[lint]

Husband/Emotional Affair:

This past summer I had looked for responses re: emotional affairs. I had found out that my husband met a woman at a conference, took 3 days to get to know one another. Found her emails declaring her love for him. Was devestated. After months of counseling by myself & confronting this other person & actually found out my husband told her he loved her, I'm still devestated. 2 years ago he had befriended 3 lonely women & hung out with them & put their needs above mine. He felt that I was too demanding & held a grudge because I put a stop to their friendship. He told me that had things been right between us, he would never had developed this relationship. I believe him that nothing physical happened but I still had a hard time trusting him again with my feelings. Well in the meantime, I had found a phone calling card, which he used to call this new woman, had found out that he had purchased drugs over the net. I did confront the other woman & basically blackmailed her & told her that if communication didn't stop, I would share the emails with her husband. She really didn't like that idea & agreed.
My husband & I have had lengthy conversations but I still don't trust him.

Now the real problem is that I turned to an old boyfriend for help. Even though I haven't seen him in 20+ years & haven't talked with him in 10+ years, it's like the friendship between us has become strong. He did help me track the phone calls on the phone card & presented that to my husband. I did tell my husband that "John" had helped me gather the information & I had told him everything about our problems in the past 3 years. I did tell my husband that if it weren't for John, I would've left him. Well, the more John & I talk & discussed what went wrong in our relationship, I'm starting to have mixed feelings regarding him & my husband. FYI: I did break up with "John" to marry my husband. I know I need to cut off contact with John but finding it hard. I look forward to his calls & emails & find myself thinking alot about him. I know I'm cheating in my heart, but it is nice to get the attention & know that someone out there really does care for me.

Sorry this is long, any advice would be appreciated.

[Reckless]

Well, I suppose you could keep speaking to John and see if two wrongs make a right but I know that in your heart you know that it is not going to help your home situation.

You mentioned going to counseling alone, do you think your husband is willing to fight to save your marriage or not? It seems to me that he was in these 'friendships', looking for the same thing you are, a certain degree of emotional support and an outlet for feelings of frustration. Can't you both see to looking for that from each other instead of people on the outside?

Most people don't 'realize' they really want out of a marriage until they have offered a viable alternative and source of love by an outsider - you did well to 'stop' the rot of inappropriate friendships but it doesn't look from your post that either you or your husband as to how to work back to becoming each others 'best friends'.

I'm sure there's much more to your story but I think the first step is for you to cut off contact with John and see if your husband wants in or out of your marriage.