Two nights ago my suspicions were cofirmed when I confronted my husband about the amount of time he was spending on the internet when I was asleep. Sometimes I would get up at night on the guise of getting a drink or going to the bathroom and I would here the computer blipping to a new screen, usually the home page. How much time can a person spend surfing the home page. Did he take me for an idiot. On the first confrontation he said it was just a girl he met playing cribbage and he enjoyed chatting with her and he would break it off immediatly if it bothered me. How considerate of him. I then mentioned that my son casually told me that "dad has a hotmail account too". I asked him about that. Yes, he relpied they did send some letter back and forth but that was it. Still not assured that I was hearing the whole thing I quizzed further "did you exchange picture", yes, she sent me one of her and her daughter. "Did you send her any" , the reply was no. All the while he professed his love for me and expressed how sorry he was. I told him I wanted him to write her a letter and leave it for me to see, I also told him I wanted his e-mail account name and pass word. He agreed to give it to me. But now the more truthful explainations of what was going on started to come out. That afternoon he rushed home at dinner and attempted to delete all the correspondence he had save, leaving in the file only his letter of repentance. Interestingly enough when you delete something in hotmail it sits in the trash for a few days. It's rather like it is at our house. No one take takes it out. What was in the trash shook me to the core. Over a period of 17 days there were 27 love letter from this woman, three sets of pictures and a note indicating how grateful this little wench was that my husband had taken time to read over her essay for college before she turned it in. She is 24, and I am 42. His new found interest in reading, which I was suspicious of was because she had suggested books to read. He even went out and bought a book of prose which he read almost immediatly and one letter indicates they made that book "their book". The letters were full of sexual inuendo, he told me they had cyber-sex twice, it was after the annoymous cybersex that he set up the secret e-mail account. He continues to rationlize it as just friendship and fantasy but he used his real name, diclosed real incedents from his and our day to day life, and exchanged real pictures (he certainly didn't cut out a picture of an unknown out of the paper to send to her). At one point she asked for his phone number. Thankfully he declined and he says he doesn't have her number or address. Further to the humiliation of this, he told her immensly private details about our sexlife and was getting love advice and counselling from this youg trollop. I am so hurt and enraged. I went to the doctor to get sleeping pills and we are seeing a marriage counsellor next week. We have been married 15 years and have three children. I thought we had a good marraige, I knew our love life had slacked off a bit but we weren't arguing, when we went out shopping or whatever we held hands I thought I had the ideal marriage, the people I work with envied our relationship. This has impacted on me to a degree that I am not sleeping, not eating, when I do eat I throw up and I haven't gone to work for two days because I'm a counsellor I feel that I am in no state of mind to help anyone with anything. I want to lash out at this man at every opportunity. I want him to stop rationalizing this as a fantasy and a friendship. He strongly contends that he never had any inteniton of meeting this woman and it wasn't going to ever go any further. Twenty-seven e-mails in a little over two weeks doesn't seem like it was tapering off to me. Additionally there was all the nights he spent up chatting with her in addition to the e-mails. I'm guessing 3-4 hours a night up to 7 days a week. The things he talked to her about, the profession of undying love and how he never wants this to end and on and on and on. How can anyone say something like this is any diffrent that a "real" love affair. It was sexual, it was romantic, it was intimate, the cybersex made it physical, it was real people, real photos, it was secretive and it was taking up a great deal of his time and thoughts. I appologise for the rambling and bad spelling but I am sooooo devastated and I need to vent. Venting on my husband is not helping our marriage. Advice from anyone who has been there or who understands my situation would be helpful and welcomed right now.<BR>

Welcome <B>marlaalynn</B>...<P>I repost for you my reply to your earlier post... but you can just click on it to find it... and add more questions, comments or whatever you like to it!<P>---------------------------------------------<P>Your story is not so different from many others. my W had 600+ e-mails over the course of about 3 1/2 months before I found out. Your still at a realtively early stage... but you need to take action soon!<P>I have a post of general welcome post I wish to share with you... <P>It has a lot of quick links to many of the <B>most</B> important MB sites...<BR>Click here ==> <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000002.html" TARGET=_blank>General Welcome for All New Builders(Newbies)</A><P>For some clarity... a short time ago the "main" forum was divided into 4 separate "sub" forums...<BR>Staying in the <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/marriage/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&forum=General+Questions&number=28&DaysPrune=10&LastLogin=" TARGET=_blank>General Questions</A> forum will give you the most responses! <P>After reading the welcome post <B>links</B>, do start on <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8113_ab.html" TARGET=_blank>Plan A</A> right away!<P>Jim