What do you mean by, 'while giving some freedom'?

And 'being more careful'?

This is your hubris. That you think you can control outcomes in other people's lives. Or even in your own. Hence your decision to hide the truth from your wife. To be false and manipulative. Because you have convinced yourself the ends justify the means.

No matter how "nice" and "generous" and "reasonable" you are toward your wife, if she finds out you have been lying to her for years, there is nothing you can do to guarantee the marriage will end neatly. Because your wife may go ballistic. And your behavior at that time may not be relevant to her decision. She may base her behavior 100% on the behavior you are choosing today (lie, manipulate, hide the truth). And 0% on the behavior you choose when she decides to leave you (you accept the blame).

You are fooling yourself if you think you can control the future. At best you are playing the odds. So am I. You know your wife much better than I do. Perhaps she will not explode when she discovers the truth. I have not exploded despite my wife revealing many lies and betrayals in recent weeks. Perhaps your wife will react similarly. With resignation.

Not sure which result I am hoping for.

I don't need to know everything she does, everything she feels, everything she thinks. People are allowed to keep some things that are just theirs.

You are doing nothing to prevent it and are doing many things to precipitate it. Hope isn't good enough when you're dealing with peoples lives.

I am not playing the odds that she wont "go balistic" as you say, but more that she wont find out some of these things. Back to that feeling of what you don't know doesn't hurt you. (I know bad concept here, but its one I have had in my head for a long time so it still works for me).
I also have believed in many situations that the end justifies the means. Not always no, it depends on the situation. But, yes I have felt that way.

Odds are she'll find out AND go ballistic. Do the means justify that kind of ends? ABSOLUTELY.

No, her getting that upset would not mean her being happy. I want her to stay happy, whether we are married or not. I want her to always be happy.

So you snoop on your college roommates, but feel that your wife 'deserves' some privacy.

Tom, are you a voyeur? You're the 'peeping Tom'? You seem to be saying that it's okay to invade the privacy of people with whom you are not intimate, and afraid to invade the privacy of your intimates because what you may find may be disturbing. Am I close?

Ask her what makes her happy. I bet you 5000 rubles (lol) that she is not going to say, "Having a husband who keeps secrets from me, like his resentments toward me, makes me happy."

Or, "I'm happy when you scare the crap out of me in the car."

Or, "I'm happy when you masturbate instead of having SF with me."

Ask her if ANY of those things make her happy.

No I am not a voyeur, no I don't peep. I know my wife, I know who she is, there is nothing that I have to learn about her. We have shared who we are.
I just don't need to know every detail of her everyday life now. I don't need to know every detail of her thoughts. Everyone needs to have some things that they keep to their own.

You use those examples because we both know the answers already. We are not perfect people, not everything we say/do will make the other person happy. Thus we say and do things, hopefully enough things, to make up for those others. Isn't that the idea of the Love Bank. Try and fill it with more good than bad.

No, the idea of the LB$ is to stop depleting and start filling. Not to excuse uncaring behavior by doing some caring things, too.

So no, that is NOT the idea of the Love Bank.

Emphatically

NO!

If that's how you feel stay single. But that ship has sailed.

Basic question: do you agree that EVERYTHING you do affects your wife?

And though -you- may not have the need to know everything about your wife's day she probably does. Hence the snooping.

If that is a need of hers, to fill her love bank you give it to her.

The love bank isn't meant to allow you to make just enough withdrawals and deposits to keep you above the line - you want to be WAY over it, so if something comes along that throws a wrench in, recovery is minimal.

There are a few cases where I've heard Dr. H recommend temporary LB withdrawals, but they're temporary!

Not a way of life.

Stop me if I'm wrong - you don't like intimacy, it makes you uncomfortable. But you don't want to be alone. So you find someone, someone you don't love but care about, enough to want them to be happy. But since you don't love them, you figure no one else will - since your opinions are more right than anyone else's for the most part. You do this because then you figure this puts you WAY ahead in the running tally that is a relationship in your eyes. You are automatically more noble, more sacrificing, more better because look at you, you're with someone you don't love! You're so giving and caring!

That starts you off at +1000 points. Now she has to shut up about the way you drive, get skinny, and work for the rest of her life to even EQUAL the points you have.

Every time you're nice to her and do something to make her happy, you don't do it out of love or care - you do it to rack up more points. To be better.

That's why you didn't marry someone you love - because this way, you win...

at the expense of your wife.

If she finds out - not only is she hurt, but you lose points. Your marriage fails and she's even more hurt and you lose even more points.

The MB goal is to succeed: To have a romantic marriage.

Your goal is to just not fail.

There is a world of difference.

Tom, how much of this do you do? Replacing physical intimacy with self-gratification?

Actually, there are spouses who would be happy about that. If a spouse has a strong aversion to sex (or at least sex with their current spouse), they might appreciate and feel relief if their spouse "indulges" in self-gratification rather than bringing their need for SF to the averse spouse.

Dr. Harley would say that this does not bode well for the relationship. And he is correct. But that is in the long term. In the short term, the averse spouse might be happy with having their high libido spouse self-gratify.

So your wife snooped and found something you were hiding from her that she was uncomfortable with, and you turned it around on her and made her feel horrible about it? And now, when you are doing things she would be uncomfortable with instead of stopping/avoiding them, you just do a better job of hiding it?

That is by no means the behavior of a great and loving husband.

Definitely agree with Nomader here. Her snooping was not the evil deed, the fact that you did something that you knew she wouldn't like was wrong, and then punishing her for finding out was incredibly cruel.

Yup.

Ah ha...which is why you don't tell your Wife about your GF at work...

the GF that you share so much information about your marriage with.

I contend that the reason that you are in a funk so many days this summer is because you are missing your little friend at work...like going through withdrawal.

Seriously, you need to be doing something constructive with your time this summer.

You could be improving so many things..

marriage..(working MB program)
financial situation... (a summer job)

Instead you want to wallow in it...and have pity parties.

AND...you don't have the POWER to prevent the end of your marriage from being negative.

You have the POWER to make the marriage positive and you are refusing.

committed

Well, the wording given by Steve Harley (Dr. Harley's son, who is himself a counselor with the Marriage Builders coaching center) to me and my wife was "Trust, but verify." He was speaking in a situation where there currently isn't an affair nor any particular reason to suspect one, but we were talking about making ourselves more transparent to each other.

Nobody has smelled an affair in our situation. Nobody has ever recommended to me that I snoop on my wife. But 99% of the time when the community here starts suggesting it, there is something to it and something they should be suspecting. Unfortunately they are EXTREMELY well-versed in picking out the warning signs.