I think I may be in trouble.

[KathyM]

I want to restate some of the good advice other posters have given you on here. Start independent counseling to work on your midlife crisis issues. Redirect your attention to your wife. Put a picture of your wife and kids on your desk. Call your wife or text her on your lunch hour to tell her you love her. Flirt with your wife, sext your wife, redirect your romantic/sexual feelings to your wife. And I think the idea of Aversion Therapy is great what some posters are suggesting, that you can do yourself right now. Close your eyes and visualize this young women briefly in your head, and then immediately switch the thought to your wife crying, packing her bags and leaving you, walking away from you, with your kids following behind her. Every time you think about this woman, replace that thought with the one of your wife leaving you. Eventually, every time you think of this woman or see this woman at work, your mind will automatically go to the thought of your wife leaving you, and that will help to make the consequences more real to you. Right now, when you are seeing or thinking about this woman, you are not automatically thinking about the consequences to that, and so you are feeding your mind positive thoughts, whereas what you need is to replace those positive thoughts with the negative reality. It's the same principle as how to treat smoking addiction by having the smoker visualize having a smoke and then picturing the smoke entering his lungs which are black and damaged. You need to actively replace the positive thoughts you now have of this woman with the negative thoughts of your wife devastated and leaving you.

 

And make sure you are building back or adding whatever is currently missing in your marriage. Have a date night once a week to strengthen your emotional connection with your wife. Energize your sex life with some new techniques you've read about. Buy some massage oil, some sex toys, and put more creativity into your sex life with your wife.

 

And last but not least, set some firm boundaries to protect your marriage. No lunches with women from the office, unless in a large group. No private conversations with other women you are attracted to. Keep it professional if you have to interact. Stop the flirting. Stop giving other women your attention. You apparently feel the need for extra validation, so when you feel that need arise, call your wife so she can flirt with you and tell you what a handsome (or whatever) guy you are.

[Agent73]

About the boundaries thing Steadfast just mentioned- it would be wise to really examine that issue.

 

You did break a boundary, and are choosing to actively deceive your wife about the details of the situation.

 

Why is that important?

 

Because now that you have rationalized this behavior as "ok", it becomes normal. It becomes a baseline for your ethics. So if in the future something else happens,in your subconscious it's now "ok" for you to flirt a little, not tell wife, focus on the marriage, and go back to normal.

 

That's like a line of bad programming in a computer program.

 

The danger is when you are faced with a new choice- the new choice may now seem "not as bad" because the baseline has been changed. So you re-write your program again if no terrible consequences from the first choice/justification cycle have been experienced. And so on and so on until one day you wake up and exclaim "how the hell did I get here?"

 

So really think long and hard about what is ok-what is your ethical baseline when it comes to deceiving your wife and flirting with girls?

 

What would you want your wife to do in this same predicament?

 

Only you can answer these questions- and they deserve some time, thought, and critical thinking analysis.

 

To be frank, I definitely don't think what I've done is 'OK'. That's precisely why I worried myself into a stupor a few nights back and sought out this forum. It's hugely not ok. If I thought for a moment that any part of it was I'd be fine. I'm not.

 

The one thing I have learnt in all this is that I'm vulnerable. I've been with my wife for 10 years now (married for 6) and in that time there's only ever been two women who have affected me in this way. Not women I've fancied or been momentarily attracted to, that's easy to deal with. But two women (of which this work girl is number two) who have made my grip on things waiver. I have to stress I HAVE DONE NOTHING with either. That's not an excuse, I know you can be unfaithful in your head as well as in body. What was different this time (aside from the age & proximity) was that I realised it was happening and am seeking help. Like falling off the wagon.

 

I'm also not blaming my wife. BUT, as everyone knows, a relationship is a game of two halves. It has been 10 years and some of that has been tough, for both of us. We have both changed. I see in her the same magnificent things I fell for a decade ago but I also see a lot less love or respect for me. I daresay she would say something similar. We talk less, we share less and we **** less.

 

She didn't drive me to start flirting with this woman anymore than I drove her become less warm to me. **** happens. I'm going to deal with what I can and then try to help her. Whether that's to deal with what she's going through or just to deal with me, only time will tell.

 

Anyhow, girl is not out of my head (and not in my bed) but I do know that I need her to be (out of my head - NOT in my bed). Wife is definitely in my head and bed and always has been.

 

This has been useful folks. It really has.

[It-is-what-it-is.]

Ok, so I am hearing more of what we need to hear to know you get it. May I push on another point?

 

Marriage has ups and downs and ebbs and flows. When you notice the down swing, you MUST redouble your efforts. Romance and the, ahem, sex that accompanies comes as a result of that investment.

 

Women generally need a certain amount of out of the bed warming up. Most people need some kind of physical affection to feel close.

 

I hope in your quest to improve things you address this, but that you also work to ensure that you are not looking for external validation when things are not going well.

 

Good luck.