I have been married for only about two years and together with my wife for six years now. We lived together before we were married for about four years. My wife recently said that she thinks we have lost the passion in our relationship not marriage, because she doesn't think it was even really there when we got married. I was pretty shocked at first and now that it has settled in I can see what she is talking about and have noticed it for awhile now and just really never seriously confronted it. We hardly ever have sex and when we do it's me wanting it and her just doing it, because it's been awhile. We use to have a great sexual relationship and it just gradually started getting less and less. I feel like there are many things that contribute to this... We had my brother living with us for awhile before getting married. We both are still in the same jobs that we hate and said that we would never stay at. I quit taking care of my self like I used to- gained weight, hygiene.... so on. We have always gotten along great and never really have a lot of fights. She says we are just best friends and not a couple. After she broke the news to me, I felt like I really had to change things. I am afraid that I started smothering her a little though. I will kiss her and she doesn't kiss back. She loves to cuddle and sleep together and even hold hands....etc. No kissing or sexual stuff at all. She says she wants sex everyday, but can't see herself doing it with me anymore. She still says she loves me very much and I say the same to her. I said that maybe we just needed to change things up a bit, like move to Austin, Texas (12 hours away) where she wants to start a photography business with her friend that lives there. She liked the idea and a few days later she said that maybe she should just go without me, because her friend is divorcing her husband and getting her own place and that maybe we should separate for awhile and see what happens. I told her that I didn't like that idea too much and that it was a little drastic. So, the last few weeks I have just been acting like everything will be fine and that I'm not worried and things have been better, but every once in awhile she just does a 180 from one minute to the next. She says everything is great in our marriage except for our sex life. I suggested instead of the Austin idea that we try the separation here first. We made rules: Of course no seeing other people, Call only once a day, and text only if needed. So far, only second day she has called me 5 times and texted a million and even asked if I wanted to come home tonight. I asked her if she is already missing me and she said she didn't think so, but was just use to us talking a lot. I think I will try to stay away for a little longer.... just wondering if anyone has any advice out there.
Keith

I decided to add a little more information, because I have started reading the other posts and I'm afraid my wife may be having an EA. I know that I have not always been there emotionally like I should and have really changed that now, but anyway she has gotten really close to a friend of mine. We all still hang out, but she hangs out with him alone a lot as well. They talk on the phone for hours everyday and every weekend he stays with us on the weekend and does whatever we do. He was the first to find out about or marital problems and she still confides in him. She says there is nothing going on and doesn't find him attractive that way, but he is a attractive guy and a musician. He also is not the kind to betray me, but I feel like they just don't realize the damage it is causing in our marriage. We are actually pretty affectionate to each other now, but when he is around..... absolutely nothing and she is even mean about any kind of touch. She says this is because she just feels bad that he is there and it would make him feel bad for not having a girlfriend. Again if anyone has any advice I am feeling pretty lost right now and I love my wife more than anything in the world and I really want to fix our problems and have the great marriage that I know we can have.

Keith

Sorry, but that is definitely an EA. I would first print out some information for her to read about what EAs really are, how they come to being, how the people involved may not realize what it is until it's too late and has become a PA.

Ask her to fill out the Love Buster questionnaire so you will know what she doesn't like about you. So you can stop doing them. And ask her to fill out the EN questionnaire so you can meet her ENs. Might be a little hard with the EA going on, but you have to try.

Please try your best to get back in the same house. It is so much harder to work this when you're apart, and when she has a place for your friend to go to.

I would also visit your friend and explain it all to him, and ask him to stop spending time with your wife. If he refuses, it's too far gone to play nice, and you will have to expose.

btw, you need to ask the mods to move your thread over to Infidelity/General Questions so you'll get the advice of the people who have survived affairs.

Above all, this is NOT the time to be the 'nice' guy who lets her do what she wants just so you'll look good. This is war.

Hi Keith. Welcome to Marriage Builders. This is a great place to learn how to have a better relationship with your wife. What I find encouraging is that she is texting you so much and wanting to stay in touch with you.

Dr. Harley doesn't usually suggest a separation unless there is abuse or an addiction, so I think my advice would be to try and get under the same roof again. It's rather counterproductive and hard to show her how you're changing for the better when you're separated. Will it address core problems to be separated? No. It could make you miss each other, but it isn't going to help you address how you got to where you are. It could actually backfire and go in a direction you don't want the marriage to go in. It could give her more opportunity to be alone with your mutual friend, for one thing. Good article on Why Women Leave Men

Which leads me to think that if she is having an emotional affair with him, that eliminates opportunity and desire for her to discuss the sort of topics she should be discussing with her husband. What this does is cause her to withdraw more and more from you and be more and more attracted to him, at least on an emotional level. Food for Thought article

So, my advice there is to see if you can get her first to commit to working on the marriage and then find some way to discuss with her what an EA is versus a PA. Read about it first here. Educate yourself. Print off what you can about it, and ask her to read it. You see, some people think there is no such thing as an EA...they think that infidelity only means a sexual encounter has occurred. What you will find out is that an EA can be just as or possibly even more detrimental to a marriage than a PA. If you have a marriage where one or both of you have been neglectful or withdrawn - and then you throw in a third party - well...it's like leaving your doors and windows unlocked, and putting a sign on your front lawn that says "rob me."

She needs to absolutely stop seeing him alone, and ideally she may need to end the relationship altogether. This will force her to concentrate on working whole heartedly on the marriage and putting her focus back where it needs to be.

The next thing you will need to do is determine what each others' love busters are and eliminate them from the relationship. There are love buster questionnaires here that you can print off and fill out. Link to questionnaires - scroll down to find Then you should exchange them and work on eliminating those things your spouse has listed.

Once those LBs have been eliminated from the relationship, you should fill out the Emotional Needs questionnaires EN Questionnaire to find out what things you could each be doing to make the other person happier. Incorporate them into the relationship.

Now...there are a lot of people here whose spouses are so withdrawn they will not participate in doing the questionnaires. That's okay. Hopefully she will, but if she says she won't, you go ahead and fill her LB Q out for her the best that you can and get started eliminating those irritants.

Ideally, then, you have eliminated those nasty negative habits and incorporated the positive into the relationship.

The other thing you should be doing now is trying to spend quality time together having fun. Build up to 15+ hours a week. That will come to 2+ hours a day, cumulative. This is what a healthy marriage looks like - really - to spend an accumulative 15+ hours together - without interruptions such as television, children, etc. Basically, if you find it impossible to do this with your current schedule - it could very well be that you've been neglecting your marriage and need to adjust your lifestyle to make the marriage more of a priority. See...all that quality time makes withdrawal very difficult to maintain. If you're stuck for things to do, there is a recreational list available on the site. Recreational list You can look that over for ideas.

Good luck. Check back often. Let us know how it's going.

Thanks so much for replying quickly... It's great just to be able to talk to someone about it. She really doesn't want anyone else to know about it. I really never thought of it as an affair until now and she called me and asked me to come back tonight. So, I came over and I did some research on the EA and let her know all that I had found and she pretty much agreed that all the signs point to that. She agrees that since I wasn't fully emotionally involved that she had probably looked elsewhere and not really even realized it. She had another friend that I didn't know too well, but I think it was pretty similar and she even told him what was going on in our marriage before she told me. We had arguments over long phone calls with him and spending time together, so she just pretty much quit talking to him and now it's just moved on to my friend. She said tonight that she goes from really wanting it to work to thinking there is no way in the same day. She did tell me tonight that she would like to go to counseling and that she really loves me and wishes that we can work things out, but who knows in an hour what she will feel. As for my friend.... they are really close and she even talked to him tonight while I was out running after we talked. I guess I will have to think of it as war like you said. I already have the book and have printed out the questionnaires. I had us fill them out together a few weeks ago. I learned a lot of things that I was not doing, but I think she really didn't even participate. Most of her answers were blank. Anyway, thanks to you both and I am not sure how to get the mods to move this over..... I guess I could just copy and paste couldn't I?

Just hit the notify button and send them a message.

Don't forget to talk to your friend and point out everything to him. Be nice at first, but if you get a vibe that he may be really interested in your wife, get your sharp claws out, and let him know you'll have to make his life miserable if he 'goes there.'

ok thanks for your insight and I will talk with him this weekend.

I just moved to this new Forum and was looking for some insight from anyone dealing with a similar situation or with an EA.
Thanks

Please do not tell her about this site. Estimate her Emotional Needs. Body shape may well be one of them.

Your instincts about your best friend and your wife may very well be right. If they are spending that much time together on the phone and spending time alone, there is definitely an inappropriate emotional connection. I've learned the hard way that a strong marriage must be supported by three pillars--friendship, familial bond, and eros. If your spouse is being a best friend with another man, your relationship is being weakened daily and the destruction of the eros/intimacy pillar of support is not far away.

Screams affair.

First mistake, well that was letting yourself and your relationship go down, was to let your WW move out.

Second mistake, not moving back together after she asks you.

Third mistake, to believe this is not a PA. Countless times we just meet alone to talk baloney. Right out of the WW handbook.

With time well we just hugged. Then kissed. Then tonsil hockey. Then it just some grouping. Then BJ, HJ. Then every which way and then some.

kct,

Well, that was a pretty graphic way to say what some of us here suspect, but I will reiterate the message:

Do NOT assume that everything your wife has told you about the relationship with your friend is true. The more deeply they are involved, the more reason she (and he) would have to lie to you.

You certainly wouldn't be the first to be betrayed by both spouse and best friend. Sadly, we read about it here all the time.

Before you can work to heal your marriage, you will have to determine exactly WHAT IT IS you need to heal it OF.

You need the whole truth. Check her cell phone records (online). Check the phone itself for voicemails and text messages. Look everywhere you can think of.

DO NOT SWALLOW WHOLE anything either of them tell you. You must verify everything for yourself.

Hopefully, you will find that you have caught on before things could develop further.

But even if you find out the worst--that it's an emotional AND physical affair, there is a PLAN here at Marriage Builders that gives you the best shot at not only breaking up the affair, but rebuilding your marriage into one that will eliminate vulnerability to affairs in the future.

I hope all you'll need is the marriage-building part.

In any event, your W and your best friend should have NO CONTACT between them. AND neither of you should share personal information (certainly not about your marital issues!) with anyone of the opposite sex.

EVER.

Right Here Waiting

Well, thanks for the honesty anyway. It has made me think a little differently. I have been checking her phone discretely and e-mails. There was alot of text messages from him and her to him, but they were all pretty platonic. They mainly just talked about random stuff. As far as I can see.... they don't speak of what's going on in our relationship at all. The e-mails went back for weeks and never really found anything harmful. She seems to want to start really making things right and concentrating more on our relationship and I have been trying to get her on board, but now that she is on board, i'm not so sure how to go about it and was hoping that someone on here might have some answers on how to start the improving process. I suggested counseling and I think she will go with no problem. Is that a good way to start? Thanks for all the advice so far,
Keith

Start out by counseling with Steve Harley. He can give you a roadmap to recovery.

K,

If she's REALLY on board and willing to work on your M, she should have NO trouble cutting all contact with your friend. (I think you'd be better off if YOU cut off contact with him too. You don't need the distraction and the reminders.)

Once you've determined the LEVEL of her sincerity about this (being willing to forego this dangerous friendship), I'd suggest you have a couple of sessions with the MB coaches. $195/hr, but truly money well spent.

Get the MB books His Needs Her Needs and Love Busters, and the workbook that goes with them (all available via the bookstore on the home page). Commit to going through them together one chapter at a time. Will take you about a year. Kinda like do-it-yourself counseling, with excellent tools.

If you both do this in good faith, and practice the principles you'll learn there, you will be amazed at how deeply you will find yourselves in love. The kind of love that will prevent either of you from ever wanting a relationship with anybody else.

Wouldn't that be worth the price of admission?

RHW

Just a little note on texting and emails:

When I was having my EA I was very good at leaving only "innocent" messages on phone and PC. My DH knew I was friends with OM so I knew it would be too suspicious if I deleted everything.

Sounds like she might be in a similar place to I was, if she is then MB will work for you.

ST