Need to hear it from another happily married man ?

[Want2Understand]

Hello all. I am trying to understand or learn what I need to do to help my situation. I am curious why a happily married man would need to meet and chat online with new women? The conversations all seem pretty harmless and casual when he let me look after someone emailed me a link to it with the subject 'husband picture', and he has said I am welcome to look at his account anytime. But I guess part of me wonder's what this fixation he has with meeting new women and conversing with them? Is it normal? Is he really unhappy? He says he is happy and everything is great (now). We just had a fight not too long ago in which he admitted he was unhappy about a few things that he was bitching/venting on this website to some new women he is now friends with. And I have corrected the issues he let me read about, more than 100%. Thanks for any suggestions, insight or help with this.

[MCMLXXXIX]

I am not married, but I consider this behavior strange and possibly harmful. Personally, I would not want to meet other women online in neither a relationship, fiancé or marriage context.

[KungFuJoe]

I'm very happily married and I find his behavior strange. There's no problem with making new friends but is he purposely targeting women only to be friends with?

 

Also the part about venting to others...the only person you should be venting to about your relationship is your partner. This shows that there is clearly a communication problem going on.

[Radagast]

As a happily married man I find his behaviour difficult to relate to. Is he conflict avoidant?

[redtail]

I am happily married and I too would find this behavior objectionable.

 

I personally would not do anything nor start anything that would make my wife uncomfortable or even question my motives. Early in our marriage a woman that I had dated prior to meeting my wife, emailed me and seemed like she wanted to start "chatting" regularly, even after I told her I was married now. I told her no and put a filter on my email so I never even saw if she responded, end of story.

 

It's not that I don't have female friends, but they're mutual friends with my wife and I.

[Want2Understand]

• Thanks for all the replies. I guess I just picked a bad apple that there are married men who do see a fault in this. *sigh*. I am just not sure what to think still. My manager said all guys need a place to vent. For most guys they go out with other guy friends and have a beer and talk the **** they need. However. My husband is very introverted. And gets bad anxiety when in a social situation. This means, while he has some male friends, they don't exactly hang out together, they are more the kind of friends when there is a work function they would hang out together, or if one of them needed help with a move, they would be there. If that makes sense.
  

 

 

• Rada: Yes. It took me confronting him about the account to tell me what his underlying problems were. He says he will now tell me if another conflict comes up. In the conversations I read. He was basically saying how he didn't want to come right out and say "I don't like this" was basically hinting around at things hoping I would get the clues. Ive told him before he just has to tell me. But I guess its so deeply part of his introverted personality that he has a hard time with it still. He has gotten better over the course of our relationship together. But it's slow going.
  

 

 

• KungFuJoe: Sort of? I guess guys don't really message other guys on this website. lol. The website he is using is called tagged.com, on this site his secret profile which has now been deleted in place of using the account that he had originally that I knew of and am friended on. But on this site, there are games and other "apps". One of them is called Meet Me. He said basically if someone clicks Yes he will (or would before when he was seeking advice) message them and say he was married and only looking for advice and friendship and that he loved his wife. In the conversations I read when I first confronted him, that was true.
  

 

 

• LadyGrey: I really am still on the fence which is why I came here hoping to get more input and direction. I mean. In a sense. He doesn't want to tell our mutual friends about "problems" I suppose, burden then. So he uses these strangers.
  

Edited August 9, 2012 by Want2Understand
paragraphs are all stuck together.