Have seen some reasonable advise here, would like some of my own. Married for 17 yrs., both 40 yrs old. My wife had an affair with a friend about 15 years ago, at the time I wasn't treating her with the respect that I should have. Through that process I recognized that I wasn't fullfilling her needs and took some ownership of our problems and made changes. Since then, I have treated her with respect and have been a very loving husband. A year and a half ago she became very close with a neighbor whose wife had left him. I was uncomfortable with their closeness and expressed myself to her, she maintained that they were just friends and for me not to worry about it. Shortly after that, she began to question our relationship, the classic "I love you, but the in-love feeling isn't there". She changed considerably during this period, not concerned with my feelings, would rather spend time with friends, very cold, etc. There were lies about things but nothing that would confirm anything more than a friendship. I found an e-mail exchange she had with an ex-classmate (they attended grad school about 9 yrs ago), the messages revealed a mutual attraction while they were attending classes, the messages quickly changed to just friendly messages after he shared that he had found someone special. After about a year of her "change", she seemed to almost overnight become her old self, caring, wanting to spend time together, more loving, etc. I have gone through alot, I still love her and am not sure exactly what happened, but I think that at the very least she has some things to hide. There has been distance in her relationship with the neighbor (he & his wife have attempted a reconciliation), I asked her why there was distance and she reponded that she is giving them space, she feels that their friendhip might threaten their reconciliation (WHY DIDN'T SHE FEEL THAT WAY ABOUT OUR RELATIONSHIP WHILE THEY WERE SO CLOSE!!)This entire process has left me bitter at times. Various things remind me of how it was and I become withdrawn and somewhat passive aggressive with her. Through all of this, I have lost some respect for her and during my "down times" am not sure my love for her is the same. She really doesn't want to talk about what has happened. I feel as though I need to forgive her in order for us to go on, but in my mind I need to know what really happened and we need to explore what it is that made her stray. I have a theory that I might have accepted too much responsibilty for our problems before. That it's possible that she looks to fullfill her needs in other ways too easily when things aren't going well for us, and/or when she feels attracted to others (we all are attracted to others)she blames it on something lacking in our relationship. She is not a good one to look at herself in the mirror. Your thoughts and opinions would be apreciated.
