First off, I need to mention that my ex-wife cheated on me. So so,estimes I struggle with what i should be concerned about and what is my past trauma creeping up
Secondly, I hope to get non toxic views. This subreddit seems better than others about that.
My wife is in school. She recently went to a conference and made some friends who she stays in contact with, mainly to study together. One of these friends is a guy who lives across the country.
The other night she showed a video to me that he sent, which was about spirituality. When she was finding the video in her text messages, I noticed they were having long conversations, paragraphs back and forth.
While I don’t know the context of these messages, based on the the video, I’m guessing it’s philosophical views on religion (he’s Jewish and very religious). Then last night, while I was talking to my son, I noticed she got another text message (she was sitting between us) and again noticed it was back and forth paragraph long messages.
I don’t think for a second my wife is interested in an affair with this guy. She’s very friendly and has always wanted many friends. She craves having friends. She’s also interested in other religions and has expressed interest in exposing our kids to other religions just so they can see different views and cultures. However, my concern is this could lead to an emotional affair, even just by accident.
I would love some advice on this. Even though I don’t think her intentions are bad, should I bring up my concerns to her?
I promised myself after my divorce that I wouldn’t let what my ex did to me change who I am. I’m a person who believes I trusting who you are with. But I go back and forth whether or not this is worth bringing up or not.
28 comments
Anything that bothers you in a relationship should be communicated.
Yeah man, women and men can’t be friends. Not appropriate sending those messages regardless of where Chad is
Why don’t you show her exactly what you wrote here and let the conversation go from there?
Two things. 1. Your emotions are valid and you should let her know them. 2. You gotta figure out where your insecurity/jealousy/fear comes from beyond your previous relationship. You should have full confidence in your partner. If you don’t know that your partner wouldn’t cheat on you either it’s the wrong relationship or you have to do more self work.
Anything can be communicated. It’s not “what” you communicate, but “how”. The goal here would be to be able to articulate your concerns in a non-accusatory way. You’ve said yourself that she’s really done nothing wrong, you don’t have reason to believe she has, and harbors good intentions. A strong marriage can allow you to express your vulnerabilities (a part of you is broken and while you’ll always be working to repair it; it will pop it’s ugly little head up from time to time; you want to be able to share that with her). My opinion/advice is to be comfortable sharing this with her, but approach it pretty close to the way you’re approaching it here: keep it about **you** and let her know if that you seem off, it’s because of your past relationship and what these long text exchanges brought up. Reinforce that you want to share all this with her because you value openness and honesty in your marriage, and you think she deserves to know
Once trust is broken it’s hard to fix it. If I were you and this happened I’d ask to see the conversations. This might be bad advice. I’d explain why I want to do this, offer the same thing requested and see what goes from there.
This is just me, what I’d do given the context.
That’s how my relationship has ended. She fell in love with that guy. Took me years to recover.
But it’s not like everyone is the same so I think you should talk with her about your concerns and maybe she will understand. You can’t really do anything about it without worsen your relationship. So try to be relaxed about it but have a talk with her. You can do it 🙂
Coms are important. You can still trust someone fully but still communicate how what you saw makes you feel.
Hopefully she’s got a good head on her shoulders and will happily talk the situation through with you with reassurance and love
You are asking the wrong place. Make sure the people responding to you are mature adult men. If the communication makes you uncomfortable it is inappropriate. I also believe this communication would make 75% of adults in non open marriages uncomfortable. Now they are developing a spiritual bond? I can see your problem with this, doesn’t mean it is wrong but it obviously is in the context of YOUR marriage. Good luck man
From what you’ve shared, I don’t thin you need to really be worried. But I can also see why you are.
Communication is always best. You can definitely just say, ‘I know it’s silly and I know you wouldn’t cheat on me but, especially with my history, I am feeling a little jealous of your relationship with this person.’ I find most people are sympathetic to someone saying ‘I have this feeling, intellectually I know it’s silly, but I’m still feeling it.’
But you can also just ask her about it. Clearly there’s something she finds interesting there, encourage her to share it. Even if religion isn’t your interest, you can be interested in her passion for it. People love talking about the things they are interested in, and if you’re in on the conversation then it can’t be anything deceitful.
Good luck, and remember that this person is not the last person. You choose them because they are better. 🙂
You should not express concern but you should show interest.
She is clearly interested in the topic. If you are too, perhaps it is something you could explore together. If you are not, you could still occasionally express interest to get to know your wife better. People evolve constantly after all.
It is perfectly fine for people to have friends, and it doesn’t matter what gender they are. Relationships require trust and communication.
I’d approach cautiously, but it sounds similar to “emotional infidelity.”
Let me give you an anecdote which may be helpful.
Recently an old (female) acquaintance from college contacted me. Now, I am basically a shut in with no social life, and I craved the sort of conversations we were having. Discussing our ideals and art and so on. Conversations were quite numerous and personal.
Now, as I was having this conversations I was conscious of the fact that if my girlfriend found these conversations she would be suspicious, upset, or resentful. So, to assuage my own guilt I would discuss these conversations with her, in general terms, to keep everything above board. She has no problem with me sharing certain things with some people and other things with her, and I think to a degree she was happy I had made a friend.
However, after some time, my girlfriend pointed out that although I may not be attracted to this person (and I wasn’t), she may be attracted to me, and my desire to connect with someone blinded me to the fact that this person probably wanted more from me. I won’t get into the details of the acquaintance’s life, but my girlfriend’s hypothesis was probably correct; the acquaintance had only contacted me out of the blue after her marriage had dissolved. On reflection, I saw that the conversations did not really have symmetry of friendly conversations, and I sort of dropped out of them.
That’s basically the end of the story, but the lesson here is that my girlfriend handled the situation quite well. She didn’t really act out of jealousy, but out of concern for my own obliviousness.
But consider this – I enjoyed these text conversations but still felt the need to be open about them. Your wife has not. That would worry me. She should feel entitled to have conversations with whoever she likes, but she should not be oblivious to how the existence of those conversations affects her spouse.
What exactly is an accidental emotional affair?
You should trust your wife. If she hasn’t given you a reason to not trust her then it’s on you.
Stop spying on your wife as well. That’s going to lead to a lot of problems.
You already know your answer. You don’t really need others to justify it.
It is totally worth bringing up. I know because I went through this exact scenario (I’m not kidding, the only difference is I had no children).
You need to communicate this to your wife, and your wife should *hopefully* understand why you feel this way. Especially based on your past history. If your gut is telling you something isn’t right, don’t ignore it because you were hurt in the past. I ignored mine, and it ended up hurting me.
Behavior is behavior.
Trust yourself and trust your gut.
My wife had similar relationships and I found out later multiple affairs.
I was ruined, still am kinda.
As a man it’s not appropriate to have that relationship with another married women.
Trust your gut. You have been cheated on before. It’s 100% a boundary she will have to respect.
“Hey, I noticed you were having really long & deep conversations with your new male friend. I’m not here to keep you from making new friends but please keep my feelings in mind when you associate with others and feel free to check with me at any point to discuss whether something may be crossing lines. Let’s focus on respecting and loving one another.”
It’s understandable to be in a place of worry given your past experience. Does your wife know about what happened there?
Absent the fear that comes with your past, I wouldn’t think twice about this. Friendships between people who *might* become attracted to members of that gender are completely normal and healthy, and IMO, should be treated as such until there are reasons to think otherwise.
If she made a new friend, especially connected to topics of intellectual interest of her, it makes sense that they’d be more prone to longer text exchanges than your average line or two back and forth, at least in my mind. Given that she’s seemingly been open about making a friend, shown you the video, and isn’t being weird or sneaky about texts, I wouldn’t make anything of it.
That being said, it’s okay to bring it up and communicate your fear. Communicating that fear isn’t about her as a person, and isn’t an accusation. You’re sharing a feeling, and you know exactly what it’s connected to.
I think as long as you can communicate that feeling without it being an act of control (i.e., asking her not to be friends with this person, or not to make friends with men in general), she will be understanding and can respond in the ways that make sense and hopefully are reassuring to you.
Jewish men don’t cheat. They are usually very obedient husbands.
Any question of “should I communicate with my spouse” should always be answered with “yes absolutely” in any situation. The difficulty is in how you communicate such that you present your feelings and concerns in a mature way that shares what is bothering you in a way that is not accusatory or aggressive, but simply addressing a concern and solving a problem with your partner. PARTNER being the key word, you are on the same team here. I regularly have conversations with my wife that include “I’m concerned about XYZ and I’m not sure that’s a good idea” because I think things through in ways differently than she does, so by discussing things we can better solve for desired outcomes. This conversation may be entirely platonic and benign but it’s giving you a bad vibe and that means it is worth talking about, if you can present your concern in an adult fashion.
I think it’s a valid concern. Long text message conversations about a topic like spirituality can lead to a depth of intimacy which may not be appropriate for a married woman and a man other than her husband. Of course it all depends upon the context of the details. But I think your concerns are justified.
Don’t bring it up as a concern. Ask questions about her conversations and be genuinely curious about learning more about this spirituality thing. If this is something she’s interested in, try to be interested in it too. Obv don’t change yourself—its just always nice to learn each other’s hobbies and support each other.
Best case scenario it’s completely harmless and becomes something you guys can do together and spend more time together.
Worst case scenario is she has hidden concerns about you or doubts about your marriage (maybe she doesn’t feel connected to you because you haven’t shown interest in her interests?) and she’s using the guy to vent and potentially emotionally cheat. But if there’s no concerns about that then you should be fine.
The worst thing you want to do is accuse her right away, even subtly and even if you don’t mean to. Thoughts provoke emotions which determine your behavior, and people are smart enough to see right through it and feel if something’s off.
Good luck!!
Hi, it also helps in how you frame this conversation. Thinking of it as a confrontation vs an open conversation or a heart-to-heart will set you up to be more or less comfortable.
Heart-to-hearts aren’t necessarily easier.
It just sounds way better & you can kind of get yourself at least a liiitle excited about it lol. It softens things too.
Also, give yourself some credit for not allowing your alarm bells to go off full throttle. Your concerns were valid. That last marriage did change you a bit. Having moments of doubt and /or side-eye are gonna happen sometimes.
It showed you what an unhealthy relationship can look like. You are now being proactive by being honest with yourself & your partner so you have a better chance at a healthy one. Yay!
This is great! Hopefully she understands where you are coming from & you both continue to grow closer.
If not that’s ok too. Get yerself into counseling so you can have someone else to help you work through things, while you continue to move forward with your life.
Good luck! You’re on the right track.
I feel like you might get more results treating this less antagonistically. Ask her what their conversations are about, share your perspective, perhaps join their chat group etc.
She is essentially hiding this from you, by not being open in the first place. I talk to women and my wife men. Even texting privately. But if i saw long conversations or she did, we’d both ask what the fuck. Why would one spend so much time messaging another sex whilst married? Keeping options open? I dont think this is right, unless its all in the open.
If wife is like “oh its just james talking about religion again”…. that’s fine. But not to tell you or just message back and forth all the time isnt right