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RelationshipFilter: She had an affair. I caught her. We're working it out. This sucks. I need help.

Sock!Puppet! — Mon, 04 May 2009 20:45:41 -0800

RelationshipFilter: She had an affair. I caught her. We're working it out. This sucks. I need help. Very Long Post of Drama. It's unfortunate that (1) this kind of question gets asked all the time and (2) these situations all feel so unique to the participants, because I concede there's a certain amount of sameness that can get fatiguing. That being said, I appreciate in advance those of you interested in not only reading my story, but offering such wisdom as you might wish.

Here are the facts, as close as I can relay them and protect anonymity:

We'll call my wife Liz, and my name might be Ryan. We've been married for 13 years. We're in our middle 30s and have 3 kids, between 4 and 10. Generally, we're happy.

6 months ago, her high school boyfriend, let's say he's Jeff, her first true love, pinged her on FaceBook to reconnect. It's been almost 2 decades since we all graduated, we're adults, etc., so I pushed aside my unease and didn't object to the communication. (I know, I know, hindsight is 20/20, but I didn't want to be The Jealous Husband. I still don't.) Over the course of the winter, the length of their online chats got longer, but there was never a hint that there was anything more going on. In February, Liz took the kids and went to visit her parents in their hometown (3 hours from here); I didn't join them because I had to work my second job. During the course of that visit Liz had a friendly lunch with Jeff, at IHOP, with all three kids in tow. I asked her about it later and she said it was a little weird, but pleasant. "He's not really comfortable around kids, so he was a little awkward, but it was nice to see him again."

Liz has had lingering doubts about why the relationship ended all those years ago; Jeff went away for military service shortly out of high school, met someone else, and bailed out on Liz without notice. She had spent the recent months asking questions about the whys and whats, and learning more and more that the end of the relationship wasn't her fault, that he chickened out and succumbed to temptation. Jeff has had a tough go of it, struggling with depression and addiction. He flunked out of the military because he was bipolar, and he's on a chemical soup of medications. That being said, Liz was really happy to have reconnected and become friends again. She really valued Jeff's friendship and was glad to put old ghosts and self-doubt to rest.

I work 2 jobs to make ends meet. Our kids are in private school that we can't afford. During the day, I work in business to business sales which hasn't been going very well with the economy in the tank, so at night I deliver pizza. I've been working an average of 12-14 hours a day during the week, and 6-10 hours on weekend nights. So, while I'm out and about delivering pizza, Liz has had ample opportunity to spend time online with Jeff.

Here's where it gets sticky.

I've never trusted his intentions. I've never been comfortable with the way he treated Liz all those years ago, even though I didn't meet her until well into college. I was concerned that they were spending so much time online together, so I activated the logging capability in her IM client, and from time to time I would peruse the chat histories to see what was up. Totally innocuous; he's a baseball fan, so they'd talk about that, or what friends from high school they were in touch with, or what the kids were doing, how his new job is going, what does he think of that cute girl at the mall, whatever. I felt guilty as hell the entire time, spying on my wife. But I couldn't shake it, couldn't stay away. Then, she went back to her parents' with the kids for Easter weekend (again, I had to work) and when she got back, all of the chat histories were deleted, and the log function had been disabled. Alarm bells started going off; what did she have to hide?

That was the weekend of April 12th. I kept my cool as long as I could, then on the 18th I downloaded and installed logKext to capture keystrokes. All I got was her side of the conversation, and I also got all of the [del][del][del] typos, and the [up][up][down][left][left][left] etc. of my oldest child playing games, but I was able to decipher the gibberish and ...

Nothing.

Not a sniff of suspicion from her that she was being monitored, not a sniff of inappropriate behavior, at least for a day or two.

Then on Thursday April 23rd, Liz asked Jeff if he thought she should record and post online masturbation pornography. I couldn't see his response, but I flipped out a little - that definitely crossed a big fat comfort line. I still didn't feel strongly enough about it to tip my hand that I had been spying on her. I still felt like my sin was worse.

On Friday, April 24th, I called home around 10:00 PM to say "hello" while I'm on a pizza run and Liz sounded distracted. Not unpleasant, just not really present. I immediately suspected she was online with Jeff. I chose not to say anything and let her go, but I had a hard time waiting for her to go to sleep before I checked the log. There, in blinding black and white:

"By the way, it occurred to me that I probably shouldn't give you head."

and then, later on:

"so I was thinking perhaps an inexpensive nightly place rather than seedy hourly"
[Jeff's response, invisible to me]
"ok good"
[Jeff's response, invisible to me]
"sounds good"
[Jeff's response, invisible to me]
"perhaps by then I'll have money to pitch in"

and finally, the kicker:

"do you think about what we'll do when we are alone together?"

And my heart caved in, and my world started to collapse. This wasn't fantasizing, or cyber sex, this was concrete plans and preparation. It was 2 o'clock in the morning, and I was so full of adrenaline that sleep was impossible. So I keep going back and reading the log over and over, trying to glean additional detail.

I decided I really wanted to see his side. I wanted to get the whole picture, I was scheduled to work the following night, and I knew that while I was gone and the kids were asleep they would be online together so I went to the trouble of downloading a more sophisticated system monitor, that would capture full chat logs, website URLs, and screen shots invisibly. I got it all set up, tested, erased my tracks, tried to sleep, nothing.

By 8 AM I'd given up, and just waited. I was going to keep my cool, I wasn't going to let on that anything was amiss. At 10:00 AM when Liz woke up and smiled at me, I lost it. I've never been so angry and so terrified at the same time. I fought through about 40 pounds of adrenaline slamming through me and opened the conversation by apologizing in advance for spying on her, then confronting her with what I'd found.

Liz: "You're right. We've been planning to get together and have sex."

So.

We have spent the last 10 days in intense conversation.

I have learned that she first proposed a sexual encounter the Saturday night in February after they met for lunch. If an opportunity had presented itself (some way for her to get her parents to take care of the kids without giving herself away) she would have gone through with it.

I have learned that she never intended to leave me, that it would have been an ego boost for her and a sympathy fuck for him. That she knew if I ever found out it would kill me. That she thought she could get away with it and live with the aftermath, whatever it would be.

I have learned that I underestimated her capacity for deceit, as she underestimated mine. She was selectively deleting incriminating chat logs, leaving the innocuous details for me to observe. She never thought I'd go so far as to install a keystroke logger.

Even so, I love her very much, and we want to stay married.

We've been learning a lot about ourselves and each other. We've grown (unimaginable as it might seem) closer together. She has cut off all contact with Jeff, at my request. They never had an opportunity to consummate the relationship, so at the very least she has been sexually faithful if not emotionally. I'll say again, we want very much to stay married. We've engaged our marriage counsellor for assistance with the crisis, and she recommended an excellent book called "After the Affair," Amazon link here if you'd like to learn more or think you might need a copy.

One of the chapters is about rebuilding trust, and the author describes "low-cost behaviors" and "high-cost behaviors," things that the couple needs to define for themselves that would help to rebuild trust. Low-cost behaviors might be something like "call me to let me know where you are several times a day" or "tell me frequently how much you love me." High-cost behaviors might be more like "Fire your secretary, sell the house, and move with me to another city."

Interestingly, the book describes low-cost behaviors as a mutual effort, but the high-cost behaviors are the responsibility of the unfaithful partner alone. They are the sacrificial, expensive gestures to demonstrate the relationship is worth investing in and saving.

So, I'd like some ideas about what might be considered high-cost behaviors.

Advice to DTMFA will be politely ignored. We want to stay married.

Advice to seek counseling will ... well, we're already in counseling, and will also be seeing therapists individually to work on our own issues.

Otherwise, the floor is open. I set up this sock puppet account so that if you have questions, we can entertain a dialogue, and so I can come back in the months ahead with updates as events warrant. If you're not comfortable posting here, you can use sock.puppet.615@gmail.com

Thanks in advance, everyone.

Can I make my sociopathically selfish ex Be There for me?

Anonymous — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:18:20 -0800

I'm scheduled to have a medical (pill) abortion in a situation involving my optimistic, scientifically brilliant, clueless ex-boyfriend. For some irrational reason, he's the only person I want with me while I go through with it. We dated last year, for three months when I was still very new to the city, and we were pretty darn happy. He was kind, attentive, respectful, and engaging. Then he had drunk sex with an ex-girlfriend who'd been pursuing him for a while. I was, of course, crushed, but I had just moved to a new place and he was my only contact. He persuaded me to take him back, and I finally relented, and then he broke up with me again a month later citing a heavy work load and little free time. A few weeks later he changed his mind again, but I told him to get off my doorstep, throw away the bouquet of flowers, and quit sending me apology letters. He persisted trying to get me back for months, but things eventually died down between us. He began dating another girl but always made it clear that if were I ever willing to try again, he'd be open, which repelled me more.

Recently we started going out to dinner and resumed the compelling dynamic we had before the cheating period, and wound up having (totally safe) sex several times. This was during a sad, lonely time in my life in which I had realized that after an entire year I still wasn't over our break-up, and I'm not proud of my egregious hypocrisy of sleeping with the same man who did this to me while he's dating another poor girl. He's in an "open-ish, don't-ask don't-tell" relationship with a girl of whom he speaks with a mixture of admiration ("she's so loyal") and indifference. I get the impression that without the policy, she'd be doing much of the asking, and he'd do the telling. He has admitted that he has always loved me, that he is biding his time with his current girlfriend as a gesture of respect to her for sticking with him as he got over me. When I discovered I was pregnant, he immediately came over and we discussed the steps we needed to take to end the pregnancy.

He is a bizarrely optimistic, scientific creature, and told me point-blank that he didn't necessarily see the abortion as a terrible thing, that it felt like an evolution of our relationship. He told me upon entering my apartment that he needed to be gone in an hour to "keep up appearances." He seems chastised, repentant, but also utterly removed. He hedged when I told him I need something more out of him, not a relationship--neither of us is ready for a real relationship after what we went through--but a gray area between fuck buddies and the relationship he seemed to be offering me this past year, to get me through this period.

While I have wonderful friends kindly offering their support, my ex-boyfriend is the only person I want with me when I take the pills (which I hear is moderate-to-severely painful for several hours), because this is his doing as well. I'm unsure if I should demand that he take care of me, demand that he be there for me more readily, or if I need to kick him out of my life for good. Part of me wants him to see the ramifications of cheating, of sacrificing other people's well-being for his own. Is wielding my abortion as a Life Lesson manipulative or justified? I honestly think I'd feel better if he could feel, or witness, a little of what I'm going through, but maybe this is a lost cause.

We're both 25 and live in New York, if that's somehow important.

Can you help a husband survive his wife's affair?

Anonymous — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:17:08 -0800

My wife had a months-long affair and I've given her another chance. Any suggestions for getting rid of these awful feelings? You know those feelings...anger, jealousy, shock, betrayal. When I research the subject looking for advice or catharsis, it's either always from the female point of view or it's a bitter hate filled screed. Oh, and then there are the innumerable "pray and it'll go away" sites, but I'm past that thankyouverymuch. I'm also constantly lashing out at her, and that's not helping the situation any.

We don't believe in therapy, and she says she's going to rededicate herself to our relationship instead of giving her intimacy to somebody else. I believe her, and that's why it's worth it to stay together (plus, you know, the kids)...so the only thing that needs to happen here is for us to create a loving environment, and now I'm the blockage to that. But every day that I feel better about the situation and have convinced myself I have forgiven her, I remember how much hate and anger I have and the cycle begins anew.

So about therapy..I've been there before and it didn't help. It's a person to talk to to get stuff off your mind, and I already have that. I just desperately want to find piece of mind.

Help me commit Ethical Adultery

Anonymous — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 21:15:42 -0800

MistressFilter: My wife thinks it would be a good idea if I saw another woman to help fulfill my sexual needs. That's loving and supportive of her, but I have one problem... how? I'll spare you the gory details. She's got a low libido and is not sexually adventurous, I have a high libido, and we want to stay married. This is a potential solution that works for both of us.

I'd like to conduct everything on the up-and-up for the most part and that means somehow meeting a woman who isn't fazed by my marriage or would prefer discretion because of a relationship of her own, ideally for a medium- or long-term friendship/relationship of some kind. This is obviously something rare and perhaps impossible but if at all possible I'd like to avoid having to go around declaring "I'm in an open relationship, want to hook up?" to women who would find that more creepy than refreshingly honest. A "friend with benefits" or "booty call" relationship is something I've never been a part of and have no idea how to go about establishing. The phenomenon was largely unknown in my crowd during my single days and it's still not especially prevalent in my age bracket.

I tried AdultFriendFinder a year or so back, and it was an absolute wasteland. The email account I used for the purpose is now a total spamtrap, and I didn't make contact with a single human being.

I tried OKCupid around the same time and met one very attractive and interesting person in a similar situation, but it never translated into a friendship. OKCupid has turned into another place bereft of potential partners since then.

CraigsList is pointless for any male to post to, let alone an attached male.

The swinger scene is a bust right from the start. My wife's support of this endeavor falls short of active participation in the process of finding partners.

So how do I start making semi-romantic friends with open minded normal to high-libido women? Or at the very least, increasing the chance that I would meet such a person? I've already got a satisfying social circle, so answers like "just make friends who are women" aren't going to get to the heart of the matter. I'd like to make friends with women who are looking for an alternative physical relationship. Online personals would be a great tool if part of a sufficiently accepting community, but I'm not aware of one that actually works. The standard personals sites all seem to focus on singles seeking marriage and I'd prefer not to waste the time of people who won't want to meet me. Suggestions as to where else I might look are welcome.

(If you want to tell me what a terrible idea this is, speculate wildly, ask for details or offer a date, abeneficialfriend@gmail.com will reach me and you can spare jess the trouble of deleting your answer. If you sincerely want to help I want to hear from you.)

My friend was accused of a crime I don't think he committed. What does he do? What do I do?

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 07:12:57 -0800

My friend has been accused of rape, which I think is absurd. Need legal advice for him (especially from anyone familiar with the U.S. military court system) and emotional advice for me. I tried to keep it simple but it’s such a messy story….

I became friends with this guy, who is enlisted in the military) last fall. He is married and has a child. He doesn’t live with his wife, and he goes back and forth as to whether he ought to divorce her. He has not exactly been faithful – and I’m one of several instances of this. We had a relationship of sorts for a few months, but it’s over now. We tried to remain friends, but currently our only contact is a phone call every few days.

What happened, as he explained it to me at least, is this: he went out for drinks with a girl, they got ridiculously drunk, and then they came home, and passed out. When they woke up in the morning everything seemed fine. Then a few days later, she was claimed he had raped her. He has no memory of having sex with her at all, much less taking advantage of her. I completely trust him and don’t believe he would be capable of doing something so horrible (and I’ll admit to usually being the sort of person who too quickly leaps to the defense of the alleged victim, not the accused, probably because of things female friends of mine have experienced).

So the possibilities here are:
- He didn’t do it and that girl is making it all up
- He’s a liar and I’m an idiot for believing him for so long
- And here’s the wild card: could he have been asleep (previously on AskMe)? His wife has told him that he tried to initiate sex with her in his sleep and I’m reasonably certain that he attempted to do this with me one time – I asked him about it in the morning and had no recollection of it. I know there’s not a lot of research out there on this yet, but the previous AskMe question about it makes it look pretty common (and there was a Newsweek story a month or so ago about this too). Maybe this is completely ridiculous, or maybe it explains why he doesn't remember doing anything with her. I don’t know. If it matters, I think he also suffers from some level of PTSD, which may have messed with his sleep patterns in some way – he says the sleep-sex didn’t use to happen before he went to Iraq (neither, incidentally, did the teeth-grinding in his sleep).

The thing is, it’s being tried in military, not civilian, court, and as I understand it, there’s a lot more burden on him to prove that he didn’t do it than there would be in civilian court, in which case it’d be more up to the girl to prove that he did. As far as I can tell it’s one of those he-said-she-said things, with no physical evidence, and yet his lawyers seem to think he’s pretty much screwed. They thought about trying to use the sleep-sex thing as a defense, but it seemed like such a shot in the dark, what with the limited research out there right now, that it would be too big of a risk – if convicted, he not only could spend a few years in jail, but would also lose his rank, his family’s health insurance, his education benefits, everything he’s worked for. So they’re thinking about making some sort of deal in which he’ll be charged with something smaller (indecent acts, I think?), plead guilty, serve a shorter sentence, and keep all of his benefits, etc.
We were hoping to find some fancy civilian lawyer who might have a better shot at getting him out of all this, but that has proven to be much too expensive to be feasible.

Meanwhile, I am torn between trying to extricate myself from this very messy situation I’ve gotten myself into (I know I was wrong to get involved with a married man, and I hated keeping things secret from family, friends, coworkers, etc., and I wish I could move on with my life) and on the other hand I want to be there for this very sweet, lost boy who has been a very good friend to me and who is getting royally screwed by the system. I know he’s made some pretty major mistakes in his life, and I’m sure a lot of you aren’t feeling too much sympathy for either of us. All I can say is that he’s very young (early 20’s) and very scared, and he’s worked so hard to overcome so many things to be where he is now (he’s essentially an orphan, his whole family is completely fucked up (drugs, trouble with the law, etc.), and he doesn’t really have any sources of support other than me) that it seems especially unfair for everything to be taken away from him now. He wants to fix things: to resolve or peacefully end things with his wife, to be a good father, to get a degree, to get out of the military and get another job, and to make a difference in the world. And so I hate it for him that this crime that he didn’t commit is going to set his plans back so severely.

I would do anything to help him, but I feel completely lost. So here I am.
I’m not even quite sure what my question is. Maybe it’s a bunch of questions.
What should he do? Is it worth pursuing the sleep-sex defense, or is it much too risky, and he should just make a deal (the latter seems more practical, but it’s so painfully unfair…).
Is there something else that can be done that he hasn’t thought of with regards to his defense?
Does this sound more or less like how a military court works, or is there maybe something he’s not telling me? As much as I trust him, I get scared occasionally that I’m being completely naïve in some way.
How do I deal with the stress of constantly worrying about my friend, who is almost certainly going to jail?
Do we just both deserve this mess? Even though he didn’t rape anyone, is this life catching up with him for all the mistakes he’s made, and with me for getting involved with him?
Help.

Adulterous friend, wife suspects, I know ... What to do?

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 22:42:55 -0800

A friend I've had for many years cheated on his wife while visiting my house 1000 miles from his home. She has always been very kind to me and I regard her as a dear friend. They have a less than one year old baby. She called me and wants to know what these odd cell phone calls on his phone were during his visit. What should I do? He comes from a sick family with one brother who drank himself to death, one who's in and out of rehab, and another who's wife and baby just left him after one too many nights of cocaine use. My friend drinks, but not often. He's never hit anyone to the best of my knowledge.

We were out at a bar, we met and talked with some girls, and then he and I went home to pass out. At 3AM he had a booty call from someone we met that night, we argued about his leaving, I tackled him, threw his rental car keys in the alley behind the house, and went to pass out. I was drunk at the time as well. He found the keys, made it to her place, and had sex with her. The next day we didn't talk much. He made some comments about not being able to wash the dirt off and I bitched about him putting this huge thing in the middle of our relationship. I realized he had brought condoms with him to my house, so it was clearly on his mind. He did mention a bit later that the girl had been calling him after he returned home.

If she's closely checking the cell phone records I assume she suspects something. I don't know much about their home life these days as I haven't been to visit in a year or more.

I figure I can tell her the truth, lie, or not talk to her/them ever again.

I don't want to bring the news that he cheated on her because they've got a new baby and there's always a chance they could work it out. I don't want to lie to her because she's never done anything but be nice to me. I believe its something he'll do again, if he doesn't do it on a regular basis. I've not asked him about that though.

I'm leaning towards not talking to them until he gets caught some other way as it seems like hes done something to break three relationships rather than one. If he cheated, told me about it, and it wasn't while staying at my house I'd still be mad at him for the same reason. If she already knew about it I'd try and be a friend to both of them. I don't know how I can do that without blurting it out whenever I see her or talk to her.

Any suggestions on what to do?

Am I naive to think I'm truly the "only one" for Demi Moore?

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 11:06:20 -0800

I recently ended an affair I was having with a beautiful, intelligent, charming, older, married woman (I'm Ashton's age, she's Demi's). After 3 weeks I just couldn't deal with the guilt anymore. I knew the affair was wrong, but I did it anyway. As a Catholic, I'm working on the whole reconciliation thing. Though I realize I'm the scum of the earth for the whole adultery thing, I'm also attractive, charming and intelligent. Aside from the physical stuff I'm about to describe, she and I had really great conversations and connections on all sorts of other levels.

She started by flirting with me. A couple of months later we had a brief kissing encounter, followed one week later by a very hot makeout session. She then told me (in very explicit terms) that she wanted to have sex with me, and that I could have her whenever I wanted.

She then said, "you know I'm married, right?"

I told her I couldn't do it, but a week later I changed my mind and chose to start the affair. The sex was absolutely amazing. Our first night, morning and early afternoon together we did it 6 or 7 times. Over the next few weeks we continued to have crazy, incredible, uninhibited, plentiful sex.

During that first makeout session she told me that she had never really enjoyed sex, but that I turned her on in a way she had never experienced. Later she would tell me that she and her (second, current) husband were more like roommates, and neither was interested in sex with the other. They were a good "team," but lived a monastic life. With her first husband, she said, she usually just played dead when he wanted to have sex. With me, she was more lively and uninhibited than I could imagine.

She also told me that she had never in her life had an orgasm (whether through sex, masturbation, or any other means). One night I spent 30 minutes performing cunnilingus and she seemed to be getting very close to orgasm but pulled away to make me stop, saying she was too embarrassed. She turned away and covered her face, so I comforted and reassured her. Two weeks later we tried cunnilingus again. When she came close to orgasm and tried to pull away I gently, but assertively continued, eventually bringing her to her first orgasm. She commented about how she was going to record the date and celebrate it every year.

When I ended things a few days ago, she said that was 'it' for her, that she would never have with anyone else anything like what we had. She'd return to her "monastic" life. Eventually she said she was in love with me, and I told her that I loved her, but couldn't continue because she was married. She wanted things to continue, even without sex, but after a few days I told her I had to cut off all communication. (Mostly because it was too hard for me to see her and not be with her, but also because I thought it best for her to figure things out with her marriage.)

I give all this detail because, now that I've ended it, a very close friend of mine and my priest are both telling me that, in all likelihood, this experience is part of a pattern of behavior on her part. My priest says that 43-year-old, married women don't just wake up one day and decide to go after 28 year old guys and offer them sex. And they certainly don't "fall in love" in 3 weeks. My (woman) friend thinks this woman is a psycho hosebeast who is probably going to go all Glenn Close/Fatal Attraction on me.

So am I being naive? Was I manipulated this whole time, even though every fiber of my being believes (wants to believe?) that everything was genuine, and that I really am the only one for her?

One last detail that tips the scales towards my being naive: She had Norplant birth control implanted in her arm, which A) lasts 5 years and 2) was due to be replaced in a few months. If she's had a "monastic" life for so long, why did she get 5 years worth of birth control implanted in her arm four-and-a-half years ago?

Please email followups to contritescumbag@gmail.com.

How do I stop my friend from being a homewrecker?

aquavit — Tue, 29 Nov 2005 18:30:04 -0800

My friend is in a relationship with a married man...the wife already knows but it's causing a lot of pain. She seems to be happy in the relationship, but I don't see this turning out well. I don't want to run her life or play holier-than-thou, but how do I get her out of this before things get worse? What do I say, how do I say it?

Cheating wife

dking — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 20:48:32 -0800

I believe my wife is cheating on me. I have confronted her and she's denied it. How can I catch her? I have access to cell phone bill (although she has a different work phone that I do not have access to), financial records but her email accounts now have passwords.

She works in an office where she has quite a bit of freedom and could easily disappear every day for a few hours. This also seems to rule out checking mileage on the car.

A little more background: married about 10 yrs, 1 child, she has no interest in counseling.

I am looking for ways to determine who/what/when/where the affair is taking place without her knowing that I am looking. Please do not recommend anything illegal, although anecdotes about how you caught the cheater (or were caught yourself!) would be helpful.

Help me get over my guilt over a past infidelity!

Anonymous — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 05:17:17 -0800

How do I get over the guilt of having been (very) unfaithful to my loving wife, when she doesn't have any idea it happened? A few years ago, my wife got a great job offer several hundred miles away from where we were living, and we decided to move, as I didn't much like my job anyway. She moved, and I stayed behind so we could continue to have my income while I looked for a job near where we were moving.

I flew to visit her every couple of weeks, at which times I also went on as many interviews as I could get. I finally got a job and moved to join them after almost four months of looking.

During those months, though, I did a very, very bad thing. My wife and I had been having some issues in our marriage before the move, and being apart, especially with her stress from having to find a place for us to live while starting a new job, didn't help. I had a lot of free time, and unwisely started spending a lot of it hanging out with an old female friend of mine who'd recently split up with her husband, and with whom I'd had a fling back in 1995, before I was married to my wife.

I was lonely, she was lonely, and before either of us knew what was happening we were having a full-blown affair. I somehow managed to convince myself I was in love with her, and told her so, though I realize now that that was really my frustration and loneliness talking. Even after I moved to live with my wife, I e-mailed her poems, and went on walks after my wife was asleep so I could call her from my cell phone. Each time I came back to the area she lived, for a variety of legitimate reasons, over the next six months (four or five times), we slept together several times. My wife knew absolutely nothing about it.

She still knows nothing about it, and I have no intention of telling her. The woman with whom I had the affair has since gotten engaged to someone else, and I trust her to keep the secret. My wife and I have mostly fixed things up in our marriage, and are very happy together as much of the time as any married couple, I suspect, is.

But I'm still wracked with guilt, and don't know how to fix that. I'm happy with my wife now, but the knowledge of what I did still burns in the back of my head. Sometimes I feel like I should tell my wife, but then I think it through and don't see any good reason to do so—we're happy together now, so why ruin that by telling her about an affair that's over and will never be resurrected?

What can I do to ease my guilt? Do I even deserve to have my guilt eased, or am I too much of a jerk?

Does Bono cheat on his wife?

kenaman — Wed, 01 Sep 2004 02:34:29 -0800

Has anyone ever heard rumours of Bono being unfaithful to his wife Ali?
Not suggesting that he has been, nor have I heard anything. Just curious.

Is cheating in a relationship acceptable or unacceptable?

KathyK — Fri, 25 Jun 2004 07:51:02 -0800

Is cheating in a relationship acceptable or unacceptable? How did you come to feel that way?