Ask Andrew
My wife and I got married in 2005 and had dated each other for three years previously, lately we have been unhappy and mention divorce when arguing. On December 9th I discovered my wife was having an emotional affair with an old friend/boyfriend who lived across the country. I confronted her and told her to end it or get out and she said she would end it. She said she “loved me but I am not in love with you” and that there were parts of me she hated and that she was depressed. On December 30th she was out late and I discovered she was with him that night. She said she was deeply involved emotionally but swore on our 2 1/2 year old daughters life that she had done nothing physical. She said he filled an emotional outlet that I was not providing. I confirmed it by going over cell phone records and seeing over 100 text messages during that period.
There is some good news as my main goal is to save our marriage/family and be a better person. I have been trying to fill the emotional needs, have seen my doctor for anti depressants and things have gotten better. She says she still is not in love with me but now feels that there is hope and wants to save our marriage. Around January 12 she removed him from her facebook. My wife has explained that she is not sure it was him that she desired, but rather the idea of having an emotional outlet. We have booked a weekend getawy to Vegas, we had not been on a trip without our daughter in over 3 years.
The problem is that she is still struggling with her feelings towards him and trying to love me again. She also does not want to admit what she did was wrong and that since nothing physical happened that she committed no affair. I also feel insecure which has led me to look at her phone records as mentioned above and I also went into her facebook account and deleted the message she sent to him telling him it was over. She became irate and said I was controlling and that she feels trapped. I saw it as a threat but she said it was how she coped. She said if she was feeling uncertain that she read it and felt better about her decision to work on our marriage. Even though I know such behavior is not going to help as i cannot make her love me, I am sometimes overcame with anxiety and act in such a way.
I am not sure where to go from here or if there is any coming back from the emotional bond she had with the other man.
Thank You
Andrew writes:
An emotional affair should be taken just as seriously as a sexual affair. There are still secrets, lies and time stolen from a marriage. Worse still, while someone is conducting an emotional affair there is no time, energy or inclination to sort out the underlying problems in their relationship. That’s why the programme for recovering from an affair is the same whether there is a sexual nature to it or not.
At the moment, you are about half way through the journey. The good news is that you’ve reached quite a good place: Hope. Unfortunately, this is a very unstable place - hence your anxiety and the need to check-up. In my book, I talk about Safety First Living. This is where the person who has been discovered having an affair agrees to provide reassurance by phoning when they are going to be late or allowing access to emails / social networking sites. However, it has be to negotiated (not just taken as a right by the Discoverer of the Affair)
As for your partner, there is a advice about ‘Mourning the Loss’ in Chapter Six. Overtime, she will probably begin to accept that having a self-medication affair was not the most helpful way of sorting out her unhappiness. However, I don’t think it is helpful trying to get her to admit that she ‘wrong’. Partly because this battle is putting a barrier between you but mainly because apportioning blame gets nobody anywhere. It would be much better using that energy to move forward together.
Finally you ask,’ Is there anyway back from an emotional affair?’ Most definitely: YES! Affairs are built on fantasy and lies. This is not a foundation for a relationship. In the cold light of day, all the pumped up emotions will whither and die. In contrast, your marriage is based on loving courtship and your daughter.
The road ahead will be fraught with danger but the worse is over. However, read my book ‘How can I ever trust you again?’ (If you are in the US, click on the link from the front page to my publishers) Share it with your wife. Understand why the affair happened, solve those problems and you’ll come out the other end with not only a repaired marriage but a much happier one. If you haven’t read ‘I love you but I’m not in love with you’ that book is available from HCI in the States.