Dr NerdLove
Hi, I have a problem. I was dating for nine months with a girlfriend who was negative. I broke it off but felt bad about it.
When dating she would say I was lazy, she didn’t date fat guys. In order to get me healthy, she called me pathetic man cause I couldn’t get here bar off one time during sex. Anyway I want wanted to get back with her and she said yes but we have to be friends first. When we have been friends for three weeks and one day I ask what she was doing and she used having sex as a joke . I didn’t let on that it hurt me but I thought I was rude. Now I I’m in a place where I don’t want to give up on her (cause she had bad experience s with other exes, where they have cheated, etc.) , she has told her family and me she see us dating again. I’m starting to feel I should see other people but I still have feelings of getting back with her because of her saying we can get back together.
Please help.
2nd Time Around
Sweet suffering Jeebus, why the hell would you want to get back together with this woman?
Dude. The way she was treating you is not cool. Constantly insulting and belittling you – even in the name of “helping” is straight-up abusive behavior. It’s one thing when you and your honey can banter back and forth and have little teases. It’s another thing entirely when she goes for blood and starts aiming straight at your self-esteem.
There are plenty of reasons why one might think about getting back together with an ex: you’re better together than when you’re apart, you both really care about each other, you broke up when you were young and stupid and now that you’re older and wiser, you can overcome those previous problems…
None of these apply in your case.
Having bad experiences with her exes isn’t an excuse for being a shitty person, nor is it a reason to stick together; that’s her problem to deal with, not yours. Her saying “Yeah, we can get back together” is similarly NOT a reason to get back together.
Your instincts are telling you to see other people. I’m telling you to RUN MOTHERFUCKER and don’t look back.
Find someone else, someone who actually respects you and cares for you. You’ll be much happier.
Doc, I know you rarely have questions from married man but I have one. My wife and I have been together for six years and married for four. We have a son who is about to turn two in a few weeks and we have been having marriage problems since February of this year. No sex and constant fighting.
We sought out marriage counseling which has been helping a lot since June and still going. Still no sex though. She wants to and I want to but neither one of us can force it to happen. She has even bought some lingerie to help make it happen.
Here is why I can’t and where the advice is deeply needed. I know she has a crush on her boss at work and has been flirting with him for a while. I asked her about it one day and she said it was nothing. I broke the golden rule and looked in her phone and texts. Her best friend and her talk about it and I read about her flirting with him and she told him to run away with her and how she wishes he would touch her. All of this is between her best friend and her. She doesn’t text him, email him, or facebook him. I looked there, too.
Should I man up and confront her and tell her I looked or should I lie and say at the Halloween party your best friend told me you wanted him or maybe should I take advice from another friend and just let it go? What should I do doc? I have been cheated on before in the same fashion. Girlfriend had sex with a married man who had three kids and this is the same situation but now my wife and I have a son.
I forgot to mention how the man is similar to her dad and she says she could never be with a guy like that and he is religious and for several years my wife has said she is not but in her texts with her friend she claims to have some religion in her. She likes buddah and this guy is a, Christian who goes to church three times a week. Not to mention he has three kids and is having marriage problems, too.
I will take any advice I can get. I have been tempted to just walkout many times but can’t because we have a son.
Desperate Snooper
Good for you for going to couple’s therapy! I’m glad to hear that it’s been helping… but your neglect of your sex-life needs to be addressed.
First of all my standard disclaimer: I’m against invasions of privacy, whether it means snooping through someone’s email, texts, Facebook messages, computer files, whatever. As a rule of thumb, you’re almost never going to like what you find, even if you’re already suspicious.
Now, that having been said, you’ve gone and done it already and now it’s time to deal with the fallout.
So all you’ve found are texts back and forth between your wife and her best friend – no indication that she’s been having contact with this guy outside of work, no smoking gun that she’s actually cheating on you, just gossip and the indication that she’s at least fantasizing about it. It’s normal, even amongst happily married couples, for one or the other to develop a crush on someone – a co-worker, the cute guy at the Starbucks, that hot woman you see at the gym every Tuesday; it’s a heady emotional rush of teenager-y giddiness, especially when you’re in a long-term relationship where the initial passion has faded into a less-frantic but more intimate companionship and love. When you’re having relationship problems – as you and your wife are – that crush can be intoxicating, leading someone to feel like they haven’t in a long time.
Absent other indications – no smoking gun emails, prolonged absences, long nights at the office, sudden changes or improvements to her appearance – I would hedge on the side that your wife is enjoying the flirting and the emotional rush of an office infatuation but hasn’t stepped over the edge into actual infidelity… yet.
Confronting her on this would be a bad idea. First of all: so far, you only have gossip to go on. Second: you got this gossip through snooping through her stuff. All this is going to do is turn the conversation from “Are you cheating on me” to “How dare you violate my privacy”, which will only make an already tense situation worse. Trying to cover your snooping by dragging her friend into it isn’t going to help or cover your ass; the first thing her friend is going to do is deny saying anything to you, and lying is only going to compound the problems.
I’m not saying that you should only confront her when you have the means to win, I’m saying that a confrontation isn’t going to do anything to help. Neither, for that matter, is “just letting it go”. If you care for your wife and your relationship, then yes, you need to man the fuck up up… but not by accusing your wife of infidelity. You need to confront your problems and work with her to fix them.
I know it’s tough, even intimidating; you’re having flashbacks to your previous girlfriend who cheated. But this time you have the chance to stop it before it happens again.
Men and women cheat for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that their emotional or sexual needs aren’t being met… which is exactly what’s happening here. You’re both stressed – two-year olds are bundles of stress-inducing behaviors, after all – you’ve been fighting and, critically, you haven’t been fucking.
You want to. Your wife wants to. But going by your letter, you’ve been the hold-out because you’ve got this fantasy of her and her boss in your head. This is what needs to stop. Her emotional and sexual needs aren’t being fulfilled by you, so she’s been indulging her crush. She’s enjoying the flirting because it has all of the thrills of a new relationship – that giddy mix of nervousness and excitement – that she hasn’t felt in a while and that she isn’t feeling in her relationship with you.
If you don’t want her to cheat on you, be the man she’d cheat on you with. You need to seduce your wife.
Remember all of the little things you used to do early on in your courtship when everything was new and wonderful? You need to summon that back and remind her just why she fell in love with you in the first place; the little compliments, the gifts for no reason, the unexpected sweet moments, the passion. Don’t let the sex just happen, make arrangements in advance. Call a babysitter, rent a hotel room, make reservations for a romantic dinner and give her the full-court press. Force the image of her and her boss out of your head however you have to – hold back from masturbation until you’re so horny you could fuck concrete, having a drink, smoking a joint, whatever – and make the moment happen. Sweep her off her feet and back into your bed.
Things may look dire, but they’re not hopeless. You’ve got a chance to save your marriage – even to make it better than it has been in a while – if you’re willing to take it.
Good luck.
Is it just me, or did the second question asker's wife admit to her friend that she directly asked this other man to run away with her? It's true, having crushes and lusting over other people is perfectly normal for all adults, including those in long-term, monogamous relationships. But it's NOT OK to express those to the crush in that way when you are in a confirmed monogamous relationship; to me, this is definitely a boundary violation, and quite possibly pointing to an already ongoing emotional affair. Sure, he couldn't find any physical evidence of anything inappropriate, but she told her friend that she asked this man to run away with her, which means any inappropriate exchanges could easily be taking place strictly offline. Full disclosure, my response is peppered by my own experiences, which are very similar to the asker's.
I think your advice for taking responsibility for the health of the marriage is great, but it's only a piece of the puzzle – this guy is responsible for only half of the health of his marriage, and his wife is clearly neglecting her half. He is not responsible for her choices, and she is an adult woman who is choosing to look elsewhere rather than speak openly with her husband about her unmet needs. We don't actually know what she's doing and why until we hear it from her. I think that she should be called on her behavior, because the problems on her end (of her unmet needs, boundary problems) can't be addressed unless they are out in the open. Secrecy of this nature is toxic to relationships. I would suggest only doing this at a marital therapy session with an unbiased third party present who can direct the conversation in a productive direction. Emotions can run rampant and it's a given that both are going to have their feelings hurt at this exchange, but he doesn't need to be responsible for preventing her from making bad choices. Instead, he can set an example by owning up to his snooping, admit that it was wrong and that it violated her and her privacy, that he is sorry and wants to work hard to help her trust him. He can also make it clear that he is committed to doing everything in his power to save their marriage, but that he will leave if she is not equally committed – that seems fair. He should also be prepared to leave if it's clear by her actions, if not her words, that she is not interested or able to focus on improving her marriage. Their son with be better of with two, healthy, happy parents whether they are apart or together.
Kristi, you bring up some great points there but I wanted to point one thing that occured to me: yes, she said things to her best friend…but no one but her (well, and the boss) know what actually happened. I've known girls and guys to overinflate things they have said or done – either to impress a friend or to continue a fantasy or bc they know that friend would totally support them if they actually did. Overhearing (or reading) convos between two people leaves a LOT of things to chance as far as veracity of statements. I've had conversations with my mother, for example, that were overheard by an ex of mine and turned into a huge fight. Bc I was *venting* to my mom; that's why I told her in what I thought was a private convo. I've been on the cheated-on or "partner thinking of cheating" side as well…but I've also been on the "you overheard/read things not meant for you when I'd done nothing wrong but vent" side as well so I'm a bit slow to jump into "she said this to someone else so it must be true" territory is all.
Yeah, I thought the bit about "running away with her" was odd at first, but then, we don't know the context. The letter writer doesn't seem to think his wife seriously is planning to run off on him in the immediate future. Maybe she hasn't actually propositioned the boss but was just making a daydreaming type comment that she'd never really follow through on. Maybe she did say it to the boss but in a teasing way that showed she obviously meant it as flirting, not a literal suggestion. Who knows?
If the letter writer can reconnect with his wife, then maybe later if he's still concerned he could ask her about the crush without mentioning the snooping (he mentions in the letter that he was aware of the flirting before he snooped, so I don't think he'd have to get into the details of how much he knows), and they'd be able to have an honest discussion because the trust and intimacy would be there again. But I think the reconnection has to come first, or they won't really be able to talk about it.
She has a two year old. When I had a two year old in the house, I fantasized about running away with ANYONE.
@ Desperate Snooper: I think you should force it. Text her (don't ask) that at [xx:xx o'clock, whatever time's gonna actually work for both of you] you'd better find her in her sexiest lingerie. Give her a long kiss that she needs to catch her breath from and go for it. She's probably into the boss at work because the boss at home isn't taking the reins.
This sounds like incredibly bad and sexist advise that comes from really bad movies. Anonymoose, my impression is that most women really don't like being treated like objects by men. You are explicitly telling Desperate Snooper to treat his wife like a piece of shit that only exists for his gratification. This has a pretty high chance of ending his marriage. The best way to approach this situation is with gentleness and sensitivity rather than brute demands.
The feeling I've gotten from reading around and from female friends who are married is that they want to be desired and considered sexy by their husband, and often times just demanding sex is enough to make them feel sexy. The feeling I got from his description is that things aren't happening for them organically, and that she's attracted to a man who is above her in the pecking order in another aspect of her life. It's a way of telling his wife "I want you, be ready" and perhaps addressing what she's getting from her boss and not from him without getting into a fight, all in one go.
And really, she can always say "No." I'm not saying he take his wife against her will, just that there's an implied consent that he can ask for sex since they're married and maybe it'd hit her in the right spot if he ordered it.
Consider me a counter-example. Do I like it when I'm not always the one initiating? Sure. But I still want that to be in the asking category, not the telling. Do I want to feel desired and sexy? Absolutely. Show it by caressing and appreciating my body once we're making out. Don't order me around unless we're in a pre-negotiated scene with a safeword in place. Being told "I want sex, be ready." is a turn-off for me. On the other hand calling me up in the middle of the day and saying "I miss your arms wrapped around me, you pressing up against me, the taste of your kisses. Are you looking forward to our date tonight, too?" Is sexy. Because it lets me say "yes." Of course, it helps if you can say it in a sexy voice, not a pleading voice.
…now I want to call up my boyfriend and leave a sexy voicemail. And yes, we do this back and forth to each other. Men need to be told they're lusted after, too.
From a woman's POV: I think it depends on what the letter writer's relationship with his wife was like when they were still acting passionate with each other. Like DNL says, he needs to go back to the things that made the relationship exciting in the early stages. I could see if they were the type of couple where he'd text things like Anonymoose suggested and she'd find that hot and it was great, then it could be great again. But if that wasn't something they've never done anything like before, I agree with you, it could very easily come off as insensitive and/or odd, and he's probably better off returning to whatever got sparks flying between them in the past.
Anonymoose's situation might work under very specific circumstances but if its never been done before in a relationship, the reaction to the txt might not go as planed. It could range from as expected to the wife not being at the appointed place and time to the wife being there but really pissed.
That's great advice!…if he wants a divorce.
The boss at home. *snort* Good grief.
Would it shock you to know that a woman I know who's currently having some marriage issues even suggested this to her husband?
This may be a feminist-leaning blogspace, but I'd never discount a wife's desire to be attractive to her husband, and to have her husband take charge once in awhile.
I think people are just objecting because it's more likely to be problematic in comparison to other ways to show desire that are less likely to cause a conflict. Like there are definitely situations in which your suggestion would work, but since we don't know that this is one of them, we'd like to err on the side of the wife not getting pissed.
Fair enough.
Each person has a unique set of things that turn them on. But unless you know your wife has a submissive fetish, I wouldn't recommend demanding sex or telling her you're the boss.
This would, at worst, piss me the fuck off. At best, I'd laugh in his face. "Boss" indeed!
The way you're framing it, it's like you're saying "Ahhhh she just needs a good dickin' and she'll be aight!"
Which is just….no.
I don't THINK that's what you're saying, but just to be safe….no. SO MUCH NO.
I gotta go with LeeEsq…this piece of work sounds something straight out of some shitty, cliched as fuck rom-com, dude….films like that that explicitly ignore reality to put terrible ideas into people's heads. We humans in reality are a bittttt more complex than that…
I'm just saying, that idea could go REAL wrong REAL quick and make him look like some neanderthal Caveman that's just going "ME HORNY! YOU HAWT LINGERIE! WE BANG BANG NOW! OOO OOO AHH AHH!"
There's more to romance and relationship maintenance than that…but let's just say even if he WERE to do that and it didn't completely blow up in his face, what does that do to solve the EMOTIONAL connection that they're lacking? That's more the root of the problem; that's why she's trying to re-ignite those initial butterflies/sparks/swirling feelings of passion with another man, something she has lost with her husband and he has lost with her. They need to remember what brought them together and what has kept them together in the first place. Every relationship has its peaks and valleys, and right now they're in an emotional valley. The only way they're going to get out of it is if they're both honest with themselves, act like ADULTS in this situation, and work through this issue together so they can re-stabilize each other and restore their marriage.
Maybe after THAT they can take your corny advice and fuck like jackrabbits in some motel or something. I dunno. All I know is you need a better taste in movies.
I don't watch rom-coms.
I don't either but I still know what nonsense is in them from other people and Tvtropes.
>_>
Another "no" vote here. I'd agree that women want to be found attractive by their partners, but not all of them would like that particular way of expressing it.
It's also tricky because it sounds like sex and attraction aren't the only issues in the marriage. Personally, I'd find a text like that hot…if it was from a partner who I felt also loved and appreciated me and who I was happy with. But if the relationship was on the rocks and I was already resenting my partner for other reasons, it would come off as piling a demand for sex on top of everything else and would probably lead to an argument.
Personally, I would find this SOOOO hot. I also get off on being submissive.
But the phrasing is pretty sexist " She's probably into the boss at work because the boss at home isn't taking the reins. " is a horrible gendered way to say it.
But the first part of your comment is pretty good advice I think (depending on the wife)
Sorry to anyone offended by how roughly I worded it. Was just going off the info provided and figured it couldn't hurt to initiate and maybe get some fire going for them that doesn't involve fighting.
I think letter #2 is a tricky situation, and generally one I try not to give ideas on when I don't know the whole story – and you really can't even talking to someone irl and knowing both parties; much less from reading what they have chosen to write or not write about in an email. Having said that, I also do tend to agree that arguments and "calling people out" on things you've found while snooping…well *I* at least have never seen that go well or constructively. And esp a situation like this, the first emotional responses of the person being called out are going to be "why the hell did you think it was ok to snoop?" and "I didn't actually do anything, how dare you accuse me of cheating?" I've seen this from both males and females on either side; not just talking about this situation. So, more often than not it turns into two people arguing not only that they were justified in whatever they did, but arguing about what the argument is about as well. I'm not saying I have a great solution; I'm just mentioning what I've seen in my own life and the lives of people I know.
My best friend and I talk about things that would make my husband blush. We are very crass and *always sarcastic* and yes, we talk about guys (although, more on her end, because she's single). However, I'm almost positive you could find something damning to me in those texts, but that's only if they are taken completely out of context and without keeping in mind the sarcasm. WE know what we mean, that's why we do it.
I'm very happily married so it's all just harmless joking around.
But the LW is "punishing" his wife by refusing sex with her. Dude, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. You have no idea if this guy even knows she exists, or to what extent she and he friend kid around about guys. Maybe she was serious, but by continuing to punish her (and keep in mind, she has NO clue why you are holding out) you'll create a self-fulfilling prophecy where she eventually does get driven away to someone else. If not this guy, then someone else.
People's libidos can really plummet from anxiety. I don't think he is intentionally witholding sex to punish her.
"She wants to and I want to but neither one of us can force it to happen. She has even bought some lingerie to help make it happen.
Here is why I can’t and where the advice is deeply needed. I know she has a crush on her boss at work"
This is why I said that. It may be subconscious, but he is definitely punishing her.
I don't think he's punishing her, even subconsciously.I think the anxiety of thinking she's going to cheat on him is killing his boner.
clearly she is the women thus he must have done something wrong ie deserves what he gets unless he changes himself to make her happy. who know what she went through it not like she had the choice of the people she dated, had sex with, gets marry too (obviously there was a gun up to her head the whole time). she has problems, she is the victim, and or you're a sexist (if youre a male) who cannot handle a strong women or is insensitive to the needs of women etc (which what some would say).
Yeah no. Regardless of gender, there are only 2 logical solutions to this problem if you are having marital problems:
1. Stay married
2. Get divorced
One would assume that he doesn't want to get divorced, otherwise he wouldn't have written at all. So, stay married. BUT, this guy is letting his secret resentments and POSSIBLE out-of-context assumptions ruin any chances of becoming once again happily married. And we give her the benefit of the doubt because we don't have her side, we didn't see these texts, and he ultimately wants to stay married! What are we supposed to say? "Sorry, she's an irredeemable lying harpy. Divorce her!" That is not productive. He asked for help, he said he WANTED to regain the passion and happiness he once had. So the only logical thing is to find a way to let go of the resentment and anger and fall in love all over again.
If he continues down the current path with all these bad feelings, he WILL end up divorced, whether the affair he so fears ever happens or doesn't. SOMEONE has to be the first one to let their pride go and make a move toward repairing the marriage. The letter writer can only control himself, not her, so he has to be the one to do it if he wants to stay married and happy.
Are you talking about the first letter or the second? Because its clear in the first letter that the woman was behaving badly, Dr Nerdlove said so, and nobody here has disagreed (except perhaps you). If you are being sarcastic because you believe women are never criticized on this site, well this is just another one of the examples you are disregarding.
It sounds to me that Writer #2 is so paranoid about another woman cheating on him, he's creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your wife has a young child. I think very few men on the planet know what it is like to be a mother to a very young child. It is in all aspects exhausting, emotionally, and physically draining. You don't feel like yourself. You feel run down and "utilitarian" all the time. A lot of new mothers get depressed, and life at home feels like nothing but demands from you and work.
Life at home sucks the life right out of you.
So you have a situation where a young wife has become a little distant with a guy who is frightened and suspicious of "distance" because of his past, and his reaction is to already assume the worst is going to happen and distance himself further.
You're paving your own road to hell, dude.
If you treat her like she's already cheating on you, what is going to stop her from doing it?
If you treat her like she is precious and valued to you, instead of a potential emotional criminal in her own home, then she's probably going to respond differently.
Give her breaks from her child. She needs time to feel like a woman, not just a mother. Reinvest in the things that brought you together, because she has no more emotional and physical capital to spare right now, and she needs our help.
Show her she has value to you, and she will feel safe and valued. That usually leads to good things all around.
Seduce your wife in the best way for you, and let go of your old anger and paranoia. They're poisoning you.
Good luck!
As for Writer #1
RUN!!!!!! Run away as fast as your legs can carry you and burn all bridges as you go.
I agree that the couple in the second letter need to take their sex life off the backburner and start working on that part of their marriage now, but I don't agree that the writer should keep quiet about what he found.
They're seeing a counselor. The wife clearly has all sorts of things she's not discussing in counseling, and now the writer is also going to be keeping all of his feelings about his wife's crush out of the counseling. There's no point going to therapy if you're just going to sit there and lie to the therapist or only talk about the good or ok parts of life. If they actually want to make some progress, I think they both need to start being more honest in counseling, and that the writer is unfortunately going to have to be the one to take the first step.
Maybe he can talk with his counselor about ways to broach the subject with his wife without coming right out and saying he snooped. Maybe it can be a general conversation about how he feels her pulling away, maybe she's been suffering from "mentionitis" in regards to her boss and he can call her out on that. I don't know.
It's a tough place to be.
Talking about this with the counselor alone sounds like a good idea. There might be a way to broach the issue (maybe even just in broad terms of speaking of crushes or directing emotional intimacy outside the marriage) without going into the gory details.
I could also imagine a counselor encouraging the writer to be direct about how he found the information – depending on the couple's dynamics, the lack of trust might be something they need to deal with directly, and a counselor might be able to keep the conversation from getting too off track. Reading someone's emails is a bad act, but it's not the kind of thing people ned marriages over.
Either way, since they have a professional involved, I think they should take advantage of that.
Yeah, he probably needs to have some discussion about feelings of jealousy, or possible mentionitis as Tosca said. He probably should have had that talk with her and the counsellor instead of snooping, but since that can't be undone, he still needs to have it.
I will tell you right now, the moment I learned my ex had gone through my phone and journals looking for evidence of my (non-existent) cheating, the door forever and permanently slammed shut against him. We'd been having serious problems for months, were in counseling together, had a young child and were about to move into the house we'd worked on for months. That instant of revelation killed the last slender seedling of hope in my marriage. This may not be the same boundary-breaking trigger for LW #2's wife as it is for me; but I would *strongly* recommend against his admitting that particular act. *If* they can get back on track, when they are in a healthy place again *may* be the time to carefully approach her (again in the context of counseling if possible), and say something like "I really need to tell you something, that I know was incredibly wrong of me at the time, and I truly hope you'll forgive me based on the difficulties we were going through then that I didn't have better sense".
The theme of this post is, "People get the love they think they deserve."