Hi
i want to share what’s being happening in my marriage over the last year as I am still very confused and need the benefit of some advice so I can make some sort of decisions on what to do.
We’ve been married nearly 14 years and have 2 children and have had our ups and downs but nothing major and I thought we were happy.
About a year ago my wife started using a forum quite heavily and had made a number of friends and as things progressed they all began to chat on a messenger service. She was online it seemed almost constantly, to the point where conversation was rare, and became very vague and protective of her online activities.
Consequently I became a little suspicious so had a look on the forum while she was at work and found that lot of her posts were very flirtatious so I had a look on her laptop where I knew she had photos and stuff of these people. There were a number of text files and I had a look and my suspicions were confirmed as I found some fairly intimate chats she had had with a particular person.
I was really hurt and upset about this and we had a lot of arguments and went through a fairly torrid time with threats of divorce and a lot of animosity between us. She stopped talking to the guy but I felt betrayed and unable to trust her and for a couple of months tried to keep tabs on her online activities as she continued to use the forum and messenger. Things came to a head when I started behaving unreasonably by accusing her of all sorts of things and I was unable to believe that she was acting innocently, particularly as she has a number of male contacts she talks to and again the arguments raged mainly because she felt that my constant checking was trapping her and making her feel stifled.
As time went on however, I managed to stop this horrible jealous feeling I was getting and things were calming down. She was still online quite heavily but as she explained, these people were just friends and nothing was happening and I was eventually happy with that.
Some of her friends came and went as online friendships sometimes do and a few months back a guy came on the scene very regularly. I only know of this as sometimes she would she would show me things on her pc and she was in private message with this guy every time (i had promised never to check on her late last year and I haven’t !! ) and sometimes I got the feeling that maybe it was happening again and a couple of times I bought up the subject but she’s just get annoyed and tell me that I had to trust her and that nothing was happening, so I let things rest and tried not to worry about it.
However a few weeks back, she was as usual at her laptop chatting away and I was in and out of the room, she had shown me a number of funny items on the forum and one time as I walked in I glanced down at the screen. She was in pm with this guy and all I saw was him telling her how he had been masturbating over her picture. I didn’t say anything for a while and later that evening asked her what exactly she did talk about with this guy as they had been chatting for some months almost constantly. She said it was just idle chit chat so I asked her what he meant by the masturbation thing. Immediately she got upset, I was accused of snooping over her shoulder and then told that there was nothing untoward going on to which I replied that there were certain things that people can say which I deem unacceptable and that was one of them. She agreed and has since said that she has sorted it with this guy so it won’t happen again but that she will not stop talking to him as she will not be dictated to who she can talk to by me.
I’m really upset that this has happened and I don’t know how to react. I deliberately bad mouthed the guy last night and she defended him and said that my comments were unfounded and that she will not stop talking to him for my sake and now the subject matter is strictly off limits. I’m upset by this as I can’t work out whether I am being unreasonable and dictatorial or whether she is overstepping the relationship boundaries, whatever we can no longer talk about it and if I don’t like who she is talking to and that she is almost constantly online whilst at home, then it is my problem to sort and not hers.
I’m at a loss what to think, she has said within the last 48 hours that our relationship is fine and that she loves me, but on the other hand talks online with a guy who obviously has some sort of thing for her…….Am I unreasonable??????