my husband cheated and won't give her up

Interesting you've gone from being his hard headed girl friend to his wife and now turned into his "Neurotic Mother" type person. You are no longer the loving trusting and caring wife that you once were?. Why do you think that happened? It happened long before he became infatuated with his new friend. The change in you left a void to be filled by his fantasy lady.

I would suggest that you find a therapist for yourself to regain the missing self control and diginity that you've lost along the way. After you regain self control then start couples counseling. That's it no short cuts.

Harvey7.

I don't know what to do anymore. I knew that my marriage was in trouble. My husband and I got married when we were only 19 years old and we've been together since we were 16. Everyone told us that we were too young. They were right, but we refused to listen cuz we were crazy 4 eachother. We had some huge problems with communication. Really huge. I didn't understand that things were as bad as they were.

About a year ago, he met this woman online. They started a romantic relationship. I only just found out about it four months ago when I looked at his e-mail. I did some digging and discovered that he had put more effort into this online affair than he ever did with his marriage. His MARRIAGE! He says she had no idea that he was even married, she was a wonderful person and so on and so forth. I decided to forgive him and work on our marriage. She was furious and refused to speak to him and I thought we were moving on. Then a friend of my husband told me that my husband had been talking to him about this woman, saying that he truly loves her?

He has been working on fixing things by spending more time with me and things like that, but a couple of weeks after I found out he actually asked me for permission to contact her again and try to be her friend. He swore that all he wanted was platonic friendship. I said no, of course. I've been saying no more than once, and every time he lays low for 2-3 weeks and then tries to contact her. He's been saying to me that it wasn't even an affair, since it was never sexual. Sure, he only told her he loved her, wrote her love letters and music and dreamed out loud about a life with her. I read their chats. I made him give me all his passwords and I check the logs on our computer, so that he wouldn't be able to get in touch with her without me knowing.

Earlier today he slipped up. I checked the log and I discovered that he has an e-mail addy that I didn't know about. I guess he's been running it in privacy mode so that it didn't go into the logs. I managed to guess the password. He set up this thing for the single purpose of chatting and e-mailing with this woman. There were over 100 e-mails and chats in there. He's been telling ME that it wasn't even an affair and refuses to even talk about it much, just wants me to get over it, but there he is BEGGING her to forgive him for the lies he told HER. I couldn't find any evidence there that there's anything sexual/romantic going on. She tells him that she's not going to cross any lines with him. But if he only wants to be her FRIEND, then why is he sneaking around? And if he only saw her as a FRIEND, surely he wouldn't be risking his MARRIAGE to talk to a FRIEND?!?

I want my marriage to work. Do you think he will ever give this woman up? I still feel like he's having an affair, even if they're not doing anything. Do you think my husband is in love with her????? Doyou think I can trust him to not try anything with her????? I'm so scared of losing my marriage and I don't know what to do. He's out working the late shift and I have no idea what to do when he comes home in the morning. I really don't want to leave him. Actually, I've decided that I won't. But I'm not sure what I am going to do.

You can't know that. You're speculating so as to put all the responsibility on her. Regardless of what she did or didn't do, cheating (i.e. going outside your marriage to have intimacy needs met) is an inappropriate response. Period. And making excuses for cheating or trying to color it as "friends" indicates to me that he would no more be a successful candidate for couples counseling than my doorstop.

She has no control over her hubby, his girl friend, the computer and finally she has lost control of her life and herself. My advise is to regain your self control and dignity and utilize the services of a therapist. Once she has regained her self control she then can decide on a course of action with a professional guiding her. Do you have a better suggestions Monkey Face?

Harvey7.

Completely agree with your advice that she get therapy. Disagree with how you stated it, as though she created the problem. She did not. Her self-control did not create the issue. His cheating did.

My suggestion is that when only one person is working on a marriage, the marriage isn't working. What she decides to do about that is up to her. But the unfortunate place in which she finds her self is in no way the result of her actions. It's the result of his lack of character.

I think parts of what makes this so hard to handle is that he's never been anything other than a really great guy. I'm 100% sure that he's never done anything like this before. I know that sounds nuts cuz of what he's doing now, but its what i knw in my heart. He's got so much integrity and such strong principles about everything else. This just seems so crazy out of character for him. I don't understand why she's so important to him. I know that they never did anything sexual, cuz I read all their chats since day 1 when I first found out. I went through his whole computer. Also cuz we had a very religious upbringing, we both don't believe in meaningless sex. We both believe that our marriage is sacred and that divorce is a sin, so I really do not want to divorce him, cuz I feel that would be wrong in the eyes of God.

How do I get him to give her up and work on us, though? I'm so scared that he'll leave me.