Hi all. I'm new to the forum but not new to Dr Harley's concepts. I first read His Needs Her Needs and Love Busters in my first marriage, after I was unfaithful. I am currently in my 2nd marriage and learned last month that my wife was unfaithful to me starting last year. Neither instance of unfaithfulness involved sexual relations, but that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt as badly as if it had.

I feel like I am losing my mind because my wife will not commit to working on our marriage with me. She says she is not sure what she wants. All I want is for her to agree to try and spend more time with me in person and on the phone. I should mention that we don't currently live together. I lost my job last year due to being unable to perform despite my mental illness. Which led to us not being able to afford our rent anymore or rent anywhere. It is very pricey around here. The only solution was for me to move in with family and her to move (with our 2 dogs) into a male coworker's condo. Where I am is a rental and pets are not allowed. I know you might have other ideas we could have done for living arrangements but lets please not focus on that.

So since December 1st we have been living apart. I have been the one seeking time with the other one the whole time. I think we got together in person twice in December. We did not even celebrate our wedding anniversary together which is also new years eve due to drama because she wanted to spend that day at a friend's party instead of being with me, but that is a story for another day.

Starting this year, I got on a combo of meds that helped me and I got through a depression which had lasted over a year maybe 2 years. My mind is clearer than it has ever been. Sidenote, we are in our early 40s. Okay so anyways, I began mindfully courting my wife. We started spending more time together, not a lot. Nowhere near the 15 hours a week, including phone time.

I'm losing my mind because I am completely open and honest with her and sharing every feeling i've got. I am hurting so badly. I feel like she doesn't care. She says she loves me and cares about me, but why won't she try to spend more time with me? Why does she have excuses why she has no time to read the marriage books?

I don't understand. I just finished reading Fall in Love Stay in Love. Now I am reading Surviving an Affair. Everything I read makes me cry and makes me more worried about what she could be doing every day without me.

I have no one that I feel comfortable talking to about anything that I experience except my wife and my therapist. My only 2 people in the world and I get very little time with either of them. My therapist is really good though. She lets me email her every day whatever I am going through and she reads it and sometimes can respond in between appointments.

At my last session my therapist said she thinks I might be suffocating my wife. She thinks it sounds like my wife needs some space and I keep pressing her more and more for time with her. I am just so worried that I am running out of time. That every week she is spending time with friends, her single male housemate, and having fun not associated with me. Why would she ever want to try and work on things with me if she associates me with unhappiness?

Welcome to MB.

Did your first marriage end because of your affair? Are you working now?

Welcome to MB.

Please tell us about these affairs. As BrainHurts asks, what role did yours play in the breakdown of your marriage? In the case of your wife, you say that there was more than one affair. How many were there, and what makes you think they did not involve sexual relations? Do you think that any of those affairs, or a new one, might still be taking place? Could she be involved with the male co-worker? How would you know if she were?


Your therapist says the opposite from what Dr Harley would say. He would say that if your wife does not want to spend time with her husband, she is probably spending time with another man.

First marriage did not end from the affair. The “affair” lasted one month. It started with a female friend asking me if I was happy in my marriage to which I finally unloaded all my thoughts and feelings I had not told anybody about. This became tons of communication over the next few weeks. There was one kiss. There was talk of me leaving my wife for her. Then one day it was discovered with a simple check of my phone record. I was confronted by my wife. I confessed everything. I snapped out of it as if I was under a spell. Marriage continued until one day we were out on a date and I thought to myself I would rather be anywhere else in the world right now than with her. As Forrest Gump would say “that’s all I have to say about that”.


As for current marriage, this situation is that last year my wife reached a point to where she assumed I was done so then she decided she was done and went on a dating site. Note that we had no talks about anyone being done. I was never done. I didn’t know anything was wrong. She tells me now that she met two guys and went on 3 dates total. But she said this wasn’t for dating she was just trying to make friends. She historically is a person who is friends with guys instead of girls. Girls are too much drama. So she claims nothing happened there.
No I have know way of knowing.

Also with the coworker I have no way of knowing.

Well, that might be all you have to say about that, but the posters on this board might have more to say. From where I'm sitting, it looks as if that affair contributed to your abandoning your first marriage.

And now you are here:
What was going on to make her assume you were done? That's a very odd conclusion for one spouse to come to when the other spouse thinks there is nothing wrong. How can there be two such radically opposing views by the spouses in the same marriage? Has she ever expanded on what she meant - on what made her draw this conclusion?

And why, if she thought you were done, was she so ready to be "done" herself? Did she ever try to talk to you about what was making you unhappy (as she saw it)? Did she do anything, that you can now look back on and recognise, as trying to improve the marriage?

If she was only looking to make friends, why did she go on a dating site? Dating sites are for people looking for sex or looking for romantic relationships. If she arranged a date with a man that she met on such a site, what was her explanation to him when he tried to do what those sites are there for, and she wouldn't play? I can imagine that many men would be quite angry about being deceived. That would be like arranging a meet-up with someone from a games board to play a game together, and then on the date her admitting that she doesn't like gaming at all. That would not go down well if she wasted someone's time like that. But then again, if she had 3 dates with 2 different men, then one of the dates led to a further date. Why and how did that happen?

If, as she says, she was only looking to make friends, did she make friends with these men, and if not, why not?

As you can probably see from my questions, I think you've accepted what she said far too easily, and that her explanations would not stand up to proper scrutiny.

Finally for now: how could she have been on any dates, never mind 3, without your knowledge? Did she make up stories about where she was going? Were you living lives detached from each other?