in 10 years and I am hoping it will strengthen our relationship further and put me in a better position to deliver ultimatums like this.

It would be nice to think that she will grow so attached to me that he will never be a threat again- but everything I have read recently suggests that it simply doesnt happen that way.

If only I could convince her that this is how it works and thats why she must not go there again - but she still tries to play it down and thinks I am putting unreasonable retrictions on her.

Thanks for your reply. It means a lot to me to be able to communicate with others who have experienced a similar thing.

Tell her other friends husband that she is thinking of hooking up with OM's friend. That way her friend can't go to that club either.

Jet,


I'll go one step farther, this "friend" is not a friend to your marriage. Your WW needs new friends.

Who

Thanks, I agree totally. Her friend used to do a job that allowed her to travel and apparently had many relationships.

Her own marriage is stale and knowing my own wife as I do now i know that going out with this friend was a recipe for disaster.

But I have to say that my wife probably likes her exactly because she is fun and accepting and enjoys a good time.

She has other friends that i would rather she went out with but I have come to the conclusion that the kind of social life she seems to enjoy most is the one that sees her out with her friends drinking dancing and just having fun -its just what she has always done.

She has admitted she likes the affirmation from other males due to her insecurity but has always told me she never has any actual contact with them. She has done so this time though.

This wont be easy to change. I either keep accepting this as I have done in the past or I make a real effort to change her (maybe learn to fullfill all of her needs better)

Or, our marriage is sunk and its time to move on but I still love her and am going to give it one more go not just for my sake and the kids sake but also hers.

ok maybe you posted this before

do you have kids?
do you both work?
married how long?

this going out alone with the girls has been going on how long?

You said in another thread she used to come home ready to go with SF but not any more

I went through similar thing. It is a big read flag.

We have 2 kids, I work full time my wife works part time, married 5 years but together over 20.

She has always gone out with the girls though not the same bunch.

Her behaviour has not changed and I had grown to accept it. By that I mean that when we were younger I got jealous very easily and tried to keep her home. As we got older I became more confident and trusting and when we got married I thought our relationship was finally safe once and for all!

I dont think she has made a habit of this sort of thing its just that I think the OM being a singer in the evenings, being tall, confident and attractive to women and doing the job he does he had a strong effect on her. She says she only danced with him the first time beacause she just wanted to prove she could attract someone like him and, possibly significantly, she wanted to prove she was more attractive than one of the other girls who actually was persuing him at the time.

Doesnt make me feel better of course but its the way it is.

It hasnt happened before that I am aware of and we were going through alot of general everyday problems at the time.