You mean sacrificing, don't you? If it had been an activity you enjoyed, you would have gone. People aren't "selfish" about doing things they want to do. The fact that you didn't find activities that appealed to you both is why the marriage became incompatible.


I would agree. But no marriage will withstand the practice of sacrifice for long. It just causes incompatibility, which is why I don't understand your desire to go out and socialize now.

As for the affair question, I'm not refusing to believe he's having an affair merely because I don't want it to be true. I actually expected that he would say yes when I asked him, but he said no and I believe him. I don't need to snoop beyond what I have already done (follow both of them on social media (we are all "friends" anyway), watch their behaviour at the office and at social events we're all at, discuss their relationship with mutual friends who know us all very well and would be honest with me but have said they really don't think there's anything going on, and ask my husband outright). I believe there is no affair. I also believe he's on the brink of one because she makes him feel good and they have fun but he hasn't crossed any boundary yet. She is definitely a threat to our marriage and has been for a long time, because he has so much fun with her, so I still need advice on dealing with their friendship-becoming-more.

With no actual affair to expose and their close friendship already being public knowledge, it's not helpful to tell me to expose anything. What could I expose that isn't already out there? Everybody who knows him socially and at work already knows he spends loads of time with her. She is single and he has left me so there would be no shame associated with them getting together, and our workplace has no policy against relationships unless they interfere with work. There is literally nothing I could say about them that would be new to anyone who knows them. Slinging mud around would achieve nothing but making me look like a jealous ex.

I'd like some positive steps to take and am asking for those.

I do enjoy socialising and always have. But I am an introvert and need time alone to recharge. My husband is an extrovert and recharges by being with other people. He pressured me to come out all the time and I reacted by refusing to come out at all. Fault on both sides but not due to a genuine dislike of socialising on my part. I'd just rather go out for a couple of hours and then come home, or go out twice a week instead of six times. He's the opposite and finds it really boring to just sit at home more than one or two nights a week, especially if we are together but not interacting with each other (e.g. watching TV). I can understand that but didn't realise until recently just how important his social life is to him. I thought he was okay with compromising but now know he was giving in and giving up in order to make me happy, then finding me really boring because he wanted to be out and I wasn't interacting with him. I thought we were just having a nice quiet time together like my own parents do in their happy marriage. He thought we had nothing to say to each other any more, like his parents do in their unhappy marriage. We saw the same behaviour but interpreted it very differently.

I would add a caveat about socializing. Good marriages only socialize in strict moderation. Most of their recreational time is spent together ALONE. When you are out socializing, you aren't meeting each others emotional needs. For example, my husband and I probably socialize 4-6 hours a MONTH. We don't have a lot of time to socialize because it cuts into our own time. We like spending time with our friends and family, but we aren't going to allow that to interfere with our own dates.

Socializing is fine, as long as it doesn't cut into YOUR time.

The soluton is not to go out and socialize more, but to find activities that you BOTH love. It should be WIN/WIN, not WIN/LOSE. One of the problems here is that his socializing IS more important than his marriage. Anything that comes before your marriage will come between it. By asking you to go out alot and do something you don't like was to gain at your expense.

Yes, that is completely correct. We did find some common ground towards the end (board gaming) and I wish we'd found that earlier because it is a perfect mix of being with people but not interacting face to face every single minute. He has always gone out gaming but I thought it was computer gaming or Dungeons'n'Dragons which I don't enjoy. It was only very recently that I discovered there are lots of other types of board game and I really love a lot of them. We play board games very well together and both enjoy it. We still do that sometimes now even though it's not at home but at gaming evenings elsewhere.

So in other words you haven't investigated and are asking us to give you advice based on a lack of facts.

Yes, and I bitterly regret not asking for help at the time to know how to negotiate and figure out a way to find those activities. We tried what we thought would work (sacrificing for each other) and when that didn't work we stopped trying to find new things. We got into a damaging habit of him going out and me staying home, rather than keep trying different ways to find new activities that we both liked. He wouldn't give up his socialising to sit home with me, and I wouldn't risk exhaustion by joining him all the time, and we didn't compromise.

I have investigated and am satisfied that I have the facts, which I have shared with you. No affair yet but a very high risk of one about to happen.

The strategy to save your marriage is completely different if there is an ongoing affair compared to when there is none. Because you are a woman it is harder to win your husband back by fighting for him. A man fighting to save his marriage looks attractive, a wife doing the same looks desperate(which is not attractive).
You expected him to admit that there is more to the relationship with this mutual 'friend'. What made you think so?

If there is a point of comparison (and there is) your chances to save this are not as good as without another appealing woman meeting his needs.

If you would approach a situation where an (emotional) affair is ongoing, as a 'normal' separation because you grew apart, the strategy that normally would give you the highest chance of saving this, wouldn't have any effect. The red flags are there, your husband did stay in a bad marriage for years, why seperate now? What changed?
Would you share what made you think they were having an affair?

Saving your marriage is a strategic plan. To implement that effectively, you need to rule out an affanr beyond doubt. When you are at war, you don't assume there is no ambush, you actively search the area for ambushes and rule them out. If not, you will get slaughtered without realizing.

If there is an affair he will paint an ugly picture of how you ruined the marriage and what a bad person you are. He will get out of the marriage easy and because you were already separated when it gets physical, everything will be happy peachy when this 'friend' becomes his new love. Just what he deserves after being treated horribly by his bad ex.

It happens all the time. Are you absolutely sure it is not happening to you? Because I am not convinced by your evidence.

I am absolutely convinced, yeah. I wish I wasn't because it reflects so badly on me that we got broken without an affair. I pushed him away over and over. He is an extreme extrovert and I am an introvert almost certainly on the autistic spectrum. We are poles apart in our basic way of thinking even though we generally share the same goals overall and have great fun together when we're not stressed. We had an awful time about five years ago (he moved his parents into our home against my wishes with no end date) and have been pulling in different directions ever since because we both got more demanding in expecting each other to live by our own values. I had a bit of breakdown at that time and withdrew from the world. He still wanted to go out all the time so he ended up going without me if I wouldn't go, and I pushed him away and refused to socialise at all with anyone because I was traumatised for about a year. He didn't take my mental health seriously and suggested I just needed to be "fixed" so I wouldn't be autistic any more and would behave like I used to. I used to be more outgoing because I had control over when and where I went before we got married and didn't get burnt out. In the last few years I got burnt out and never really recovered the fun loving and outgoing person I used to be.

We had four sessions of marriage counseling after his parents finally moved out and he said we needed help to deal with my autistic characteristics, but it didn't fix the core issues of not meeting each other's needs or respecting each other. He refused to go again after four sessions, which I thought was because we had found coping strategies for our conflict. Turns out we hadn't, and were just burying the problems under "regular date night" and "find a hobby together" strategies that didn't last.

After that I got in a habit of saying no more often than yes even though my mental health had recovered. I got lazy and felt I could pick and choose when to make an effort and when to withdraw, even though I knew I was lonely and isolated and rejected. I just didn't realise he felt lonely and rejected too because he was always out with other people. I prioritised my default reaction over what would actually make me and him happy because I was selfish and lazy.

He is at fault too for not considering my feelings or my mental health. This all came out in our second attempt at counselling, after he'd asked for a divorce and declared that he didn't love me any more and couldn't get the feeling back even though he wanted to.

Oh and there was no specific thing that made me ask if he was having an affair except that they were both off work this week and I wondered if they were together so I asked him. They weren't in the same place as it turned out (yes I saw proof of that) but it looked really bad on the surface. He was shocked that I'd think they were a couple or that other people at work would assume that he'd left me for her. He volunteered that he'd probably knock the lunchtime pints on the head for a while so nobody got a false impression. I just hmmmmm'd at that and think he's already in a habit that will be hard to break.

You hit on one of the main reasons that marriage counseling fails, it focuses on conflict resolution rather than creating romantic love. This is why it was a waste of your time. Sitting around talking in a counselor's office does not save marriages. Nor would a "regular date night" have any effect. It takes date NIGHTS meeting each others emotional needs. I think you want to believe that type of counseling would have helped, but i seriously doubt it. It has a notoriously high failure rate. Couples who are in love don't have an issue with conflict resolution.

Even so, this is all irrelevant to the current state. What should happen now is that you take steps to rule out an affair. I realize you want to believe there is none, but those of us who have a more objective perspective don't think you have really investigated.

Asking him is a waste of time. If he were having an affair he would hide it. You need to investigate and stop asking.

I don't want to believe that at all. I know it didn't help and it actually made things worse because we were papering over the real problems and then feeling bad that we still felt bad. I wish we'd never seen that counsellor. I just didn't have the knowledge at the time to understand that the problems were still there and getting worse.

I think what Marriage Builders instructs would have saved us, and still could if we followed the course, but I don't know how to get my husband on board now when he has made up his mind that it's too late. I wondered about making a bet with him that he can have an easy divorce with no further struggle from me if he tries it for whatever period Dr Harley suggests as a make-or-break.

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I appreciate your help but I am certain that there's no affair and it's really unhelpful to keep trying to convince me there is. But thank.you for looking out for me.

What is your advice where there's no affair yet but the husband has been turning to other people to have his social needs met and the wife appears boring in comparison, and he is on the brink of starting an affair with someone who seems like more fun?

First off, I would suggest you might not be the best judge of what is or isn't helpful. Would you agree you are the least objective person on this thread? I am not trying to convince you there IS an affair. We are trying to convince you to INVESTIGATE, which you have not. You have convinced yourself that there is no affair based on very flimsy reasons. It is not fair to ask us to spend our free time helping you when you haven't taken this step.

Step #1 is to rule out an affair. Step #2 would be to follow the advice I already gave you.


Socializing is not an emotional need, per se, but I would agree he has been getting his EN of recreational companionship met outside of marriage. "As soon as one need is met outside of marriage, the others are soon to follow. " Dr Bill Harley

I did know this sort of affair-focussed hectoring might happen based on reading other posts, so that's not a surprise. I saw other people driven away for the same reason: prove an affair or we won't help. And it's impossible to prove a negative to strangers on the internet.

Do you only have advice for people with an affair already going on? I need advice for how to prevent an imminent one and repair my marriage.

This is why I am convinced people who refuse to talk about snooping really do NOT want to know the truth....If you investigate, then it would ONLY CONFIRM that there is no affair.

Investigate doesn't only work if there is an affair! It will help you so that you know how to proceed either way. Win-win.