If you need a sounding board...find another man. Period. No buts. NO "I'm different and I won't do that."

I was friend with the art teacher. I wrote grants for shool with the art teacher. I went out after school with other teachers...but the art teacher and I were HARDLY EVER alone. I liked being able to talk so easily with the art teacher. It was easier to engage with the the art teacher because we were both so creative. And he knew my DH and taught my kids....so nothing inappropriate would ever happen. Besides, everyone needs friends they can talk to. And I really didn't feel anything for my H because he didn't really feel anything for me. I was tired of him being blah and there being no sex and me being the breadwinner while he was pursuing his "dream." But the art teacher and I were just friends.

Until we started having sex.

I realize now that I crossed lines with the art teacher at least a year before we ended up in bed. But it was all just harmless. Yeah, ask my children and husband if it was harmless. My DD finally asked me LAST YEAR to please just take her guitar to school. Art teacher was her guitar teacher, and she was good. But she couldn't bear to touch it after my A.

Don't play with this...even though it sounds like you are already as deep in defensive justification as I was.

Did you just stick up for the OW while you are here speaking so negatively about your wife?

Would you feel ashamed to tell her?

Would it hurt her for her to know?

Do you feel she might leave you if she knew?

We are good for each other as friends, that is all. I don't think either of us would ever consider the idea of being married to one another as something that would have worked. That is in the current state (both being married) or if the two of us had met single.

Tom, could you please read this:

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2352025&page=1

I wasn't going to marry OM either. We just enjoyed talking, he thought I was hot, and I took the "easy" route of betraying my family instead of getting off my self-centered, entitled, immature butt and work on my marriage.

I don't mean to sound flip, but it's like watching someone else about to drive off the same cliff I drove off of. The landing is not pretty, so I'm frantically waving my hands trying to stop the driver.

I know some of you seemed concerned about this (more than concerned), but I do not believe my marriage is in such bad shape that an affair is on the horizon. I know people have said this, but I cant see myself ever innitiating something like that. I know, people say that.
I honestly don't see this person as anything more than a friend. A friend I need beacuse I don't have many friends. People need friends. I have also always seemed to get along better with women than men/boys than girls, even when I was a kid.

Its not a coincidence that I mentioned a "friend" Tom. I have just seen it over and over again. Doesnt that tell you that I know what I am talking about...We know what we are talking about?

Tom, what was your first post here about?

Adultery...

Rather telling, don't you think?

You're not as safe from an affair as you think.


Marriage > Friends

If you tell your wife about this friend and she's uncomfortable with the relationship you should be more than willing to give up the friendship. The fact that you are so hesitant indicates that this relationship is already far more than inappropriate.

You can always make other friends. They're not that special. They're not a wife.

My husband too has always gotten along better with women. When I felt his relationship with a good friend was making me uncomfortable he dropped it. We still see her, occasionally, but always together.

I am more important to him than her.

Doesn't sound like it's that way between you and this OTHER WOMAN.

ETA: My DHs relationship with this woman was never inappropriate. I saw all their texts, I was around for most of their conversations. I just started to feel uncomfortable with it. Out of respect for me he cut off the relationship.

Oh, I want to ask a deeply personal question...

When you're alone and 'letting off steam', are you more apt to think about Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt?

Tom I am a guy who rarely has sex with his wife. I work in an office with many female employees. I never discuss my marriage with any of them. Period. Despite, as you can see by looking to the left, having posted literally thousands of messages here over the years. So it is not as if I don't have plenty of marital issues to discuss!

Maybe you will hear this better from a guy than from the gals who have been posting to you lately.

You are already having an affair with your "friend". Perhaps just an emotional one so far. But an affair nonetheless. You are already cheating on your wife. And your friend is indeed the OW. These are facts.

The only way to prove otherwise is to go home and describe every one of your conversations with your "friend" to your wife. And see if she objects to your having discussed those things with your friend. If your wife says "fine, I have no problem with you discussing with her your marital frustration and disappointment, or our sex life" then your right and your friend is just a friend. If your wife goes berzerk, then you are cheating. Care to take the test?

Ahhhh, Brad Pitt ....Oh, sorry I thought you were askin me.

Haha, very funny CW. That was a good one.

Vib- my wife is more imporant than the friend. I care much more about my wife, but I don't think you can't have a spouse and a friend of the same sex that you care about both.

Question- if nothing physical ever did happen with this woman (which, I don't ever see happening, she would probably laugh and think its funny, that this is even suggested that our friendship turn to that), wouldn't that make our friendship, simply a friendship and nothing wrong with it?

Then ditch the "friend"!!!!

Tom,
You need to listen to the advice. You knew when you came here that no one would know you, or much about you, or be able to understand every bit of your special situation. But they understand human nature, and their own experience.

I have several female friends, some closer than others. A few of them are not really friends of my wife, because our friendship predates our marriage by a lot of years, back to childhood. When we first got married, we all went our separate ways. Only one time in the first ten years did I ever speak to one of them again, and that was because she had marital problems, and I had introduced her to her husband, and was their best man at the wedding.

Only in the last few years have our paths crossed again, and with two of them, the limited encounters through some charity work is very pleasant. There is no hint of anything between us, but the conversation is sparkling, perhaps because it is infrequent. I can trust them and they can trust me, but we never discuss anything about our current marriages. I have discussed some ideas about marriage, and told both of them about this website. When I do see them or talk to them, my wife knows.

This is a very rare relationship. You can't start something up like this with an adult you just met. You can't do this when you are younger than 50. You can't do it without a solid marriage and a wife that knows it, knows the woman very well, and approves of it. 99.9% of people cannot do it because they fail one of the tests I stated. You fail all the tests.

If you need to talk about a problem in your marriage, talk to your wife.

PS: Recommend Dr. Harley's book to the Other Woman, and read it yourself, if you "don't believe an affair is possible".

If I actually thought an affair were possible between the two of us, I would "ditch" the friend. But the friend, is just a friend. You can not tell me that you have not had friends of the opposite sex that simply stayed friends.

Many people have affairs even when the marriage is not in bad shape.


You need friends? You just acquired a board full of them!

She is a danger to your M, ditch her.

No,

it would make it an Emotional Affair, which is every bit as devastating as a Physical Affair.

And you know I don't know that I've seen any EAs that didn't eventually go PA. If they stopped before then it was because they were discovered.

You don't court someone, and develop an emotional connection to them without it becoming physical.

Sorry.

Doesn't happen.

You are giving this woman something you are willfully withholding from your wife.

Intimate Conversation.

She knows your intimate thoughts and feelings.

Not your wife.

THAT is an affair.

You are "Unhappy in Marriage and resenting my Wife" This friend of yours is dangerous to your M.