Need advice - thoughts on the stories my wife told me.

10-17-2024

Hi all,

I wanted to write on my situation – and would love advice and any analysis on what I should do – or how I should feel.
TL;DR on advice I’m seeking:

1) How should I feel about the three stories she told me? Are they linked?
2)I don’t think my wife is hiding a physical affair. But should I be more concerned? Am I too trusting?
3)My wife volunteered everything here – and while there is always room to suspect there is more – maybe there isn’t?
4)What should I do next, if anything?

So, to start off, I read Dr. Glass’s book – and it changed my perspective on relationships. My wife and I have been married for 10 years, and have dated for 20 years. So we have known each other for a decent amount of time at this point.
I want to state that, my wife and I didn’t have a "bad" marriage, but it certainly wasn’t a "great" marriage. Over the last year – I really felt that something was "off" in the relationship. Just a gnawing feeling. I thought that maybe there was an affair. So, doing some deep diving and research, I came across Dr. Glass’s book. This book is fantastic for explaining what a great relationship should look like: Being best friends with each other.
I was guilty of not being best friends with my wife – and for not being emotionally open to her. I wrote a very long letter (1 month ago), and read her this letter while we sat up and talked in bed. I lined out all the ways I felt I had closed myself off to her, and asked that she open herself up to me. I told her that, if she had indeed had an affair, I would be very open to discussing and forgiving.

Before I go on, to cut to the chase for many people, I want to clearly state that my wife never confessed to any physical affair – or even illicit back-and-forth messages. But in reading Dr. Glass’s book and doing research, I believe there was emotional cheating and emotional infidelity (more on that below).

While my wife told me a couple of stories during her "confession" period, there are three I want to get opinions on.
STORY 1: The first she told me that night, was about a colleague at her work (Dan). This colleague works on a different floor in a different department. She told me that 10 years ago, while we were engaged, Dan had tried to send her flowers and she had rejected the flowers. If that sounds like a weird story to you – that’s exactly how it was presented to me. My wife piecemealed information on this event – and…over the course of a week, and after many many questions from me, the full story was that another co-worker of hers (Mary), had apparently been "saying things" Dan and encouraging him, and that culminated in Dan sending my wife flowers. Although my wife "rejected" the flowers, she says that the next day, when she ran into Dan, she put her hand on his arm, said that she was flattered by the flowers, and said that she would be interested if she were single. But, she says she is engaged. During this confession, she told me he was extremely good looking and that she was shocked that he would have been interested in her. She swears she never had any inappropriate conversations with him, or really even knew him. They were in completely different departments and she said they barely talked.

STORY 2: The second story my wife tells me (10 days after our initial talk on being honest) was about a man she did training with at her work. She went to another state to do this training. She said she developed a crush on this guy (Paul). Paul was rugged and outdoorsy (opposite of me). She said that this wasn’t a passing crush – but one that lingered over the course of a "month or two". She said she would look him up on Facebook over time. She said this attraction faded after those two months.

STORY 3: The last story I was told, and I think the worst. After two full weeks of saying we were going to be honest with each other, my wife finally capitulates when I said "do you swear, on the lives of our children, you’ve told me everything?". So then she tells me this story. She starts off by asking me if I had ever been "attracted to someone else" while we were married. And honestly, I haven’t been attracted to anyone else. No crushes or anything. She then goes on to tell me about an "attraction" she had to a mutual friend we have at church – John. She tells me during this initial confession that she had crushes on him from late 2019 to early 2020. And then in 2021. She said that it was never physical, and that they barely talked outside of church. She showed me her phone, and it seems to be true. She and John were on a church council together that met once a quarter. I had noticed that John did seem to like her and like talking to her when we were at church together. But nothing crazy. That was the end of the story. I thanked her for being honest, and didn’t really understand why she thought this was inappropriate. So two days later, I follow up and ask her to provide me, in writing, what her thoughts were with John.

STORY 3 CONTINUED: She tells me that she felt an attraction to him in 2019 and 2020, and that she would feel uncomfortable being around him. From what she described – nothing here sounded too bad – just an attraction that can happen to people. A couple months is certainly not fleeting, but nothing huge in my opinion. COVID happens in 2020 – so we don’t see John at all. Fast forward to early 2021 – and we start seeing John again at church. My wife and I are in the midst of buying a new house, and we are also trying to have another child. We had been striking out for a couple of months, and that led to some fighting and angst. She says that from April 2021 to June 2021, she started thinking about John "multiple times a week", and fantasizing about him. My wife rarely masturbates, and she admits to masturbating over him. She would fantasize about "lying naked" together and "being close". She also fantasized about something happening to me (death I presume) – and that allowing her to be with him. This lasted two months until, during one of the times we were trying to conceive, she says "John’s face" popped up in her head when her eyes were closed. She says that after this moment, she stopped fantasizing about him, and never had feelings for him again. From my perspective, the only things that seemed somewhat suspicious were John’s brother (from a state far away) Facebook friending her and talking to her non-stop while I sat next to her at church event. Coincidentally, we also decided to switch churches, and I was very happy about going to a new church (without knowing anything about John), and she got upset and started crying. In her defense, John was also leaving the church, so it’s possible she wasn’t crying over him.
Thanks for getting to the end – I put my questions up front, but would love advice on what everyone thinks.

3 comments posted: Thursday, October 17th, 2024