First time poster, here!<P>I have a problem and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it. It's driving me insane, so I really need to hear from objective people.<P>I recently discovered that my husband has been answering--and placing--oline personal ads. After much praying and soul-searching, I decided that I had to confront him about it. His response? "It was all kind of a game--I really didn't think about it as I was doing it. A guy at work came up with it and I thought it would be fun to be someone else for a while."<P>Aside from my horror that he would play such a mean-spirited game (people who post personal ads are very often fragile emotionally--this makes responding to them facetiously very cruel, in my opinion), I'm just destroyed by the fact that he did it at all. To me, this is every bit the same as if he had physically cheated on me, which he swears he did not.<P>He says he never met any of the women, but I accidentally stumbled on some of the messages, and they were quite personal. <P>I do love him, and I don't want to throw away six years that have been pretty darn good. I guess part of what frightens me so much is that I suspect he's lying to me about the reason he began all this-we have been arguing a lot over petty little things, and I believe he may not be truly happy in our marriage. That thought just breaks my heart, but when I asked him he stuck to his original reasoning.<P>We've talked (and talked, and talked, and talked) about it, and he swears he'll never do it again. He said he didn't realize how much I'd be hurt by it, and he had me watch while he deleted all the ads, messages, etc.<P>Now what do I do?? I really need some brutally honest feedback, here, because I don't want to be freaking out over something that's not a big deal at all. <BR>

Hi, I usually post over at d/d, but tonight is slow so I was browsing. Brutally honest feedback huh? Well here goes.<P>The first I knew that my h was unhappy was when I caught him accessing porn sites on the net. Stupid me, I didn't know what to do about his unhappiness, since he wouldn't talk about it. Had I then known about this site, things might be different now (we are separated after he had an affair). <P>You need to read everything you can on this site, particularly Plan A stuff, and find out about love busters and the love bank. That will be a good start for you.<P>Don't ignore this, or pass it off....I did and look where it got me.<P>Good luck!!!

Welcome.<P>Based on your description, it's really tough to say, IMO, whether an "extra-marital affair" is taking place, but it is safe to say that an "infidelity" has already occured - by this I mean a betrayal of trust if you're having the feelings you're having.<P>It may be well worth your money and sanity to have a session with Steve Harley or Jennifer Chalmers (see the "Counsel" portion of this site) to get some professional guidance. Regardless of an affair, they can help you start a plan on strengthening your marriage.<P>Whether you do this or not, please consider doing some relationship work using guidance such as that in "His Needs/Her Needs" or other recommended books. It can't hurt to get a copy of "Surviving An Affair" and put Plan A into practice to improve your participation in the marriage, regardless of whether an affair has occured.<P>Please understand that wayward spouses in actual affairs - even just on-line affairs - become masterful liars. Your husband's response when you confronted him fits the pattern. Hopefully, he's being honest.<P>If you decide to lay low, keep your ears and eyes open and if you find evidence of a continuation of his behavior, you'll obviously have reason for much more concern since he's now stated he won't do it again.<P>Good Luck,<BR>WAT

Thanks for the replies, Nina too and WAT. It really helps "talking" to someone about this and getting some feedback. I have many close friends, but this is not the type of thing I'd like to discuss with them, because I don't want to poison them against him. I believe he's a good man and that he made a huge mistake with a huge lack of good judgement.<P>I hope he's being honest with me at this point...I already caught one lie. I found another personal ad site in our Internet history folder. The site is from last weekend, and when I asked him about it, he told me he accessed it to delete his ad and his profile. When I logged on yesterday (he always uses the same password, which I know), his profile was still there.<P>I didn't tell him I'd logged on, because I don't want him to begin covering his tracks even more than he tries to now. I really want to believe him, but it's terribly difficult. Of course, there's also this part of me who says that this was a trivial thing and it's not such a big deal, since he didn't physically cheat on me. As it happens, I've always had the mindset that thinking about cheating might as well be cheating.<P>Sigh. I need to and want to get past this, but how do we ever bring complete trust back into our marriage? Before this happened, I would've staked everything that I could trust him without reservation. Now I'm just not sure.<BR>

There are many people here, myself included, whose spouses are (in my case was) involved in this type of activity on the internet. Here is a link to my story.<BR> <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum30/HTML/000730.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum30/HTML/000730.html</A> <P>It sounds to me like your husband is minimizing his activities. There are ways you can find out what he is up to. One is to install a keystroke monitoring software. It can be run in stelth mode so that he would not know it is there. If you are inclinded to do this, try the one available at <A HREF="http://www.iopus.com." TARGET=_blank>www.iopus.com.</A> We've been using it for months and have never had a problem with it.<P>You have every right to know what your husband is up to so that you can make an informed decision about your own life.<P>One way to measure if your husband was just playing a silly game and not overly involved is if he will stop the activity because it bothers you.<P>HOpe this helps<P>Z<P>------------------<BR>He loves not who does not show love.<BR>----William Shakespeare

Do your homework on here. This is such an awesome tool to help you and your marriage. <P>As Nina suggests, read up on plan A, love busters (LB's) and the love bank. To get a better grasp on it all, read about EN's (emotional needs). Find out what your H's top EN's are, and try to fulfil them as best you can (that's one main element in plan A). The other main element in plan A is to make changes in you. That part for me, took longer to accomplish.<P>I do hope that your H is telling the truth that he has not had a physical affair (PA) with anyone, but the point of the matter, is that by the sounds of it, he is having EA's (emotional affairs). Those can be more devastating and detramental to a marriage than PA's. <P>Many people do not understand how EA's are possible. The mindset is that an affair is purely physical. That's not true. The fact that your H is focusing some of his energies away from you and towards other women in a personal manner, is still an affair. Any MBer will tell you that.<P>Keep on reading, and keep on posting as questions come up. We're all here for you.<P>Take care,<BR>Karen<BR>

The PA vs. EA aspect is what I'm having a difficult time making him understand. I'd almost (ALMOST) rather he'd had a fling with somebody else. Then I could put it off as a physical thing--maybe. <P>But these women--he told them we were preparing to buy a house. He told them things about our personal life (nothing raunchy) that I just couldn't believe. Plus, there's the added hurt that he was talking about our marriage to these women!!!<P>I haven't been able to find much about Plan A and/or Plan B. Can someone point me in the right direction? I've read through the introductory material about emotional needs, love busters, etc., but I can't find anything about A or B. I'm a real newbie, hunh...<P>You all may know just what I mean when I tell you how much of a relief it is to just let it all out. I've seen such compassion on this board in the two days I've been posting. Thank you!<P><BR>

The PA vs. EA aspect is what I'm having a difficult time making him understand. I'd almost (ALMOST) rather he'd had a fling with somebody else. Then I could put it off as a physical thing--maybe. <P>But these women--he told them we were preparing to buy a house. He told them things about our personal life (nothing raunchy) that I just couldn't believe. Plus, there's the added hurt that he was talking about our marriage to these women!!!<P>I haven't been able to find much about Plan A and/or Plan B. Can someone point me in the right direction? I've read through the introductory material about emotional needs, love busters, etc., but I can't find anything about A or B. I'm a real newbie, hunh...<P>You all may know just what I mean when I tell you how much of a relief it is to just let it all out. I've seen such compassion on this board in the two days I've been posting. Thank you!<P><BR>

Giving it a nudge to the top.<P>I'm very confused, and my instincts tell me I'm being lied to. I so badly want to believe him that it was all in fun and that he never had any intentions of physically meeting any of them. At the same time, I still regard this as infidelity. He swears it'll never happen again, but I just cannot shake this bad feeling I get.<P>Would it be a good/bad idea for me to ask if he'd be willing to (along with me) confront this "friend" who started him on the path? I realize my H is a grownup who made his own decision...I guess I'm just trolling to see if he really did get the inkling from someone else, or if it was something he initiated.<P>Lost, confused, and really cruddy feeling. This has hurt me more than I ever could have imagined. I find myself wondering what I did wrong (this is my 2nd marriage, and I'd suspected H #1 of cheating, although he never did as far as I found out. He just loved alcohol far more than he could ever love me).