Tattoo guy is laughing his [censored] off.

I know that I don't want to keep feeling like I'm not worth a DAMN in a relationship that I feel I give everything I've got. Does that answer your question?

Christ, I can already feel the emotional walls going up.

Sorry for the harshness. Sounds like many of you have been here.

It's quite hard to stay on track when I'm hurting and feel violated and ignored, and many of you guys are saying (with goodwill in mind) that I'm a chump, but that it can ONE DAY be better if only I work my [censored] off at it (which I feel I've already been doing).

Infidelity has always been the most abhorrent thing to me, struggle as I do with feeling wanted and loved; and all the stuff going on in this thread is putting pictures into my mind that don't exactly drive me to wanting to fix this - but instead protect myself and isolate from it.

Yet another post from me.
Say we were to get past this cheating. At the moment I don't see how, but I appreciate my vision is clouded by emotions.
How do we move on from here where by her own admission I have been doing everything that I should be with regard to affection and conversation and all the other important factors, and yet still she feels unfulfilled? Can part of it be attributed to her illness or does she just have a set of emotional needs so great that an oil tanker couldn't fill it? Just this weekend - before the recent issues came up! - I suprised her by buying her some thoughtful and selfless gifts unprompted when she thought I just went out to visit the hardware store; by her own admission I do everything I should but it doesn't make her happy and she can barely appreciate them. What's the point? Am I beating my head against the wall, and myself and the children would be better off if she was gone?

Venturi, no one is saying you're a chump. You've found yourself in a place that many (myself included) have found themselves.

I'm sure you've tried to be the best husband you know how to be, but you are up against a bigger obstacle - your wife's infidelity. That's a whole different animal, and requires a different approach than trying to be a good husband.

I'm sorry if I missed this, but how long have you been married? Any kids?

How much time do the two of you spend together in an average week? Just the two of you. No kids.

Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. This post doesn't help the poster, Justlooking.

Maritalbliss, we have just celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary and 5th anniversary of our relationship. We have two boys, aged 4 and 3. The eldest is not my biological child, in fact we first got together when my wife was pregnant with him, but I have been his father figure since before he was born and he is my boy in my heart. We got together young and progressed through things fast but we've both felt that we were always old before our time and were more mature than our peers of similar age. We were ready for kids and our relationship was in fact founded around them and we were glad for it. I guess both of us had an emotional need for having a family? Whatever. Our relationship has been through unbelievable turmoil and we have prevailed because we wanted it to, so I'm really flagging when at the moment my wife is saying she's not sure if she wants it to.

Up till now there have been very few issues of us feeling a "lost youth" or anything along those lines and when it has come up we have managed it in a safe and successful way, I think.

There was only one incident in the past of unsurety in the relationship and it was from me a few years ago. My wife was in a very bleak state mentally at the time, and we were still not 100% certain on how to have "lives" while balancing that with family in a healthy way. I had a crisis of confidence, feeling trapped, and asked her to stay with her mother for a night (knowing that her mother is a great influence on her and wonderful with the children and would probably help her to not feel the pain I knew it would cause). But she couldn't ever help but take it as me "deciding I didn't want them" when I clearly stated all along that I thought I did but felt I had no head space to WANT to be a family man rather than continuing to do it because I was obligated to.

Almost within minutes of them driving away I knew that what I wanted was my wife and family regardless of the issues, because I finally had the free CHOICE to not do it if I didn't want to, and I told her as much - that my resolve was stronger than ever and I knew what I wanted.

She has likened her current situation to the one I just outlined but I don't feel it's a direct parallel because in my "crisis" I said BEFORE that I was almost certain that "us" was the correct thing but I simply never felt I had a choice. This time, she is saying that she doesn't know if "us" is the correct choice at all and is fairly unwilling to listen to attempts to fix it.



edit: Regarding time spent together; we spend at least 2 hours a night together without kids (since they were young we have been great at "enforcing" bedtime and in fact they understand that it's perfectly normal that mummy and daddy need time every evening to just be together, which I hope is a positive idea to nestle in their brains for adulthood). We spend that time it seems with me constantly trying to find something to do together that she will enjoy, including things we enjoyed together not a few weeks ago, but also plumbing the depths of things we have enjoyed years ago. Lately she has withdrawn significantly and doesn't get "into" anything, which I have chalked up to depression. But I don't know how much more I could have done, considering I never gave up on trying to find something that entertained her, until I was too exhausted and needed to myself relax?

Venturi, how did the two of you meet? Was she married at the time?

Venturi, I'm not going to lean too much on her 'depression'. Many people have situational depression that is not organic. I believe she is disillusioned with her marriage right now, and I think if you can sell her on Dr. Harley's program for building and maintaining a great marriage, that depression will lessen or end entirely. That can't happen until the affair is dead.

While you're working on killing the affair (and there is one) you need to be concentrating on Plan A. Don't give her the Emotional Needs Questionnaire - she'll skew that, as you have seen.

Your first job is to kill the affair.

She was not married at the time but was in a fairly meaningless empty "childish" relationship by which she got pregnant. She has said that she wanted to get pregnant to instigate a change in her life as she struggled through her teenage years, and didn't intend to set up a family with the previous man, he was simply a means to an end. I can kind of understand it in a twisted way.
We initially started speaking online before she was pregnant, but I didn't really think she was interested. There was a degree of "spark" between us, though. We met for the first time in person the day she found out she was pregnant, at which time she was still with the previous man. She didn't appear to me to be trying to leave him for me, and I did not strive for a relationship between us because I felt it would be dishonest, so I carried on with my life. That day was a leaving party to see me off before I spent a few months overseas, and in that time she left the previous man and we talked earnestly and late into the night via the internet. We're both young, this is how our generation communicates, don't judge us! When I got back into the country we continued speaking a lot online but not meeting. I was afraid that I was reading too much into the situation and that she didn't like me after all, and I didn't want to set myself up for humiliation which I had experienced before.
Eventually though after moaning about my job to her she invited me to her place for the day, I skipped off work to be there with her, we hit it off immediately and I stayed from morning until late at night - by the end of the day we were lying on the sofa in each other's arms.
The pregnancy element/baby's father thing did concern me but over time my fears were reassured that she didn't want anything to do with him and in fact later on I became a mediator in trying to keep a level discussion field between them about things like child support. Eventually the father conceded, with our blessing and no ill will meant, that the baby didn't really fit in with his lifestyle and my wife and I were providing all the "family" the baby needed, so the complication of a biological father would make things harder for everybody (there was still significant negative tension between my wife and him).

No, I mean: how many hours do you spend OUT OF THE HOUSE. Like on a date night, or spending the weekend away from the kids? I'm not talking about watching TV together after the kids are in bed. I'm talking about 'dates'.

So, kill the affair.
Not sure how to go about that without inspiring resentment (I did read everything Dr. Harley wrote about addiction) and further driving her away, considering that she associates myself, our marriage and our LIFE with nothing but negativity?

All these posts are getting rather messy aren't they!
I suppose we spend very little time out of the house on dates, we have done a few recently but they have ended badly being soured by her poor mood (I had attributed to depression and tried to be supportive in that, but perhaps it wasn't that after all).

We do have a couple that we get on incredibly well with as a foursome and see at least once a week, regularly staying the night at their house (with kids in tow, but in bed by a reasonable time). But I don't know if that counts.

Venturi, you are wasting time because you don't understand what you are dealing with. If you don't follow my instructions to undercover this affair, it is going to get more entrenched. The more entrenched, the harder it will be to break up the affair.

The reason you don't think she is having an affair is because a) you don't know the signs and b) you are being lied to.

So please get the GPS and other spyware so you can stop this affair before your marriage goes further downhill.

We will show you how. We just need you to get the goods. Let me know when you have done that I will help you with next steps.

Part of the reason that you are beating your head against the wall is because she has fallen in love with someone else. You probably have done a good job of meeting her needs over the years, but you just weren't doing it ENOUGH and were probably also committing lovebusters. But all of the need meetin' in the world will be of no avail if she is in love with someone else.

A woman is only in love with one man at a time. This is why it is so critical for you to find out what she is doing and kill her affair. Once the OM is removed, you will have a chance. We will also teach you to do a better job of meeting her needs. You have been doing a lot of guesswork [buying her gifts] and don't really have any idea if that hit the mark or not. [it didn't!]

So we can help you turn this around and so you can both fall in love again. But we can't do any of that as long as she is in an affair. So first order of business is killing the affair.

It doesn't. What maritalbliss is getting at is Undivided Attention time -- 15 hours spent alone, out of the house, concentrating on meeting the 4 intimate emotional needs: Conversation, Affection, Recreational Companionship, Sexual Fulfillment.

Thanks for your thoughts Melody. Let us explore the theory that my wife is having an emotional affair with Tattoo Guy. How do I go about "killing" the affair? I can't appeal to her "better nature" or logic because at the moment she resents everything good about our lives.
I don't think I can really expose, per se, because no definitive act has been committed - only failing to SHUT DOWN a growing emotional connection with someone besides your partner. Is that enough to send out all the exposure emails and letters and phone calls?

In contrast, we do know the signs of an affair. Snoop.