Long story short, my wife an affair with her boss at the time 4 yrs ago. No counseling just a lot of "I'm sorry" and she had "learned her lesson". Fast forward to this weekend, she brings home xmas gift from her current boss whom I'm not real comfortable with and says "I got an early gift". Well of course I became uncomfortable and told her so, not in an angry way at all. I asked if we could talk about it at another time as our 5 year old daughter was standing there. When I brougt it up to her at the appropiate time it turned ugly. She said that she had no control over what people bought her and that she didn't do anything wrong. At that point I explained to her that I was just simply telling her that I felt that is was not appropriate for her to be receiving a somewhat expensive gift from her boss.

My question is should I have just let it go? When I let her know how I feel I always get the " I can't live like this for the rest of my life" speech.

I'm confused - just what lesson did she learn, exactly?



You are quite correct in expressing your concerns about the gift. Did you also express those concerns to her boss?



IMO, your W is acting in a selfish, entitled way, which is why I asked the first question that I did - what lessons did she learn? She could have easily told her boss that she would prefer to *not* receive those kinds of gifts because of the effect it would have on you and subsequently her relationship with you.

Is your W familiar with MB? If not, it might be a good idea to direct her here, let's here her side of the story - why she thinks that it's Ok to accept expensive gifts from her boss, even though doing so makes her H upset.

MIM The lesson she said she has learned is how close she came to loosing her family and home, that's how she puts it. She would not go to counseling nor would she look at this site. She used to ridicule me for visiting this site so I haven't mentioned it to her in quite a while. For me I read this site daily although it's been a long time since I have posted.

This weekend is the first time in a long while that I have said anything to her. Whenever I had brought up any feelings that I have her response is "well maybe we should just split up", which she brought up again this weekend. In fear of breaking up our family I have just kept most things to myself in fear of breaking up our family and loosing everything we've worked so hard for.

"When I let her know how I feel I always get the " I can't live like this for the rest of my life" speech."

RUT-ROH!

My WXH said the exact same thing whenever I said anything about inappropriate 'friendships' he had...

On the other hand, for folks unfamiliar with MB principles (which is pretty much everyone out there) there is a popular myth that these sort of activities are 'harmless' and that a spouse who objects to it has a 'jealousy problem'. I was never able to convince my WH that in order to protect our marriage he needed to stop behaving certain ways with coworkers.

Maybe if you search online for one of the recent articles about emotional affairs and discuss it with her it might help?

BTW, did other employees get the same gift form the boss? And is the boss married?

I didn't think of this soon enough to try it in my own situation, and I don't know if it's a good idea even (maybe some of the veterans will say what they think), but I've wondered if it might have been a good idea to try when my WH tried to defend this sort of inapporpriate behavior:

How about bringing the subject up, calmly/conversationally, in fornt of some other folks? What if the next time you get together with family or friends you survey them on what they think is or isn't appropriate behavior between an employee and boss? BTW, does anybody else at the workplace know that your wife was given this gift by her boss? My thinking is that if it really were OK then it wouldn't have to be kept secret, right? I know, I know, the WS and OP pretednt he secrecy is needed because the BS, coworkers, etc. don't 'understand'... or they are 'jealous'... But really, if it's innocent then it's OK to talk about it openly with others to get their thoughts on it too.

Maybe instead of talking about these things less with your wife, because she makes threats, you should bring it up more often AND with other people around so she's less likely to successfully gaslight you into accepting it. BTW, I also was careful to not object to certain things I felt my WH shouldn't be doing. That was partly because I was afraid of him leaving me but also partly because I didn't realize that my feelings were normal and justified. I mean I really did try to work on my 'jealousy problem'...

Accepting gifts?
A "just forget about it" attitude?
No concern for your appropriate feelings?

Nope. Huge red flags here.

You need to start snooping now.

Nobody else received anything yet but they will just not as much I feel. I explained to her that is was strange to me that she had received a gift so early. She said she wentto work the next day and told him she thought it was excesive and he shouldn't have done that. But she said that's all she could do and that she couldn't be responsible for someone else's actions.
He is married and my wife is friends with his wife but in my eyes that means nothing. The man my wife had her her affair with was very close friends of ours, at one time.

My opinion: I think she's gas-lighting you big-time, and using your fear of splitting up against you. You need to take that fear out of the equation if you want to your relationship to take a different direction. You have to reach a point of being able to make it perfectly clear to her that you are quite willing to exit the M if necessary.

Have a read of Artor's thread on the "Recovery" forum.

No, but she could start taking responsibility for her own.

She could have refused the gift, saying that it was too excessive and might cause her H to be upset. In other words, she could have behaved in a way that suggested her relationship with you was a higher priority that her relationship with her boss.