My wife and I have been married for 16 years.<p>My wife suffers from depression and has attempted suicide 18 months ago. I love my wife very much and she has always reciprocated the same to me. However, starting 6 weeks ago she started going out to dances with old girlfriends from her school days and also with some new aquaintences (I am not invited). In her new-found clique she is the only one who is not separated or divorced. At this same time her personality started to change. Not that she was becoming depressed. Rather, she has gone in the other direction in an extreme way. Now she only wants to be with her friends and will not have anything to do with me or our son. She stays out all night and sometimes stays over night at her girlfriend's house, not returning until after noon the following day. She has told me the now her eyes are finally open and she is becoming the person she was before we met. She also says that our relationship as man and wife is dead and that she loves me only as a "friend". <br>We have tried speaking with our minister, but that didn't help. All the reasons she gives for the "opening of her eyes" are based upon arguments and quarrels from 5-10 years ago. These are problems which I thought were resolved and should be treated as "water under the bridge". But since she brought up these old subjects, I tried to discuss it with her, but she doesn't want to hear it. <p>I really do not understand why she is acting this way and have tried to explain it as a "high" phase of her depression. <p>I want our marriage to work and I think she does too, because she hasn't threated to leave and she won't remove her ring because she says she is still my wife. <p>I don't know where this will lead, but I am feeling very hurt. I am willing to try anthing to regain my wife and heal our bruised relationship.

It sounds like your wife is having an affair. Check this out by attaching a tape recorder device(Radio Shack) that will come on at the sound of a voice or you may want to hire a P.I. to investigate this possiblity.Good luck

Mars....attach it to what???? ROFLOL!!!

good question hopeful2 and what does ROFlOL mean? I guess Ii'm just not up on all of these terms.

LOL: laughing out loud<br>ROFL: rolling on floor laughing<br>ROFLOL: rolling on floor laughing out loud<br>ROFLMAO: rolling on floor laughing my ('butt') off<br>BTW: by the way<br>IMHO: in my humble opinion<br>IMNSHO: in my not so humble opinion<br>OP: other person<br>OW(M): other woman (man)<br>SO: significant other<p>That's all I can think of now.

Thanks for all the help!!

Earl...please forgive me for ignoring your problem. I am no expert, but it seems like until your wife is healed from her manic-depression, your marriage is not likely to change for the better. This must be a terrible mental disorder, but isnt there a drug for this? I heard this is caused, or at least in some cases, by a chemical imbalance in the brain...certain drugs can help. Is she on any? This is all I can think of that may help you. Except for prayer. Miracles do happen and there must be support groups for families of manic-depressive people. I dont know. Dont give up, until you have explored all possibilities.

<p>Ok..Here are some tips for finding out about the OM or OW<p>All of these tips are not ethical or legal, but then cheating is worse. I am not going to debate it here. I will just give those of you out there some things to try that may or may not aid you in determining what you may or may not be dealing with:<p>Go to a store and purchase a micro cassette recorder with all the attachments necessary to hook it up to your phone line. Hide the darn thing and use batteries. The batteries will die before the end of the tape, so you will need to constantly replace them. You can hook it up to a power adapter, but you may get caught. You have to hide the phone line under something that your spouse won't disturb. The hook up can be made to seem inline. Have the phone line coming from the wall positioned under something (where the recorder will be placed), then continue the line to the phone. Any time a phone is picked up in the house, it will start recording (follow the manufacturer's procedures for setting the VOX function). It only recorders when the phone is picked up. When you play it back at normal speed and then easily guess the number dialed by listening to the tones, (there are more expensive devices that will automatically display the number dialed, but may be too expensive for your budget). If you use batteries, it will less likely be detected. Destroy all packaging and receipts for the device, and keep erasing tapes that contain no valuable information. Buy the 90 minute tapes, and set to the lowest recording speed in order to extend the recording time to 180 minutes per tape. This is illegal! So make sure you tell everyone who dials or talks on your phone that they are being recorded. You want to check with your local police department and tell them you are going to do this……Let me know if you do what I suggested in the previous sentences I would feel good that you are obeying the law. In fact tell your spouse before you do it…this way you have all the bases covered!<p>By doing this, you will find out the phone cards they are using, voice mail passwords, bank account numbers, the ip service they are using, and of course the type of relationship your spouse may or not be having with another person. Turn it off when you are home, no sense recording anything you want to say to your friends.<p>Don't dial any numbers extracted from the tapes you recorded from your home phone, since reports can be easily obtained from the Phone Company. You should also call up your local and long distance carriers and order detail phone reports for the last three years, or tell your spouse you are going to do this and see if they admit to anything. Make sure you are at home when they arrive in the mail, they won't send them to your office. To find out what numbers your spouse was calling, use the AT&T reverse look up…at http://www.att.com….or any number of reverse look up engines on the Internet. In some cases you can also find their email address. Then pop their email address into other search engines or dejanews.com to find out what they are interested in..(Porno, hobbies, etc.).That is legal and public information. The more sophisticated you are using a computer, the more information you will find. I would suggest downloading a Ferret, and use it to search multiple search engines, with results that can be sorted easily.<p>If you are worrying about getting caught, include a note next to the recorder saying something to the effect: Honey, I am sorry I had to resort to this, but I was concerned for your safety in particular, and our family in general - I love you!.This way if you happen to die away from home, your spouse will understand, and your children may not know what you are talking about.<p>Another tip:<p>If you know the name of the person who is emailing your spouse, and they only do it at work:<p>Set up a free email account on Excite, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc etc. Use their first name or last name or initials and email your spouse a message. Do it on a Friday, or before a holiday. The message should be generic, for example: "Hi there! I have a new private email address, How's it going? Email me back to see if it works". Don't plan a meeting, or ask them to call you, or indicate any kind of topic that your are not sure of. This will only be good until the other person calls your spouse, and then the game is up. You may get a few email exchanges with which to find out something useful. I did this, and the coward [censored] replied and wrote, "Better now that I got your note, can we talk during the day? Or would early evening be better? Phone numbers?" (he acted like a dog, as if phne numbers were doggy bones) The time periods were when she was at work, and early evening was when I was not home. Fortunately, this confirmed a few things for me. One: my wife said she broke off the game she was playing with this guy a year ago. Two: It confirmed his email address WHICH LED TO A WEALTH OF INFORMATION ABOUT HIM, because all I had to go on was his very common first name, and very common last name. Three: It confirmed that she was indeed at one time talking to him on a regular basis. Four: Gave me the opportunity to email the piece of **** and let him know that I was not a happy camper (or words to that effect).. I let my wife know that I did this, and that he replied and gave her the opportunity<br>to reply first.(she kindly let him know not to bother contacting her ever again).(What can I say? I felt guilty..) I emailed a follow up after hers, with the stronger message. Now I can reachout and touch somebody. ( I would never hurt or blackmail and contact any of his friends or family, because I am sure that all my wife did was talk to this guy).(However, if I ever find out that he accidentally brushed against her, or kissed her hello..I will not harm a hair on his head, or alter his physical structure) ( I will consider legal and good Christian options)…….but then again..I won't know for sure until that happens…<p>Use only as a last resort, when you are sure your spouse has communicated in an improper way, and has told you about it, and insisted that nothing is going on anymore. You can also do the reverse, and set up a fake email account for your spouse, make it searchable on the internet, and wait/check it everyday to see who responds. Sort of like fishing….<p>You could also dowload Keyloggers, sniffers, etc…but if the spouse is good with computers, you will be found out……<br>

Mars-<br> You are a friggin genius. Wish you had posted this months ago as I was blindly stumbling through the process.