This is my first time posting a question here because I am too embarassed to ask my friends. My husband and I are both in our 40s and have been married for 12 years with 3 young children. 5 years ago I suspected that he was having an affair by stumbling across his e-mails about a soulmate. He said it was rubbish sent by someone he hardly knew. I know this girl and confronted her and she denied everything and so did my husband. They both claim to be friends only except that he had to lie to me and tell me he was attending meetings when they were actually together(to prevent me from getting upset!). He told me it was all in my head and I was making a big thing out of nothing. Since he kept denying everything,got very angry everytime I brought it up, and I had nothing to go on, I just let it go.

Last week I read his emails again and found out that he has lots of profiles and blogs of girls in their twenties. I asked him where he got them from and he said they were girls he just met while at the course of his work.Mostly people in the sales dept. They are not his workmates. They forwarded their profiles /blogs to him. Why would they do that?? Are 20 something career women now in the habit of letting everyone see their lives? And why would he be interested to read their blogs when he can't even be bothered to talk to our children or to ask me how was my day? I just feel he's not telling me everything. Would guys in their 40s really be interested in reading those girly blogs? Need opinion please. As usual he's trying to tell me its all in my head again. And I dont' know how to get him to talk to me. He gets all angry and verbally abusive(I know it to deter me from bringing up the subject)and I just feel too mentally exhausted to even want to bring it up anymore.What should I do? Marriage counselling is out of the question. He insists I'm the one with problems.

Welcome to marriagebuilders. I'm so glad you have found us.

What he is doing is called "gaslighting" and is a very common thing that cheating spouses do.

I suggest that you install a keylogger on your computer and see what he is up to. I think Specterpro has a free one. It will give you a good picture of what is going on in your marriage.

Thanks for input, but, oh what on earth is gaslighting?

Not my definition...stole it from another website.

Gaslighting....


This term is taken from the movie "Gaslight" where the husband (Charles Boyer) tries to make his wife (Ingrid Bergman) think she is going mad by convincing her what she thinks she is seeing isn't real. When the WS is either caught or suspected, he/she may try to convince the BS that they are not seeing what they think they see or that something didn't happen, even though everything points to the fact that it DID happen. We have heard stories where the BS has even walked in on the WS and OP "in the act", yet the WS still denies that anything was going on. It is an effort on the WS part to completely deny even the most obvious evidence, and to make the BS feel that they must be seeing things. Sometimes, probably because the BS is so desperate to NOT believe what they are seeing, the strategy works. This may be part of "the fog", when the WS is not ready to accept responsibility for what happened. Or in some cases, the unrepentant WS may do this so that they can continue having the A.

Kim,

Of course he is going to tell you that it's all in your head, he's having too much fun.

Install the keylogger and get your evidence. In the meantime, read up on the "to-do's" on this site.

Once you have confirmed what is going on, you will need to EXPOSE. Sounds like he's an internet junkie and may have several EA's (emotional affairs) going on.

Read Dr. Harley's Basic Concepts and try not to react in anger, keep yourself calm and collected in this, as much as you can.

Stay on the site, you will get lots of help and encouragement.

So sorry you are here!!!

P.S. Your friends, unless they have gone through this, may not be able to give you unbiased advice.

Introvert - Thanks for the explanation. It happened to me, and I'd never heard of gaslighting. So it was hard for me to explain it to another poster.

Thanks everyone. I googled gaslighting and found a very good explanation by Jeanne Sparks in the Helium website which I could really relate to.The keylogger thing would only work if he logged on to our PC at home. He has his own laptop and PC in his office. Anyway have managed to draw out from him his password for all his email addresses.(since you say you have nothing to hide)But of course he can always start a new add. Sigh...

Hi Kim--

Glad you found MB's. There are a lot of wise people here who can help guide you with this. They have helped me tremendously.

Why is MC out of the question??? B/c your H won't agree to it?

Sorry you are having to go through this. But his internet activity IS hurting you and IS hurting your M.

Hope you can get your evidence.

Another Kim

Hi Kimberly, MC is out of the question because I'm the one with imaginary problems. So here I am sitting and reading all the marriage forum articles and buying enough marriage counselling books to start my own library! Oh, by the way,his emails are now all totally work related and he has deleted all his links to those girls. Not even one single forwarded joke. Anyway i find it kind of funny that he now probably has to go through them and delete everything inappropriate before I can get to them, well, that is before he starts informing his friends of a new e-mail address!

Ugh. Well, hang in there Kim. Keep coming here for support. Hope you are having a good weekend.

Do you & H fulfill each others needs?

Take care!

Well, he doesn't fulfill my emotional needs as he is one of those male clams, but really, generally everything is ok.I never ever thought he would be capable of lying to me until I found out about his OW all those years ago. Of course, I never could trust him again after that.Especially since he wasn't even sorry and put all the blame on me.If I didn't dig through his emails , I would be pretty happy.

But he was acting so suspiciously, always closing his previous page and pretending to do financial research everytime I walked into the room. Well, of course, as I anticipated, he has got himself a new address. Hasn't had any incoming emails from friends since last Friday.Only work related ones. Since his email add is in his namecard, I doubt he will change that so easily. And if those women are those he meets during the course of his work, maybe they will still send messages there. Really, what do they see in him? He is almost twice their age!!!Anyway I have two preschool kids and another one who hates school to drive me up the wall.Sometimes, I just don't have the energy to bother with what DH does anymore.