[sullida2]

So my wife and I are going to our first consultation meeting for marriage counseling on Tuesday and I am not quite sure what to expect...

Some background on my situation...

We have been married for 12 years and have 2 young boys. Our marriage was wonderful before children. Their arrival changed our relationship and we simply did not adjust appropriately, or at lest that is how I see it.

Shortly after my second son's birth my wife came to me and expressed her unhappiness with our relationship. I did not think much of it since the issue seemed to go away by itself after taking about it. I thought maybe some type of "baby blues" or something...

Almost exactly a year later we had the same conversation and again after discussing it and taking some time for ourselves we seemed to be back on track. This time I figured maybe it was just the stress of the kids...

Then again almost exactly a year later ... same conversation. This time I started thinking we were in trouble. We discussed marriage counseling, but I was convinced. I told my wife that if she wanted to go to counseling that I would go. Just set it up and I'm there. It never happened and things returned to normal (not good, but back to our new normal). Anyway now I was thinking it was "winter blues"

Same conversation this year, but things have been different, I just could not put my finger on what it was. I figured we were heading to therapy for sure this year and quite honestly by now I have gotten over my denial that our marriage is going down the wrong track.

However this feeling that there was more to it than just lack of communication and being emotionally detached was nagging me. I started asking questions about one of her nights out and received some very vague and dismissive answers. He posture was also quite defensive. This was all very strange and got me worried. I tried again and again he put up a wall to avoid my questions. At this point I felt she was hiding something from me and you can see where these thoughts spiral out of control.

Now I am quite ashamed to say that I ended up snooping around her phone and found that she was deleting tuns of messages, emails, and call logs. All sort of odd to me. I ended up using some data recover tools to recover the deleted data and essentially discovered she was having an emotional affair with a co-worker. I do not believe it has ever been physical, but I am not 100% sure. Several weeks ago I would have said there was no possible way. Now I can just say that I am fairly confident that she has not had a physical affair.

A few days ago my wife caught me snooping in her phone and was not happy at all about it. During the ensuing conversation I tried to bring up the emotional affair in a round about way because I did not want to seem accusatory right after she caught me snooping. She assured me that nothing has happened and that he is just a good friend that she is able to talk to.

So now here is where we stand...
We have poor communication
We are emotionally detached
My wife is in denial about an emotional affair
We now both have trust issues
and I am tired, so tired - have not been able to sleep

I setup a meeting with a marriage counselor for Tuesday of this week. I am confident that we can work though the communication, emotions, and even the trust, but I am worried about confronting her about the emotional affair. I truly believe she sees nothing wrong with it. If asked to end the relationship with her co-worker I think she will resent and blame me for it.

So now to the meat of my question... Will the counselor guide me though confronting her about the affair? Will he help her realize that the relationship she has with her co-worker is an emotional affair? Do you think it will be sooner rather then later? I fear that if she does not accept her relationship as an affair, confronting her with it is only going to make things worse.

I do truly love my wife and I understand the affair and other issues in our marriage are a result of failures on both our parts, I am just not sure she will see it that way.

Well kudos to anyone that reads all the way through this - lol - Now that I had a chance to vent a bit I am off to try and get some sleep....

[vickieh69]

Originally Posted by sullida2

So my wife and I are going to our first consultation meeting for marriage counseling on Tuesday and I am not quite sure what to expect...

Some background on my situation...

We have been married for 12 years and have 2 young boys. Our marriage was wonderful before children. Their arrival changed our relationship and we simply did not adjust appropriately, or at lest that is how I see it.

Shortly after my second son's birth my wife came to me and expressed her unhappiness with our relationship. I did not think much of it since the issue seemed to go away by itself after taking about it. I thought maybe some type of "baby blues" or something...

Almost exactly a year later we had the same conversation and again after discussing it and taking some time for ourselves we seemed to be back on track. This time I figured maybe it was just the stress of the kids...

Then again almost exactly a year later ... same conversation. This time I started thinking we were in trouble. We discussed marriage counseling, but I was convinced. I told my wife that if she wanted to go to counseling that I would go. Just set it up and I'm there. It never happened and things returned to normal (not good, but back to our new normal). Anyway now I was thinking it was "winter blues"

Same conversation this year, but things have been different, I just could not put my finger on what it was. I figured we were heading to therapy for sure this year and quite honestly by now I have gotten over my denial that our marriage is going down the wrong track.

However this feeling that there was more to it than just lack of communication and being emotionally detached was nagging me. I started asking questions about one of her nights out and received some very vague and dismissive answers. He posture was also quite defensive. This was all very strange and got me worried. I tried again and again he put up a wall to avoid my questions. At this point I felt she was hiding something from me and you can see where these thoughts spiral out of control.

Now I am quite ashamed to say that I ended up snooping around her phone and found that she was deleting tuns of messages, emails, and call logs. All sort of odd to me. I ended up using some data recover tools to recover the deleted data and essentially discovered she was having an emotional affair with a co-worker. I do not believe it has ever been physical, but I am not 100% sure. Several weeks ago I would have said there was no possible way. Now I can just say that I am fairly confident that she has not had a physical affair.

A few days ago my wife caught me snooping in her phone and was not happy at all about it. During the ensuing conversation I tried to bring up the emotional affair in a round about way because I did not want to seem accusatory right after she caught me snooping. She assured me that nothing has happened and that he is just a good friend that she is able to talk to.

So now here is where we stand...
We have poor communication
We are emotionally detached
My wife is in denial about an emotional affair
We now both have trust issues
and I am tired, so tired - have not been able to sleep

I setup a meeting with a marriage counselor for Tuesday of this week. I am confident that we can work though the communication, emotions, and even the trust, but I am worried about confronting her about the emotional affair. I truly believe she sees nothing wrong with it. If asked to end the relationship with her co-worker I think she will resent and blame me for it.

So now to the meat of my question... Will the counselor guide me though confronting her about the affair? Will he help her realize that the relationship she has with her co-worker is an emotional affair? Do you think it will be sooner rather then later? I fear that if she does not accept her relationship as an affair, confronting her with it is only going to make things worse.

I do truly love my wife and I understand the affair and other issues in our marriage are a result of failures on both our parts, I am just not sure she will see it that way.

Well kudos to anyone that reads all the way through this - lol - Now that I had a chance to vent a bit I am off to try and get some sleep....

I have been to counseling before with my first husband who had an emotional affair with one of his employees. And yes...the counselor should guide you through confronting her. They can tell her whether or not her involvement would be considered an emotional affair. However, he/she cannot make your spouse believe anything.

In my past experience with counseling, I have found that it was best for me to get the actual or perceived infidelity out there sooner. It will no doubt lead to where breakdown in the relationship has occurred and begin the process of working through it.

Kudos to you for acknowledging that it has taken both of you to get where you are at in your relationship.

[Leed]

Hi ~ I'm really glad you are going for counseling because you both need it. From the sounds of things, you two don't know how to communicate -- that's a big problem and it sounds like it's been a big problem for years!

I don't know if you can get the counselor aside to ask about the emotional affair, and give him a heads up before the session, but he should be able to guide you thru confronting her about the affair. She's got to realize that it WAS an emotional type affair, and not just a "harmless" friendship. If that's all it was, why was she hiding it, and then deleting it?

Granted, you shouldn't have gone thru her phone, but to be truthful I would have done the same thing if I had suspected my mate of doing something wrong. So i can't really say anything bad about that.

I wish you the very best. I sure hope your wife comes around and admits what she did was wrong. Please let us know what happen, will you? We do care. God bless and take care of yourself, okay? Hugs, Lee