Dear DSO: "We Are Not The Same Since My Wife's Emotional Affair"

Okay, if you're a frequent listener of the Dad Starting Over podcast and you find yourself saying, "Yeah, that sounds like me," well, you don't need another podcast episode. What you need is support. The Help for Men Brotherhood is where men go when they're done pretending that they got it all handled. You know, your dead bedrooms, your divorce, your loneliness, your rebuilding life. We have private forums, frequent live Zoom meetings, one-on-one coaching courses, all my books at no additional charge. And yes, we get together in person, real men and real conversations. So stop doing this alone and join the Help for Men Brotherhood today at help4men.com/join. I look forward to seeing you in the next member meeting. Hello everyone. We have a new Dear DSO entry on the website and you can submit your own question or story to dadstartingover.com/dear-dso, and if it's a good one, I will answer it here for the whole world to see. And this one comes from Jay, and the subject line is, "How should I feel?" Interesting. He says, Ralph Brewer Brewer Brewer, I contemplated for quite some time whether or not to send this message for advice. I have such a great deal of respect for the advice that you bring to the table. Oh, that's nice of you to say. Thank you. And I think I need some perspective. My partner of 11 years and I are both in the prime of our lives, yet it doesn't feel like anything is, quote, prime. Roughly 7 years into our relationship, I found out that for a brief time she was engaged in an emotional affair. At least to my knowledge, he says, that's as far as it went, with another man that she worked with temporarily. It blew up our universe. I wanted nothing to do with her immediately after, but she was incredibly remorseful for what she had done. But to this day, I don't feel that she was completely honest with me. It was as if she shrouded by a fog at the time of her life and was a completely different person. So who knows what she could have been capable of, right? It's been about 2 years since our last conversation about it. I even tried couples therapy, which was my idea, and I don't feel like we were able to get anywhere as she has avoided issues and didn't see the utility of the therapist's recommendations, which pointed out both our flaws. And I took it to heart and was willing to make an honest change and still have been trying. Our relationship isn't terrible, but ever since the affair, romance of all forms has significantly tapered off. Granted, we've had 2 kids since then. They are little and I get that side of things. So he's saying because they're little, the romance dies. Gotcha. I appreciate what she does for the family as a mom, but I can't help but struggle with thoughts of inadequacy due to the significant decline in our partnership and our sex. We used to have adventure. We used to laugh and joke all the time, and it was sustained for a very long time, well beyond the, quote, honeymoon phase. But now she spends most of her time glued to her phone or watching the kids and is fairly negative about life in general. And I'm sitting on the couch after work and chores just feeling this longing. Parentheses, I'm working on fixing that since reading The Dead Bedroom Fix recently. There are glimpses of the woman that I fell in love with, but it's not enough for me to feel content. Parentheses again, and I don't think it's enough for her either. She deserves electric passion and fun, he says. I found my thoughts wandering more and more as time keeps passing and our passion for one another continues to be, for lack of a better term, dulled. I love her and I love my kids, but how do we get that primordial fire back? I know it'll probably never be as it once was, and that's fine. I just want more glimpses of her. And I want to feel seen and deeply loved and desired by my best friend. Sad. Thank you for listening. Oh, Jay, thank you first of all for reaching out and sharing this. I appreciate you finally got up the courage to reach out to yours truly. I appreciate the compliments, all very, very nice of you. It's a very touching story. I think a lot of men can relate to this. But you got, you know, I don't know, I often use the term, you got a perfect storm of issues going on here. But in your case, you kind of do. Let's Set the affair aside for now and just look at your situation as, you know, two parents of two young kids, and you've been together for years and years. Right away, those are all things that chop away at that visceral, lustful sexual connection between two people. What gets in the way of that? Time, familiarity, safety. Those all chop away at it, right? Especially in the women in our lives. Thing to kids. Oh geez, that's just like, for some people it cuts it off completely. Some women and men, believe it or not, report to me, ever since having children, the sexy part of me is gone. I don't see my partner as a sexual being anymore. It's almost like Mother Nature flipped a switch to say, you know, this person's job, this person's job is done as your mate, your baby-making mate, move on. And you know what, they're not wrong. That's kind of what Mother Nature is doing. That's why you kind of have to fight it. But anyway, um, So you have that working against you. And here you are, the typical male, you know, I want that glimpse of the old her back, and you see it in glimpses, but she seems very resistant, very avoidant, if you will. I'm not saying that's what she is, but she's kind of checking some of the boxes here. And you are checking some of the boxes as Mr. Anxious, you know, you're preoccupied with the health of the relationship, and I want to better connect, and I want that connection, I want that feeling again. But all of this, let's go back to the affair. Let's take that off the shelf for now. And put it front and center. All of this is colored by the affair. You know, I always talk about emotional affairs in my videos, and it always surprises me that people are like, what the hell's that? Some people, you know, hear emotional affair, and then they'll hear the description of it, and they'll be like, that's no big deal. Everybody does something like that, right? Well, for some, your more sensitive types, it's a big honking deal, myself included. Emotional affair basically means no touching, none of that stuff, no sexual whatever going on. But you have a deep emotional, probably sexual, over-the-line connection with another human being. Over-the-top flirting, sexy messages, maybe even pictures back and forth, videos back and forth, you know, texting each other hundreds, if not thousands of times a day kind of thing. And but you don't ever actually physically get together, but you're still in an inappropriate relationship by most people's standards, by most monogamous people's standards, you're You're still in a very inappropriate relationship between you and another person, often another married person, which makes it even more titillating and forbidden. These are all ingredients that come together to form something that is very, very addictive, which is what you saw. You saw your wife in the throes of an addiction, basically. Kind of like if she was suddenly an alcoholic or a drug addict, you notice she's not herself anymore. She seems very overwhelmed with feelings and She seems like her attention is elsewhere. She's more concerned about this thing over here than family and husband and what's going on with her. And then voilà, you discovered, oh, she's talking to somebody else. I don't know, you didn't give the particulars about how you found this out or whatever, but you're also, uh, hinting at your, um, a lot of anxiety around, I'm not sure she told me the whole story. I'm not sure that she in fact stopped that emotional So you're saying that that matters to you, that if it did cross the line into physical, what is this, completely over at that point? You know, you're going to ask me, what are the chances that that went physical? Pretty high, to be quite honest with you. It's very rare that an emotional affair stays emotional for very long. Sorry, I don't mean to throw like gasoline on the anxiety fire here, but chances are it probably went farther than what you think. But I think what you're seeing here is somebody who got a taste of the the good life, so to speak. In other words, they got a taste of that old-new relationship energy, that honeymoon phase with a different human. And then that was wiped from the table, and now they're back to secure, safe, quote-unquote boring, typical, predictable relationship. And there's nothing wrong with any of those things per se, but when it comes to the visceral, erotic, sexual connection, and that bleeds over into emotional connection as well, with another human, you can't match what she had with the other dude when it comes to that category. There's just no— nothing you can do to match that energy. It's just we're hardwired to be drawn and addicted to that. That's what got you and the wife together and connected so many years ago. You had that feeling too, and so did she. And then it naturally dissipated, as if Mother Nature again is saying, hey, your job is done here. And she found it with somebody else. It's not nice, it's not good, but it's not unheard of. And dare I say, it's a very, um, typical trait of human beings to form connections with multiple people throughout their lives. Unfortunately, the deal was she wasn't supposed to do that while she's married to you, right? She was supposed to have boundaries in place between her and other humans to keep those kind of inappropriate connections from happening. So she's at work, Guy at work says, "Hey, you look awful hot today." She's supposed to say, "That's very inappropriate. I'm married. Do you want me to go to HR and get your ass fired? Don't ever do that again." A lot of women don't because of, you know, the agreeableness personality trait, and they don't want to get in trouble. They don't want to cause a scene, you know, whatever it may be. But for some people who lack those boundaries, that can very quickly lead to some not-so-good stuff, unfortunately. And it sounds like your wife gave you pretty strong indication of she's lacking in some of those boundaries. And probably with hindsight being what it is, you probably look back on your relationship and go, yeah, she hasn't had boundaries when it comes to a lot of stuff in her life. This is kind of, you know, part and parcel for who she is. And you look back, go, well, no wonder she formed an inappropriate relationship with somebody else. I saw this coming a while back. So here she is, post-affair. She got a taste of the good life, so to speak. You know what I mean when I say that. And, um, now she's thrusted back into the old faithful husband and two kids, little kids, and advancing age and all this other stuff. And she's escaping on her phone. She's trying to self-medicate, if you will. I'm glad you read the book The Dead Bedroom Fix, which is basically a template for how to create the best type of atmosphere in your marriage from a male's perspective to elicit sexual connection between the two of you. Things that you can do as a man on your side of the fence. But as I say in the book pretty bluntly, you're only one side of the equation, dude. She has to be the one to say, I'm willing also to do this dance, this sexy dance, if you will. Between the two of us. I'm willing to put down some of my barriers and allow that connection to happen. But it sounds like she's like, ain't happening. Marriage counseling? Eh, don't get much out of it. You want to do this? You want to do that? You're Mr. Anxious reaching across the aisle, so to speak. Do you want to now? Do you want to do this? Read this thing? Watch this video? Let's go to counseling. And in some cases, it takes the old ultimatum, which is, I love your wife. I want us to be We were a couple, but ever since the dreaded affair— yes, I'm bringing it up again, I know you hate to hear it, but yes, I haven't gotten over it yet. Why haven't I gotten over it? Because of the following. You know, have this little speech prepared. I'm not happy with this, this, and this. Now here comes the dreaded ultimatum. I am not happy with where we're at in this relationship, and here's why. Are you, wife, willing to work with me to get to a place where I feel it's, it's, we're at a healthier place as a couple. But I gotta warn you, wife, what that's gonna involve is going back to the affair thing from years ago, and further hashing that out and getting to a place where I feel comfortable with where we're at. And I may not ever feel comfortable. And I may decide, wife, that I don't want to continue this relationship. Sorry. But I don't want to just throw in the towel. I want to work on this. Are you willing, wife, to work on this with me? It may mean facing some not so good stuff about you, about us, about me. What do you say? And if she says, what if I don't? That's where, dude— switch your name— Jay, that's where you got to say, or I'm going to shake hands and say, this is it, we're done here. You have to be willing to get to that place mentally, get to that place, you know, internally, and outwardly say that to her. I'm willing to go there. Sorry. Are you willing to break up your family? Be a model for how parents don't work out issues with— to the two kids we have now? Is that what you're going to do? You're going to show them, you know, how mothers just give up on relationships, how mothers go and have emotional affairs and then give up on remaining connected to their husbands? Is that what you want to show them? I'm willing to work on this. Are you? You have to understand, she may very well say, no, I'm not, see you later, bye. She was just waiting for such a moment to make that declaration. Or she may say, fine, you know, what do we got to do? That's probably the best bet. Fine, whatever, what do you got to do? And then you say, all right, Wednesday, 8 AM, we're going to go meet with Dr. So-and-so, the psychologist, therapist, whatever. I already made the appointment, we're going. And it ain't going to be a home run. You know, after session number 1. We're talking multiple sessions. We're talking a lot of patience on your part. We're talking roller coaster before it eventually smooths out. And even with that, you need to be honest with yourself and say, okay, this is best case scenario, up and down, up and down, finally smoothed out. When it finally smooths out, Jay, what the hell is it that you want? And is what you want realistic? And is what you want fair to this wife? Does she have the tools in her toolbox to make that happen? I know she had it before, but buddy, that was so many years ago. That was a different chapter of her life. And unfortunately, we have this giant, you know, stick of dynamite thrown in the whole thing with the affair guy. Ouch. Are we sure that's completely over? Are we sure she's not still been in contact with the guy? Are we— there's all these questions. They all have to be answered in some way. I don't know if that's possible, to be quite honest with you. Only you can decide. So the big question that you have here is, how should I feel? Dude, there's no shame in however you feel. That's why I say to a lot of people, it's okay to feel. You know, people come to me and say, I have contempt, I have this, I have that, I have no attraction to the spouse. It's like, it's okay, dude. These feelings are there for a reason. Process them, feel them out. You may very well say, you know, I'm feeling a lack of connection and I feel contempt towards her and I feel disgust and I feel That's cool. That's— of course you do. Who wouldn't, right? So work through those things with or without her. But how you feel is not the issue. It's what you do, what action you take. That's everything, buddy. If you want to, you can reach out to me and talk one-on-one, and we can work through this. Go to help4men.com, go up to coaching, and you can see my profile as well as the profile of everybody else on the team. Somebody else may, may be a better fit for you. Or you can join our private men's group, the HFM Brotherhood. We have private discussion forums. A lot of guys have been in your shoes, trust me. We have live Zoom meetings. You get all my books at no extra charge, including the audiobook version of all my books at no extra charge, including Austin's book, which may be right up your alley, which is called Why Sex Ends After Kids. They want to check that out. We also get together in person. We have our 5th annual conference in the States coming up here soon. In addition to all that, you also get big discounts on that coaching that I mentioned. So it makes financial sense to join the group, get all those benefits, and get the cheaper coaching. All that together ends up being cheaper than if you were just get the one coaching session by itself, the public pricing. I know we try to make this as inexpensive as possible and easy for guys to join. We're trying to help as many men as we can. There are millions of you out there that just need a helping hand, a little boost over the wall. So check it out, help4men.com and the HFM Brotherhood. But best of luck to you, brother. Keep in touch. Thanks so much.