Hello, I've been married 30 years, always seemed like a very happy marriage, best friends, soul mates, etc. We talk a lot and spend time doing fun stuff together. 2 kids, 19 and 22, at home. When we disagree we always work it out constructively.
My husband met a woman at work and began hanging out with her, going on walks during free time, then phone calls & texting. He would tell me about her along with other work friends. His comments about her began to be numerous and very complimentary. I actually met her once, she's quite attractive.
Finally I got tired of hearing about her and asked if he's in love with her. He said no, they're just friends. This was about 6 weeks ago (the whole relationship was several months long, I think.) I told him I think he's attracted to her based on some comments he made. He said only slightly, and they did flirt and make verbal sexual innuendo, but never kissed or did anything physical. She is separated from her husband. He says she has no female friends but many male friends and is flirty.
I do believe that he did not do anything physical with her, but that he was infatuated with her. He has been going thru midlife crisis and says that her attention has been an ego boost. He did lie to me about some phone calls and deleted many texts. He has never been dishonest to me before, I truly believe.
I'm sure I have not always met all his emotional needs but we both think our marriage has been quite good up till this.
He still has to see her at work and talk to/text her occasionally but says he has avoided spending time with her.
We are trying to improve our relationship.
I am very depressed and have no one to talk to about this. I'd love counseling but have no money for it. Just need someone to talk to and thought I might find that here. Thanks for listening.

Sorry you are here but welcome.

This is definitely a EA and very possibly even a PA. They cannot work together ever again without endangering your M. Even just glancing at each other will trigger the addictive feelings and thoughts and the A often continues, they just get better at hiding it.

Do you have your snooping in place? We recommend VAR/GPS in the car, keylogger on the computer.

Have you independently verified that the OW is separated? That is such a common lie that is used, I think we must hear it daily here on the boards. Even if they are truly separated, the OWH should still be told since they are still married.

Have you exposed this A to anyone?

(((cookie)))

cookiecat, welcome to Marriage Builders. You are in the right place. I would suggest you get ahold of the book Surviving an Affair and read it so you understand what you are dealing with here.

Unfortunately, the affair has not ended. As long as they continue to see each other every day, the affair is ongoing. They have just gone further underground.

Don't take my word for it, put spyware on his phone and take a look at his texts and see for yourself. Some good ones are flexispy and mobilestealth. Don't ASK him if the affair has continued, just quietly snoop and find out yourself.

If there are any other ways they communicate, I would snoop using that method. For example, if they email each other, install a keylogger on his computer so you can see what they say.

Once you get the evidence, come back here and we will help you with next steps.

Unfortunately, an affair is not something that can swept under the rug like this. The affair will become more and more entrenched as long as they continue to work together. Your marriage can never recover. The reason is because an affair is an addiction. He cannot get over the addiction until he removes the SOURCE, so to speak. It is like the alcoholic. He must stop drinking and stay out of bars in order to sober up.

In this case, your H will remain high on the fog of his addictive affair until he leaves that job and gets away from the OW. I just want you to be aware that your marriage is over unless and until he ends all contact with this woman. Recovery is impossible under these conditions.

But please quietly snoop on him to get the evidence and come back here. We can help you save your marriage.

What is VAR/GPS?

I looked at the spyware online, I can't afford it.
Also, I do believe him that he is only speaking to her for work purposes.
I came here for emotional support.
Thanks anyway.

cookiecat, we are supporting you. I don't think you understand the danger you are in. If he has had an emotional affair with her he is not speaking to her for just work purposes. That would be like an alcoholic who claims to sober up by changing the name of his drinks to "business drinks." Do you think he can ever sober up doing that?

That is all that has happened here. If your husband is being honest, then you can VERIFY that by snooping on him. That will help you restore trust. Blind trust is going to harm you.

That's how my 30-year marriage almost ended. My H started out in an emotional relationship where the OP hung on his words, flattered and flirted with my H. We had had a good marriage, too.

Please look at this very seriously, unless you are prepared to say goodbye to your marriage and the life you and your H have built all these years.

This forum absolutely supports marriage and will not back off when they "smell" something. If another woman is meeting some of the emotional needs of your husband, it won't be long before the physical needs are met as well. From there on out, it will be even more heartbreaking and difficult. Please listen to the vets here and do whatever you can to end this.

Cookiecat -
Believe it or not, you're probably in a better position that those occupied by 90% of the folks who start threads on this board. Your husband had (maybe: is having) an Emotional Affair. You were alert enough to raise the issue, and your husband seemingly is open to the fact that he was approaching the precipice that too many spouses go over.

Time for some serious husband educating. Eventually, you're going to want to get Surviving an Affair, available on this site. First however, you might need to more fully convince your him that this WAS, in fact, an affair. For that, I recommend NOT Just Friends. This was the first of two books that shocked my FWW out of her foggy thoughts of "Oh, there's nothing going on...my husband is just overreacting."

In the meantime ensure that you know what are his key EN's that require satisfaction. The dual "EN Needs Questionnaires" on this site is a great place to start. Once you have his answers, you can return to being the Cookiecat he fell in love with over 30 years ago. (Hint: He said OM supplied him an "ego boost". Translating that to EN-speak yields, affection, conversation, and admiration, primarily. You can find all that here: http://marriagebuilders.com/ca/to.cgi?l=pop3 )

You have a very real opportunity not only to halt his slide to affair-dom, but to build a better marriage than you had before, IF you act quickly. The Infidelity Algebra shows that:

EA + Time + Opportunity = PA

You'll want to remove the Time from this equation.

Thanks.
He told me today that he saw her and told her they can no longer be "friends". He told me he's arranged it so he will not see her or call her at work. He is begging my forgiveness. I am keeping an eye on his phone use. I just ordered Not Just Friends. We are going to use some of the ideas on the website. We both really want to make it work. I just really came here to get some help with my feelings and I don't think that's going to happen.

That is because we recognize you have much greater problems and are headed for disaster. When someone is sitting on the railroad tracks with a train headed towards them it is typically not a good time to discuss your feelings. Your feelings will be much worse than this when your marriage crumbles over an ongoing affair. That is where you are headed.


How will he not see her at work? And how will you know it if does not call her at work? Do you see what I mean with this? If he contacts her at work, you will never know. He is like the alcoholic who goes to the bar every day and sits looking at a drink but is told he can't take a drink. Eventually, temptation collides with opportunity and he takes a drink.

You already know you can't rely on will power. He has already proven that will power did not prevent him having an affair in the first place. It hasn't helped him in the past and it won't help him in the future.

And that is what will happen here. In 10 years on this board I have NEVER known of a marriage that recovered where the affair partners worked together. But I can point to COUNTLESS affairs that resumed this way. So instead of being 6 month affairs, they turned into 4, 6 and 10 year affairs. [some ended up over on the pregnancy forum when the WH got the OW pregnant] Recovery is impossible as long as your H continues to work at the same place.

here


Entire article at: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

How to Survive an Affair chapter in HIS NEEDS, HER NEEDS
p. 177

...I have seen husbands build new and wonderful relationships with their wives but then go back to their lovers after five or six years of what appeared to be marital bliss. When I ask them why, they inevitably tell me they miss the woman terribly and still love her. At the same time they stoutly affirm they love their wives dearly and would not think of leaving them.

I believe a man like this has told the truth. He is hopelessly entangled and needs all the help possible to be kept away from his lover and stay faithful to his wife. I often recommend that a man once involved in an affair come in to see me every three to six months on an indefinite basis, just to talk about how things are going and to let me know how successfully he has stayed away from his lover. He must resign himself to a lifetime without her. HE MUST CERTAINLY NOT WORK WITH HIS FORMER LOVER AND SHOULD PROBABLY LIVE IN SOME OTHER CITY OR STATE. Even with those restrictions the desire for her company persists...

First, we cannot afford for him to quit his job. It's about survival. And if he left the job, how would I know that he was not still seeing her somewhere else?

Most people can't afford divorce. Can you afford divorce? Have you priced out divorces in your state?

You build a life of total and complete transparency together ~ he puts a GPS in his car and allows a keylogger on his computer and phone.

Or, you (gasp!) ~ move and he changes jobs. We wanted our M badly enough that my H did both ~ changed jobs and we moved out of state.

HE CANNOT CONTINUE TO WORK WITH HER. That is not an option ~ I have not seen even ONE marriage survive where the APs (Affair Partners) continued to work together ~ not ONE.

I know it sounds crazy at first ~ what, quit his job? Move? These things can happen if you want your M badly enough ~ where there is a will, there's a way.

cookie, you will end up having a nervous breakdown if they continue working together. No one can stand that sort of emotional trauma and abuse for very long. Please believe me....if he continues to work with her, not only will your M eventually end, but you will end up with PTSD and a nervous breakdown.

He is addicted to her. It is not love, it is an addiction. There is a big difference and once you understand that, it will be clear why they cannot continue to work together.

He also needs to take a polygraph ~ this was a PA and you cannot recover until the truth is out.

I am sorry you are here but this is the right place to recover your M! Many of us here have done just that!

You can't educate a wayward, it is actually a lovebuster. It would be best if you QUIETLY snooped. Sharing this site with him is just going to alert him to be on guard and to be careful.

I can tell you from experience that what he is going to do is say and do what he needs to to get you to believe nothing is going on so that he can continue working with her.

Even if you believe he doesn't want to continue the EA, even just glancing at each other is going to trigger the addictive thoughts and feelings and this is going to make it impossible for him to fall back in love with you.

I understand that he has told you he won't talk to her, etc, but what you need to understand is that waywards lie lie and lie some more. My H had a workplace affair and after I discovered it, he ended the phone calls and text messages and assured me they would not see each other at work anymore but it was all a LIE. You can click on my username and scroll back to see my first thread. It is all laid out there.

Once he defogged he admitted they only stayed away from each other for a very short time and then resumed their relationship in the workplace. He will be the FIRST person to tell you that affairees CAN NOT work together. It kept him confused and prevented us from making any progress. Thank goodness the OW was engaged and had no plans to leave her fiance or this could have ended very very badly for us.

I understand you just want to share your feelings but we would be doing you NO favors if we just stood by and didn't warn you. When I first posted here, people were very blunt with me about the risk I was taking with my H working with the OW, even though he was already in the process of looking for another job. And thank goodness they were so blunt. I needed to hear it! If just one person had just told me not to worry and to go ahead and vent, I probably would have run with it and ignored the other posters...

Cookiecat,

I believe that you will get help with your feelings if you continue to use this website and forum. There is so much here for you. For months, before posting, all I did was read and read and read... that helped me to understand my feelings and the feelings of my spouse. The posters here are very helpful!

I also strongly recommend the SAA book!

You reading Not Just Friends is great. It won't help him much.(Got it myself and had my WH read it a couple years ago when I was convinced he was in an emotional affair (turns out it was a physical affair all along).
Following MB guidelines might help your marriage.
Get all the books from Dr. Harley from MB and read them (notice my user name......)

Its your best course of action.

cookie, you are holding a ticking bomb in your hand. You want emotional support? Wouldn't you rather have an intact marriage?

Understand, cookie, that the posters here are either healing in stages from adultery or are trying to kill an affair. No one is blind to your pain. Because we've been where you are, our first response to you is going to be by order of priority:

1. Kill the affair
2. Heal the marriage

The posters here are letting you know in no uncertain terms that Goal No. 1 has not been reached. We are seeing the train coming, and sweetie, you're on the tracks. We're trying to push you off the tracks before it hits you.

I know it is ever so much easier to make your WH pinky swear that he'll never see her at work, as opposed to having to find another job. But you will be tortured daily by knowing that they are together, looking their best and being their most charming. She's a box of chocolates, cookie. He might have resolved to lose a few pounds, so he put the box down on his desk. But that box is just sitting there, every day...one day he's going to decide that one chocolate won't hurt...then it'll be two....then three....

You see? I've never read a successful outcome on here when the APs continued to work together. My H told me he wouldn't have been able to stay away from his OW co-worker - we were lucky that his AP quit the job and left after they were exposed at their job.

Cookie, I would not show him this website at this time. This is a safe place for you to come to learn more about the dynamics of an affair. There are tools on this site that will help kill an affair. You don't want your H to see those right now.