First thank you for read my post, I know it's long, but it's important for me to ask these questions.

My wife and I have been married for 12 years now and we have an 11 year old son and an 8 year old daughter. The first year of marriage and the dating years leading up to marriage we were inseparable and our love was deep. A year in I enlisted in to the Air Force, we were apart for 6 weeks due to basic training, saw each other for 2 days and then separated off and on for 6 months due to technical school. This whole time we was pregnant with our son, essentially alone. So fast forward to about 6 years ago. I got deployed for 4 months, I had always handled our finances and had racked up about $5000 on credit cards due to the fact that I wasn't able to make ends meet regularly and had to charge groceries, etc... While I was deployed she discovered these bills and felt very betrayed by me that I had lied to her about them.

During our entire marriage we always struggled with our sex life. By going to counseling I've discovered that I have a fear of intimacy. I don't take rejection and embarrassment well and don't like to put myself out there to get embarrassed and hurt. So I end up not taking the risk of trying to start things affectionately, I send a clear message, by use of porn or other means to make my intentions known. It scares me to be affectionate and get out of my comfort zone and get turned down and feel embarrassed, so I don't put myself in that situation to get hurt. I also push her away and unintentionally make her feel like I'm not attracted to her. My first inclination when anyone invades my personal space is to push back. So with all this I've made her feel that I'm not attracted to her. She has tried to tell me for years that some things needed to change, but I've also discovered that I live life with blinders on and choose to not accepts that bad things are happening and choose not to deal with them. So for years I've been essentially ignoring her cries for help.

My wife has also lived her life for others mostly, always doing things for others and rarely for herself. Her parents always have put unfair academic and personal expectations on her, as do others and it's exhausted her.

No fast forward to the present. She recently lost her job as an executive in a bank, but she chose not to continue a career at that level. She felt that she needed a change. I make enough for us to get by, but it it stressful for me to handle alone. So she chose and I reluctantly in the beginning choose to support her, to take a job with our local school district as a bus driver. A month in to the job she meets a 65 year old man and forms a friendship with him. She tells him her frustrations and he teaches her that she needs to do things for herself not others. Honestly I'm grateful for him for that, it's a lesson she needed to learn and on I couldn't teach her. However she spends most of her time after work and in between shifts at his house and forms a stronger dependency on him. By this point she's happier being around him than our family. I ended finding out that she is lying to me about being at his house and not where she tells me she is. So I confront her and she comes to a realization that she believes she's having an emotional affair with him. I ask if it's ever been physical and she tells me no. I know that she's still friends with him and talks to him, but she isn't at his place alone like she use to. She even talked to him about her realization and told him that they needed to pull back on their friendship. She we both want to go to marriage counseling together and I'm ready for it, but she isn't quit yet. She wants to visit her private counselor first and discover a few things about herself first.

Now that the history lesson is over, on to my questions and concerns.

1. Is it healthy to allow her to continue to talk to this man if I trust that the relationship isn't turning in to something else?
2. She is reluctant to commit to our marriage yet, because she's unsure that the changes I've made in myself will stick and I won't eventually revert back to the man I have been for years. At this point is it healthy for her to be defensive?
3. I've noticed that when we kiss now it doesn't always seem genuine and sometimes feels like just going through the motions. Is this to be expected?
4. I've been putting myself out there emotionally with her and trying to express my interest in sex in a more affectionate manner than before, but I'm being met with comments that it doesn't feel right, right now and that when we make out I feel like a stranger, etc... As hurtful as this is to me, is this also normal behavior?

I accept the fact that I've done a lot to get us to this point, but I also feel like if I'm changing the things I've always done, I should be met with open arms and an open heart. Maybe that's just the impatience in me talking. At any rate, with all this information, to you do you feel that she's in it for us and just needs time and I patience? I think I'm just asking for reassurance with all this, because I feel like I'm in the dark and I can't stop wondering until I get some clarification from her.

Thank you for your time!

Hello Darkmatter, welcome to Marriage Builders. It is hard to know where to start here, but I need to first make the point that much of your thinking has been shaped by a culture of "counseling" that is very destructive to marriages. There is alot here about childhoods, etc which is a major distraction. Marriage Builders takes a more linear approach in solutions and does not get bogged down in psychobabble.

First off, I would avoid the counseling and focus on saving your marriage. The biggest threat to your marriage is your wife's affair so this has to be addressed first. Your marriage cannot possibly recover as long as the OM is in your lives. Therefore, your first mission is to run this dirtbag off. This is not hard to do because most OM are weasels and cowards. He doesn't care about your wife and will run at the first sign of trouble.

The way to run him off is to expose the affair. Affairs thrive on secrecy, so keeping it a secret helps it thrive and grow. Exposure will also shine the light of reality on the affair and motivate your wife to end it. Please go read the exposure thread in my signature. This is simply your best weapon in saving your marriage.

Once you have effectively killed the affair we can show you how to create a fantastic, pssionate marriage. We won't talk about childhoods, etc, but we will teach you new habits.

OM are punks and weasels

This is exactly how all affairs BEGIN. A married person talks about her personal life to a member of the opposite sex. Yuo should not be grateful for this, because it has put your marriage at great risk. Affairs begin with opposite sex friendships. As you have learned the hard way....