Oh God I need advice

[Jaseball 0]

I havent read every post...but...

To me exchanging ANYTHING with a member of the opposite sex that should stay within a marriage is infidelity. Be it secrets shared, sexual talk, flirting, nude photos. Anything that would HURT your other half is infidelity to the relationship. What you must do is decide if you love him enough to learn to trust him again. Once you've decided that..you need to lay down your boundaries.

1. Explain what will happen if this ever happens again

2. Get rid of all individual net accounts and create ONLY joint ones with shared passwords

3. Learn how to track his movement online

3. Agree to surf the web ONLY together

4. Get rid of net all together

5. Find out why he felt he was lacking to make him want to do this

These are just suggestions. My SO and I have agreed to limited net, with ONE account..Skype ..for him to call home. Once together, we have no need for messengers, my space, email accounts. We share our passwords now. Not that we'd invade privacy, but it does give a feeling of accountability.

I truely hope you and him feel this marriage is worth the time and investment to save. Sexual indescretions are serious, and painful. But they dont need to be the end either. Something made him do this.

Good luck.

Just shows how people are really different. Getting rid of the net altogether in 2007 is unrealistic. If you have to track someone, have their passwords, and feel the need to be tied at the waist it show no trust; only paranoia and insecurity.

Glad it works for you, but I could never imagine dealing with a person who only trusts me while I'm in plain sight and always accounted for.

[BabyBouncer 0]

I havent read every post...but...

To me exchanging ANYTHING with a member of the opposite sex that should stay within a marriage is infidelity. Be it secrets shared, sexual talk, flirting, nude photos. Anything that would HURT your other half is infidelity to the relationship. What you must do is decide if you love him enough to learn to trust him again. Once you've decided that..you need to lay down your boundaries.

1. Explain what will happen if this ever happens again

2. Get rid of all individual net accounts and create ONLY joint ones with shared passwords

3. Learn how to track his movement online

3. Agree to surf the web ONLY together

4. Get rid of net all together

5. Find out why he felt he was lacking to make him want to do this

These are just suggestions. My SO and I have agreed to limited net, with ONE account..Skype ..for him to call home. Once together, we have no need for messengers, my space, email accounts. We share our passwords now. Not that we'd invade privacy, but it does give a feeling of accountability.

I truely hope you and him feel this marriage is worth the time and investment to save. Sexual indescretions are serious, and painful. But they dont need to be the end either. Something made him do this.

Good luck.

Thank you for your suggestions...

What you have suggested will not work for us for the following reasons:-

1. I dont think I need to explain to him what could happen if he ever did ths again.

2. My husband is a web designer and works from home, so we have 5 PC's in our house all connected to a local network and the internet. I have my own PC so I can do what I need to do without interupting his work.

3. That would not be possible as I work in the city and he works from home.

4. again not possible as all our banking and finiances are set for internet access and this is the only way I have of being able to talk to and see my children and granchildren in the UK, and of course my husband needs the internet for his job.

5. We are now working with a councelor to try to overcome what has happened.

As for installing a keylogger or such things, I do not feel that this would be a good thing. You see if I want my marriage to continue and for us to move forward from here then my spying on him would only put more doubts in my mind and I dont think it is right to spy on anyone. I do know all his passwords as he does mine and I think it is better for him to know that I could check to see what he has been up to if I wanted to. If I felt that I needed to go behind his back and spy then I dont think there would be any chance for the future. I have to give him a chance to learn for his mistake and if we work together I think it will make us stronger people.

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts with me.

[StillThePrettiest 3]

honestly, I think you have dealt with everything about as well as anyone could be expected to

it sounds like the first counselling session went well, and that your counsellor will be good to continue working with... and it sounds like your husband is more than willing to do whatever it takes to try to make things right... it won't make things exactly like they were, but who knows? in the end your marriage could even end up stronger through all this (helluva way for that to happen though, I know)

in any case, I'm still full of admiration for your grace and strength, and I wish you all the very best

[bakofoil 27]

honestly, I think you have dealt with everything about as well as anyone could be expected to

it sounds like the first counselling session went well, and that your counsellor will be good to continue working with... and it sounds like your husband is more than willing to do whatever it takes to try to make things right... it won't make things exactly like they were, but who knows? in the end your marriage could even end up stronger through all this (helluva way for that to happen though, I know)

in any case, I'm still full of admiration for your grace and strength, and I wish you all the very best

I completely agree. I've just read through the thread and am full of admiration for how you handled this. I also think the answers came from within despite coming here for advice.

You clearly have been through a lot over the past few years, personally and as a couple. I wonder how much the stress of that has impacted on your husband. Perhaps he internalised a lot of emotion to protect you and needed an outlet of some kind. I know it was the worse kind of outlet but remember that an emotional connection is far deeper than any sexual connection. I think if you get to grips with why he did what he did, you could find that you learn a lot about his feelings for you and, as has been said here, your marriage could end up stronger.

Best of luck. You're an example and inspiration to us all

[Mags 112]

in any case, I'm still full of admiration for your grace and strength, and I wish you all the very best

Absolutely.

[Sprailenes 47]

A year ago before I moved here my friend made a fake myspace profile account with a fake girl and started talking to my fiance with it. She was trying to prove me wrong when I said he would never think of cheating or flirting.

Oh did she ever prove me wrong. His response to this girls second message was: "I find you absolutley beautiful and don't worry about the fact that I have a gf, I think you're awesome"

It only hurt because it all happened within 20 minutes...from the time she put the profile online. He took the bait and started talking like that within 20 minutes.

I felt like such a fool. Granted we talked it over and worked it out. But it does hurt.

AND

When a someone says in defense of their stupidity: "Its just the internet, it's nothing"

Well I know a lot of us here met our significant others online, so we know how easy it is to get caught up in the heat of the moment and fall for people or whatever. So to us who are on the other side of the fence defending our relationship and our dignity, it isn't "nothing" or "just" the internet.

I wish you all the luck in the world and I am glad you are working it out. Trust can be rebuilt! And men and women can change.

[lost at love 0]

I'm sorry you are going through this. I have been going through something similar myself lately and I'm not coping well. I didn't get to see any of the messages that he had with this girl because I asked to see the account he was using (he has a secret yahoo account that I don't have access to I found out) and he told me for three days that he would show me but not now. When he finally got around to showing it to me he had deleted all the contacts and the messages so I don't know if there was more than one girl or only the one he was stupid enough to call from our phone and I have no idea what they talked about other than what he has told me. I called the girl and asked her to stop talking to my husband after I confronted him about her and he confessed but she didn't give me any information.

He acts like nothing happened and he expects me to act the same and I try but I feel like crying all the time. I've been taking muscle relaxers to sleep at night because I just lie there and think about what he's been doing while I'm away. It took me two years to be able to trust him becasue of my own trust issues from being hurt so many times in the past and we were really getting to a good place in our marriage when I found out about this. We had fights in the beginning and I told him to leave the house once but we worked through them and our relationship seemed so strong and filled with love until I found out about this girl. I feel like my whole world has come down around me and I don't know if I can handle it. I'm angry at myself for trusting him but at the same time I still love him and I want our marriage to work but I have all these doubts now, about myself and about our relationship. I feel like he's only with me until he gets his greencard and then he'll leave me but he swears that's not the case. He says he only started talking to that girl because I told him to leave the house once and he felt he needed a "back up plan" in case I made him leave and he had no place to go. He says she was the only one but how can I trust him when he didn't show me his other account until after he made changes? I can't help but feel like there may have been others there and I feel like I've lost a lot of the love I had developed for him because I don't trust him any longer.

I'm afraid this marriage is going to end in divorce because he's either going to leave as planned from the beginning or I'm going to drive us both crazy wondering and suspecting him all the time now.

How can I ever trust him again after this??

Edited October 18, 2007 by lost at love