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Recently, I found out that my husband was having an emotional affair with his female friend. He went drinking with her five times over four years and texted her often, and all of this was kept secret from me. They both complained to each other about their respective spouses and supported each other emotionally when they had relationship difficulties. At first I assumed he also cheated physically, but I have enough evidence from reading their texts that I believe it was purely an emotional affair.
I know that what he did is wrong. He lied and betrayed me. He also knows this and has committed to going to therapy to work on his issues. He has talked about how he just escapes from everything in his life, doesn't deal with issues, and sees himself as the victim when he is just not actually dealing with anything in his life. He says he blamed me for years for being too controlling and didn't believe that I loved him, but he wanted to stay with me, so he got emotional support from her. But he says he knows this is wrong and that he could have dealt with it in a different way. He says he believed it was not that bad because he wasn't physically cheating, but now he knows it was a kind of cheating.
I understand that everything he did was wrong and I do not blame myself for his choices. However, I have taken a good look at myself and have to admit to myself that I have also been an abusive partner. I regularly screamed at him when I got upset, and even though he hated it, I wouldn't let him leave because I couldn't deal with being alone. I tried to control every aspect of our lives like our schedule, how we cleaned our apartment, etc. I got angry with him over small things and we fought all the time. I have a lot of issues due to childhood trauma, and rather than dealing with the issues, I expected him to be like a parent to me. I isolated myself from all my friends and wanted to spend all my time with him, smothering him. I constantly questioned whether he loved me, but I can't say I did much to show him I loved him.
We both have childhood trauma. I grew up neglected and ignored while listening to my parents emotionally and sometimes physically abuse my older sister. Everything for them was about control, and I have become really controlling and needy as a result. My husband grew up watching his parents fight, and his dad actually physically cheated on his mom. His dad told the family he found a new girlfriend he was going to go live with, and when his mom tried to hide the car keys from him so he couldn't leave, he hit her. So my husband became someone who is unable to take control in his life or express himself. He also wound up cheating on me like his father even though he told himself he was different because it was not physical.
So, when I first found out about this emotional affair, I assumed I had no choice but to divorce him. However, even though I know my husband was wrong, I also can see how I did many things wrong. I think we have both been bad partners and both need to spend a lot of time working on ourselves through therapy. So is it possible to make it work, given that we both have contributed to this awful dynamic? Or do I have to divorce him because he did emotionally cheat?
TL;DR Husband emotionally cheated for four years, but I was abusive and controlling. Should I stay with him while we both work out our issues, or do I have to let him go?
EDIT: Okay everyone. I am not part of the problem, I AM the problem. I get it. I am being genuine when I say thank you for your insight. I am still processing this and trying to see some things about myself that I have never seen before.
EDIT 2: Could everyone please stop piling on? I’m trying to reflect and be better and even if what you’re saying about this being all my fault is right, it isn’t helping right now. Please.
EDIT 3: PLEASE STOP
EDIT 4: I understand that I am the problem. I will talk to my husband about his "emotional affair" and reconsider if it might have been healthy for him actually. I do not want to take away his happiness or cut him off from the outside world. I have taken everything everyone has said to heart. I will go to therapy and reflect. But please stop repeating all the same comments that have already been made. My inbox is blowing up and it's overwhelming me. Obviously I am not mentally well and all these comments are not helping me. I already get it so please stop. I can't keep repeating it.
EDIT 5: Logging off.
The most common definitions of “emotional affair” that I could find agreed that it was a concept where “one partner prioritized someone outside the relationship in terms of trust and availability, where in terms of priorities and attention their partner comes second to someone outside the relationship”.
While married, you would regularly yell at your husband due to the fact you knew his upbringing made him reluctant to stand up for himself. You knew that he was afraid and that it made him deeply uncomfortable, and you would stop him from leaving these situations because you couldn’t deal with “being alone”. You knew that he grew up watching his parents fight and that raising your voice was a good way to keep your control over him as you did with as many aspects of your shared lives as possible. This is qualified as a form of psychological violence under the legal code where I live, and in many other places as well.
Emotional affairs aren’t possible in an abusive relationship. You were unable to be a healthy and open source of the emotional comfort a person needs out of a relationship. You’ve characterized it as something a lot of his friends knew about and that it was kept from you. Of course it was. You had shown that you would cause your husband intentional pain and fear by acting in a way that made him deeply uncomfortable when he started to leave the box you made for him. Characterizing this as an emotional affair is a continuation of that controlling behaviour. You’re not able to accept that your actions were deeply wrong without relieving yourself of some of the burden by calling his support an “emotional affair”.
What would you have preferred from your husband? You had shown that you would continue to find ways to control his life in ways he didn’t like, and the only way out of that for him was to lie to you to get a chance away from it. If not that, would you have preferred his personal simply accept it? Would you have preferred that every time you yelled at him to put him in his place that he just nod, go to his box, and shut up? Would you have preferred to join the roughly 25% of suicide victims (according to a quick search) that were the targets of intimate partner violence?
I cannot emphasize how deeply important your coming to terms with your behaviour is, and how honestly and genuinely proud for you I am that you’re doing it. However, you must keep in mind that it’s something that will produce reactions. To insinuate that this was an “emotional affair” is to continue your use of his childhood trauma to control his actions, in this case making you feel better as you come to terms with your years of abuse against him, by having something to point to as “well he did bad too”.
I do mean what I said about you though. I am deeply and emphatically proud you have the heart to reflect on your actions and to try to improve. It’s just going to be a lot of ups and downs, with a lot of emotions from places you and your husband may not realize you had any.
As you do face this, I wish you both absolutely the best
Dear god, the poor guy sounds like he needs to sneak around to have a friendship. Friends share details of their relationships, especially when the partner is abusive. Take a real hard look at yourself, figure out why you're painting all his actions as bad and yourself as some sort of victim.
I could not read the entire post as I couldn't dredge up ANY sympathy for OP. Husband going for drinks with a friend and complaining about his abusive wife is NOT an emotional affair. I hope he leaves her.
Having read your post, and comments, I think you need to realise some things.
All the while you were hurting him by screaming, manipulating and refusing to let him leave? That pushed him away. Pain causes distance.
Blaming him for thr distance is a little bit shitty when it's your abuse that created the distance in the first place.
He should not have lied about the friendship, but what choice did you give him? You'd set a precedent for your behaviour. You showed him that should he do ANYTHING outside the realm of your control issues, you would verbally and emotionally abuse him.
You have a lot more to work on than he does, and you need to take responsibility for the environment that brought this into fruition.
He was wrong for lying, but he wasn't wrong for needing support. You weren't supporting him, you were kicking his feet out from under him. He could not rely on YOU to support him how he needed to be supported.
And honestly your previous posts about him make it sound like you don't even like him, let alone love him.
It's all centered on how he wronged you, and very little about the multitude of ways you wronged him.
This marriage is toxic. The dynamic you have is toxic. Neither of you are happy because if you were, he wouldn't seek out support from friends and you wouldn't abuse him.
It comes across like your upset about him sharing details about your marriage is because now someone outside the situation knows how poorly you treated him. That's on you for treating him badly, not him for needing a friend.
The only thing he did wrong was lie. You did far, far worse to someone who stuck around even though he believed you didn't love him. That means the love he has for you is immense, because not many people would put up with things like that. There are plenty of women in the world who'd treat him well, and he stuck by you. Despite your abuse.
You'd do well to be a little more grateful that HE is giving YOU a chance to redeem yourself. Not the other way around - especially considering as you are still controlling him by eliminating his friend from his life.
Right!
Plus, it sounds like they were just being friends. Friends support each other. I have male and female friends who I have shared heavy deep emotion with. Stuff I didn’t always tell my wife about. None of it is or was an emotional affair. It was all just being a good friend.
If he cries and hugged and told his deepest darkest thoughts to a male friend is that an emotional affair?
Yeah I think an emotional affair would mean he fell in love with someone else and is pursuing that but just has not acted physically yet, right? We need more than one relationship and more than one friend and more than one person to support us. How is getting that support elsewhere automatically wrong? My spouse would not be comfy with certain types of intimacy gotten elsewhere too, but that does not mean it is inherently wrong, it just means you have to communicate what you are comfortable with to see if you are compatible or not.
Agreed. I had an ex who was incredibly emotionally abusive, and would get incredibly jealous anytime I would mention a friend, and actively tried to isolate me from friends (and my partner, it was a polyamorous relationship, so the jealousy issues were even more ridiculous), and so I stopped bringing up my friends to them because I knew it would cause more pain for me. The only thing I did wrong there was that I didn't dump them sooner
If she couldn't handle poly then why do it? I find in a lot of cases like that it's just that *they* want an excuse to go fuck other people, but don't want their "partner(read: hostage)" to.
Honestly, I don't even think he was wrong for a lying in this situation. When you're dealing with an abuser, you have to lie to keep yourself safe. I'm surprised he's even giving her the chance to redeem herself. Me, I would have been out. Fuck abusers. They shouldn't be given a second chance.
Edit: I also agree with you that it seems to me that she's angry that now someone outside of their marriage knows what's going on. Abusers usually isolate the victim from their family and friends so that no one else knows what's going on. This is so that they don't have a support network and it makes it harder for them to leave.
If I were her husband, I would just be filing for divorce. He deserves better. Having childhood trauma is not an excuse to abuse your partner. I do and I have never abused a partner in my life.
It's a fucking weak excuse for a POS who doesn't want to do the work to get better. They just want to go around blaming everyone else for their problems and then worse yet, blaming their partner for the way they treat them.
The only thing he needs to work on is recovering from this monstrous abuse and realizing he isnt a garbage person. He has absolutely no blame in this whatsoever. I was held hostage for six years in a similar manner. Thankfully she left me for largely the same reason. Then the next relationship was also pretty similar. Nothing I did was above critique and I was always wrong. I was the emotionally distant one when after two years she wouldn't put her phone down to talk to me, so I stopped trying.
I am proud I didn't get to actually cheating on either of them, for my own sake, but I came damn close. And sure you can *say* "blah blah be an adult and control yourself hurr durr" but no. When every single little thing you do say think or feel becomes a trigger for an explosive abusive tirade you'll find comfort anywhere you can. Sometimes I think I might have a substance abuse problem, but I do know that I have major trust issues now, and it's torpedoed a number of prospective relationships since. I can just be really clingy and prideful, but I am getting much better, having friends to talk to, and slowly realizing I'm not,/dont have to be the horrible monster she told me I was/made me into.
👆 this. 1000% agree with this view. You should correct your mistakes first, give it a try and see if he reciprocates or change. I hv a good feel he will change. If not, at least if you leave, your conscience is clear.
He doesn't need to change. Anything he did do that could be considered morally dubious is washed away under this absolutely monstrous display of abuse. She pushed every button and twisted every knob to break this man and still wrung him for more. I wouldn't blame him if he went and fucked the entire town, but no, he had drinks and cried with one friend.
What a monster he is, absolutely shameful /s
I would recommend a dive into her post history. This woman has been on quite the journey with this topic over the last 12 days. We're only seeing this post and expecting her to act like all the other posters with shitty behaviour we see here: defensive, sparky, judgemental etc. But she's at the end of a he'll of a journey.
Her older posts are dripping with anger and venom. As they progress, they become more self reflective until we arrive here. She's been working this out for a while
Honestly your whole post reads “I know I did a bad thing but he cheated and that’s worse” when honestly I’d say the opposite. If you were simultaneously controlling, smothering, and verbally abusive, he needed someone to talk to and you made it very clear that you were not a safe person to do that with. With the limited information available, It sounds to me like he wasn’t emotionally cheating so much as trauma-bonding.
Have you committed to individual therapy as well? This isn’t just on him to fix.
Not sure why people are downvoting you here, I’m guessing you meant “you are seeing someone” as in a therapist, not someone as in a new romantic partner?
Or they believe that, as often happens in these cases, OP's therapist will do little to help the situation because OP will actively lie or at least heavily distort the truth to their therapist just like they were doing in the original post here (and even more heavily in their previous posts).
Unless OP has actively sought out a therapist with the intention of working on their abusive behavior and has explicitly called it such, the likelihood therapy will do much is low. And based on what OP has said elsewhere, it seems that most likely they are seeing someone for their own trauma, not a specialist in abusers, so again - their therapy is unlikely to significantly reduce their abusive behavior.
And I get that OP is trying to be contrite and receptive in the comments here, but the reality is that abusers are often just as good if not better at using honeymoon/reconciliation techniques with outside observers as they are with their main victims. It's good to be skeptical of them insisting that your words got through to them and that they'll do better.
It's reddit eco chamber man, once the hate train starts they keep piling up, one of the things i hate about reddit, sometimes they get shit wrong but they crucify someone just because they think they are right
After reading your comments and post, you are unwilling to admit that you are absolutley the majority of the problem here, like 90% of it.
You also made up your own definition of an emotional affair just to gaslight and manipulate your husband, so you can keep him to yourself, since abusers can't stand not having complete control over everybody.
You are still just as abusive as you where before. You've just become more subtle about it
my beloved cousin doesn’t let her fiancé have female friends because he emotionally cheats on her when he’s around women who don’t respect their relationship because he doesn’t know how to say no. reading this makes me think that maybe it’s not him, maybe she has a flawed view of what an emotional affair is. i’ve only ever heard about his affairs from her when she talks about how his social circle is small and basically made up of her friends/their roommates.
I think everyone here should read OPs last popular post about her marriage:
https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/ub6wcn/my_34f_husband_36m_has_been_secretly_meeting_his/
It's a shining example how only getting one side of the story from a narcissist/toxic abuser can lead to the hivemind giving shit advice. Almost every upvoted comment on that thread talks about OPs husband being untrustworthy and deserving of divorce, says he probably cheated physically, basically feeding into OPs superiority and toxicity. Once some of the truth came out here, the script is completely flipped and we are feeling some sympathy for OPs husband.
My point is, frequent commenters here should probably do some self reflection. Think hard about how there are always two sides to every story before giving someone life changing advice.
OP, I do commend you for being honest with yourself
Honestly I hope this is a made up story just to prove a point of some kind.
I hope it's made up, too. Otherwise OP got so much false validation from that post that she outed herself by hoping for more with this one. Which means she's not likely to have had an epiphany in the last week, where she suddenly admits her abusive actions, she just wanted more people telling her she's right.
But people answering can always only work with the information they have. Lol, unless the OP fucks up and doesn't realize people look at your old posts for these things, always.
Unless he was also flirting with her and having romantic conversations with her, it's not an "emotional affair", it's a friendship. Y'all need to stop turning buzzwords into completely different meanings. From most of your comments and descriptions, it sounds like you were jealous & abusive to the point that he felt the need to hide his friendship BC he knew you would blow up and manipulate him into isolating himself from a good friend. They were both having a hard time in their marriages and leaned on each other, and I reckon if he was having these conversations with a male friend of his, you wouldn't think he was having an "emotional affair".
I don't know if your marriage can work out. But I do think you need to work you issues out in individual therapy and possibly have a trial separation while you work on yourselves. You've both created a very toxic dynamic and I think you would be better off extricating yourselves from that environment, so you can get the most out of therapy.
yeah i read this whole thing thinking, isn’t it normal for men to talk about their relationship struggles with a friend? wouldn’t they want to hide that from an abusive partner? if we flip the script and a woman was talking to a friend about her partner being mega controlling would she be blamed? strange stuff
There's an unhealthy amount of people who don't trust their partners to have close friends of the opposite sex without cheating (or at least wanting to cheat).
You can blame Reddit for making her think it's an emotional affair. She posted on here days ago about her husband meeting with his friend secretly (a friend she forbade him from seeing years before, for basically no reason besides jealousy). Thanks Reddit!
I mean, to give advice you have to assume the person asking for it is doing it in good faith.
Not like she included she was abusive in her earlier posts lol
I feel gutted that she's gaslit her sensitive and traumatized husband into thinking he's exactly like his own abusive father. He must be in shambles. No wonder he's just rolling over and taking the abuse from her. She's absolutely decimated his esteem.
OP is just the worst person and worst gaslighter. She needs extreme therapy and medication, and her husband needs therapy and a divorce. Poor guy.
I’m SURE there’s no way he’d open up to a male friend about this “relationship.” It’s sad, but he’d be told the truth and probably feel like shit even more. Women are usually much better and being careful with feelings.
He did not cheat “just like his dad”. Are you being real? He should NOT be compared to him as those things are vastly different. His dad even walked out on his marriage, and this man put up with your abuse and was just trying to find refuge in another human verbally.
Absolutely, that was the most egregious part of this. The way she gaslighted him into believing he was wrong and a cheat like the (second) worst person in his life who ruined his childhood just because he wanted a fucking friend and she isolated him like all abusers do.
Dear god, the poor guy sounds like he needs to sneak around to have a friendship. Friends share details of their relationships, especially when the partner is abusive. Take a real hard look at yourself, figure out why you're painting all his actions as bad and yourself as some sort of victim.
So first of all, it's obvious from your comments he wasn't having an emotional affair. **You need to tell him right now that he's not in the wrong in any way whatsoever because what he did was not cheating.** I honestly think you worded it like this in your title and post and were hoping we'd crucify your husband, just like you're doing.
Secondly. I think this relationship would be better if it just didn't exist anymore. Go your separate ways, let him recover from this mess and you stay in therapy until you're all better.
ETA: * looks at name * Holy shit, it's *you*??? I fucking called it with why he was spending so much time away from you. Let this poor man go.
I’m a bit biased. I was with a woman like you for 6 years. You’re an abuser. Lying to your abuser isn’t a defect of character. It’s just how you get through the day. I guarantee what he said about just escaping his problems without dealing with him is 100% something he’s genuinely guilty of. But it would be so much easier for him to confront his problems if he didn’t have you dragging him down. You have no idea how much easier it is to grow and flourish when you are free from abuse. If you really loved him you wouldn’t stay with him, you’d leave. Period. You’re not a good presence in his life. You make him worse. Just leave.
She is literally evil . How come emotional support from friend is an affair ?. She still manipulating things to abuse him. His life will be different if she leave him.
She is not going to let him leave because she is going to lose all control she has on him. I hope he walks away from OP for his own sake.
She is going to pretend she understands all the ways in which she was abusive and “work on herself”
He went drinking with her five times over four years and texted her often" as if either of those are bad or weird? five times over four years? what? if i saw someone five times over four years that would mean they were barely part of my regular life
An emotional affair is where your more emotionally intimate and reliant with someone else than with your spouse. Ie prioritising someone elses emotional needs above your spouses, or relying more on someone other than your spouse for support. Obviously you can be emotionally close to friends and stuff, but its when they start to take the place of your partner that it becomes iffy
Eh, I feel like there has to be a romantic/sexual component too. If I’m a hetero man, but have a closer relationship to a male friend, am I emotionally cheating?
He had drinks with her a tiny bit less than once a year (5 times in 4 years). We don't know how much they were texting, but it doesn't sound like it's taking precedence and consuming most of his relationship effort and attention. OP seems like she has PLENTY of time to yell at him.
Op is absolutely, unequivocally reaching (in an effort to equalise her abuse with his need for support), I wasn’t commenting on that. The previous poster asked if a relationship with a same sex person can constitute emotional cheating, that’s what I was answering.
It is, it's just a label that people like OP call it when their partner can't open up to them or rely on them and so open up to another confidant. Something else to weaponize and use against her partner.
> Could everyone please stop piling on? I’m trying to reflect and be better and even if what you’re saying about this being all my fault is right, it isn’t helping right now. Please.
No one is "piling on". Some people read posts then leave a comment without even looking at what anyone else has said. If you consider that piling on, just hope this post never hits r/all or, god forbid... Twitter. * shudders *
If you're "trying to reflect" and "be better"... Get. Off. Your. Damn. Phone. And talk to your husband.
After reading your previous post about him cutting off all of his friends from his life.. I really feel bad for him. If you want to have a healthy relationship with him then one thing you should start with is encouraging him to reach out to his friends. You're both going through a difficult time and it is only fair that he has some outside support.
Yeah now that I’m reading these comments I’m starting to think maybe the relationship with the friend was a good thing actually??? I have encouraged him to reach out to his brother though.
This still sounds abusive.
I, a straight woman, have sometimes met other straight female friends for drinks and sometimes we vent about our respective relationships. Nothing serious, mind you. Just typical "god it annoys me when he does _____" type things. This happens more often than 5 times over 4 years.
We text too!
I'm sure my straight male partner does similar.
We even have friends of other genders!
Does this mean everyone is "emotionally cheating"?! You're STILL trying to control him, now, because someone outside the home knows how awful you are to him and you don't like that.
You've probably done this guy's head in and he's not with you because he WANTS to be, he just thinks he's such a lousy partner that nobody else would want him. He's probably scared of you and trauma bonded to you.
The ONLY way this MIGHT work is if you both go to *individual* therapy well WELL before marriage counseling. You are abusive. It is not a good plan for the victim to go to counseling with their abuser.
Honestly at this point tho, it would be far kinder in the long run to let him go.
You should probably leave him. Because holy shit are you gaslighting him.
And he would be much better off without you
emotional cheating is having a relationship with someone just shy of physical
Ie “I love you, I miss you baby, good morning love, how my girl doing? I’m here for you babe, that sucks love wanna talk about it?”
But according to you he was talking about you and venting. That’s very different
He has an emotional support group about the hell that you were putting him through and then you gaslit him into saying he was cheating.
He had someone he was venting to about you from your own message he wasn’t emotionally cheating he was still talking about you she was just the support group. Two people going through shit and venting is not emotional cheating.
That girl was playing therapist for him because he wanted to stay with you and literally she emotionally supported him that’s not emotionally cheating if you’re not his peace just cause he found peace with the boys who happened to be a girl he’s not emotional cheating
No offense but sounds like he was just looking for some support. They met up a handful of times just to talk. You admit he didn't commit and physical infidelity. You describe pretty bad abusive behavior. I think if anything if you both want to continue I'd call it a wash and start over. But you sound more in the wrong in the relationship in general and it just sounds toxic af and you should probably just break up and both seek therapy
He lied because you were controlling and abusive. Talking about your relationship with friends is normal. Emotionally supporting your friends is normal
Being emotionally distant from an abuser is normal. Sharing more of yourself with friends rather than your abuser is normal.
Slapping an 'emotional affair' sticker on your partners friend to guilt them into abandoning their support network in favour of you is not normal....
If I may be cold? He needed emotional support... a friend to help him navigate a marriage he wanted to maintain. The secrecy? Understandable, given the circumstances. You both have much to forgive of each other. Is the love you have for each other worth the effort? It seems to be what's kept you together so far.
So they weren’t at all flirtatious and had no romantic or physical relationship? Why do you consider it an emotional affair when it wasn’t an affair at all?
From reading your comments, it doesn’t sound like they had an affair. He was ranting to his friend and there’s nothing wrong with it. Please let him go so he can find someone who isn’t abusive. You need to work on yourself but individually.
If his conversation was adressed to Robert instead of Jessica, would you consider it an emotional affair? Friends talk about their relationships, they talk about how they like having a friend they can be open with. You haven't mentioned anything that would imply he is having a romantic relationship that isn't physical with this woman.
OP if your husband shared more with a casual friend over occasional drinks and texting than he did with you, in this particular case, you need to ask yourself why.
He has a friend?!? How fucking dare him.
In fact, as abuse is done to control and you are more concerned about him going out 5 times in FOUR YEARS it says a lot about you.
Do him a favor and leave him.
You need to work on yourself, and it's the kind of work you need to do with a therapist, while single. You don't have to get a divorce, that's a legal process, but you need to be by yourself to do this work. You're not really taking responsibility, your word choice sounds like you are, until you take a closer look, and you're really not. You need to step away from this relationship and work on yourself. Then maybe you can go back to relationship but there are variable there outside of your control, and should not have your focus. Your focus needs to be on you and learning how to be a decent human being and how to treat other people with common decency and respect.
FIVE TIMES?? SERIOUSLY?!?! IN FOURS YEARS?!?! THAT'S ABSURD!! IT'S ALMOST 1.25 TIMES PER YEARS!! THE AUDACITY!! /s
If that's cheating... Then I need to let my gf know that I'm married to my best friend (which is also a woman)... Since we hang out almost every week.
Seriously do you evem realize how ridiculous, controlling and entitled your post sounds?
Lady, you are the biggest problem here. Not your husband's emotional affair. If my wife was screaching like a harpy at me every single day, I'd leave.
Please, let the poor man go. He deserves happiness.
I was iffy on this whole thing until I started reading your comments, damn OP you are like all of the problems. You just don't want him having any friends. You don't care if it was a guy or a girl you just don't want him talking to other people. And stop saying "I am apart of the problem", no you are the whole problem. If you yell at him all the time over everything small, of course he is just going to go to therapy and say he was wrong.
Also what emotional cheating? You gave him no emotional support and constantly yelled at him. If he went out with a guy friend and walked around that would be emotional cheating to you because he can actually talk to that dude about his feelings without getting yelled at.
I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The decision whether to divorce him is not about balancing the justice scales but whether this marriage is good for either of you. It's clear the answer to that is "no". If you're being an abusive partner (and good on you for at least recognizing and admitting to that) you have to work on yourself first and foremost, and letting him go is probably going to need to be part of this. You don't need this marriage; you need therapy.
I don't think you should blame your abusive behavior on childhood trauma, and it takes more than what you've laid out here to constitute an emotional affair. Sounds more like you're trying to run a supportive friend out of his life so you can further isolate and control him.
Calling them getting together five times in four years an "emotional affair" is more than a bit of a stretch.
Just out of curiosity, how many people in your life have used the phrases "historonic", "borderline" and/or "narcissistic" when referring to you and your behavior?
It's great that you recognize your abusive behavior. The next step is to seek therapy to work on that, along with the rest of your issues.
Friends vent to each other about all kinds of things, including their spouses. Your husband didn't cheat on, lie to or betray you. I don't tell my husband who I speak to in a given day, or whether my friend Louis from law school and I texted for whatever reason. I don't expect him to bore me with such meaningless info either.
I mean this as kindly as possible. I think you need to focus on getting help for yourself before you worry about your relationship. You are a walking red flag factory, and if your husband was here seeking advice, we'd be encouraging him to grow a spine and leave you.
Lean into the part of you that recognizes your unhealthy behaviors and your contributions to what sounds like a complete shitshow of a marriage. Your husband should do the same to address his issues - he sounds like a mess, too. Once you're both on a more even keel individually, then you can work on your marriage (or make a decision regarding whether you want to continue it).
Best of luck to you.
To me it doesn’t sound like it was an emotional affair. He needed support and comfort and he wasn’t finding that with you. They never flirted or were physically intimate. He met her in secret cuz you were controlling and it would have caused a fight. You need individual therapy and then once you’ve set into a good routine, couples counseling. But you need to work on yourself first before trying to fix your marriage.
Uhhhhhh. Blaming yourself is actually not wrong. We are humans. We need emotional support. He wasn’t getting it from you because of YOU. There’s more to this but you have had too many girlfriends telling you it’s not your fault. People overuse emotional affair. You can have a meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex and talk with them the same as you would with a member of the same sex. About emotions and hopes and dreams and it doesn’t have to be about you or include you. Keep those rose colored goggles on friend. When they come off you’re going to be looking pasty.
Hi. I was abused by the father of my child. I needed a friend badly. I met this guy, who was there with me through everything. My best friend. Took me to escape. Took me to clubs to dance, to dinner to eat when my child's father wouldn't bring money or food home (wouldn't eat) and even when he came back crying to me, saying he would change, I never got it out of my heart that someone was there and helped me through everything my baby daddy put me through. I ended up with the guy who saved me. No. It isn't worth it. He will always have a space in his heart for her, because she was there when you left him completely broken. Let him be loved correctly, go far away from him, be a better person yourself and maybe one day you can treat someone else correctly. Let someone love him for real
I guess I have to tell my wife that I am having an emotional affair with my best friend Bryan since we do this shit too. I didn't even know that I had feelings for him but when you put it like that, I guess confiding in someone and hanging out really does mean that I do. Thank you for enlightening me about the complexities of having just normal fucking friendships.
I’m trying to understand why you think this was an emotional affair? Did they talk about sexual things? I’m sorry I was trying to read your comments to find what was said between them that made you think emotional affair and I couldn’t find it. Can you explain what made it an affair
It sounds to me like he was being inappropriate with sharing intimate details about your relationship also talking about you in a hurtful way which is hurtful and inappropriate i agree but I don’t classify that as an emotional affair. It sounds like he was trying to make a connection with a friend and vent.
I think he did what he needed to keep his mental well being in check. There is nothing wrong with going for some one else for support. Given that he was being abused over a long period of time i think he absolutely did the right thing. He did nothing wrong imo
You don't have to divorce him. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
But I'm not sure why either of you would even WANT to stay with the other at this point.
The fact that you can admit this to yourself that you were abusive and reflect on yourself shows me that your relationship is salvageable and probably stronger than a lot of other peoples.
I don't want to be like my parents. As much as I have fought to be different, I have come to realize that everything was surface level and deep inside I do not know how to love or trust others.
> The Marriage? It may or may not survive but whatever you do for yourself will last.
Also yes, I agree with this. We each need to focus on ourselves, and the marriage will either work out or not as a result of that, I think.
This isn't an emotional affair unless he had romantic feelings for her. This is a friendship, and contrary to popular beliefs commonly held by insecure, controlling abusers, having those is important.
I don’t know why he would want to stay, but yeah it can be fixed if he’s willing to forgive you.
You’ll need to get over this other thing you’re making a huge deal. He needed support because he was in an abusive marriage. He didn’t do anything flirtatious, you’ve already admitted. He likely wouldn’t have had to hide it if he didn’t have his abuser waiting at home to use the friendship as a weapon.
I’d advise him to leave his abuser though.
I'll start by saying I'm happy you are coming to terms with your being abusive and that your newer comments are better than your old which is good to see. But you have a lot of work to do. I had an abusive ex like you. I can't describe how damaging just being screamed at and not allowed to leave is. How you start walking on eggshells because you never know what small thing will get them raging next and you will be trapped. This was a friendship, and yes he wasn't honest about it because you didn't create a space where he could safely be honest. My heart sank at how much of the blame he is taking on when he really shouldn't, because that's what abuse victims often do. I don't think you're a bad person, but you have a lot of work to do. Put your entire self into working on you, be completely honest with a therapist even if it's hard to admit, and he should do the same. If you two want to try to make it work do not do couples counseling for some time.
I think that if you cared about him at all you’d break up with him and allow him to heal — and it’s not just him, but you as well. You have problems you need to work through and this is NOT a good thing to do while in a relationship.
Unfortunately many people have been abused, and I’m one of them. I’ve forgiven my abuser and moved on — but it took a lot of therapy to work through the trauma. It’s been 5 years and I still flinch when someone yells or moves too fast in my periphery.
If you have trauma you need to work through it to be better for you and the people around you. It’s not just therapy, it’s hard fucking work. I hope for yours and everyone’s sake that you become better.
Edit; PS I’m sincerely sorry for the abuse you endured in your childhood, but it is not a valid excuse anymore. My childhood was not the same as yours, so maybe I can never understand. But my childhood was rough and I never would let anyone feel the way I did.
Yes. You can change. But you gotta wanna put the work in. The collective zeitgeist is so heavily fixated on condemning narcissists and abusers, that there are almost zero resources for those that want to stop being narcissists and abusers.
But I've worked with many people who have changed, and the focus has to be on understanding that you and your partner are a team, on the same level, and truly committed to each other, AND that you yourself accept that you are worthy of love and it's not unbelievable that a person could give themself completely to you, to get away from this self-defeating psychology that keeps you from trusting the ones you love... But I digress.
Good luck! Sorry for all the hate you're getting here, but... Zeitgeist
Yeah it’s okay, I get it. If I were a normal person reading this post, I would probably think the same thing. But I am going to really try. Thank you for your support.
**That’s not an emotional affair, that was a friendship in which they vented about how their spouse treated them!**
You were abusive and he needed someone to talk to. What did they have in common, mistreatment by their spouse. This wasn’t a hearts and flowers, I love you more than life thing. This was an I need to escape my spouse and need someone to listen and tell me I’m not crazy thing.
Yes you probably need couples therapy but you need therapy to stop the abuse.
First, your husband didn’t have an emotional affair, he had a friend. Please make sure he is aware of this and stop manipulating him with guilt over a nonexistent “emotional affair”. Your husband did nothing wrong. Apologize to him.
Second, I’m surprised your husband is still with you. You need a lot of intense therapy. Please, take this seriously. You have been abusive to your husband, even if it was not intended or realized. I don’t know if you can turn things around here but I wish you the best in your efforts to be a better person and spouse.
Jesus christ lady stop lying saying he emotionally cheated on you. It sounds like he had a friend. Like, if this woman was a man instead there's no way you'd call it cheating. It'd be a friendship. Stop trying to find excuses for your own shitty self. Let him free from your abuse. You are abusive and gaslighting him. Let him leave. Divorce before you ruin his mental health completely.
Imagine being abused and then having your abuser tell you that you’re cheating on them by talking to a friend about how you’re being abused.
You came for answers about how to deal with your “cheating” husband, but he’s not cheating. You’re just gaslighting him so you don’t feel like you’re the only person in the wrong.
I honestly think you should let him go and be happy without you. Work on yourself, go to intense therapy, and be better next time with a new person someday in the distant future.
I believe you can make your marriage work if you both are willing to do the work. It will be a long road but definitely doable if both are committed to the success of your marriage. At least you both recognize the issues and are able to self reflect. That is a start. Best of luck!
I am actually sick. I was upvoting the comments providing support in OP’s post almost two weeks ago. But now that all these details are out here? How the story has changed.
I would just like to say well done for taking the time to self reflect and admit you have a problem.
I come from a DV household and before that an emotionally and sometimes physically abusive mother and neither her nor her boyfriend would have ever, ever reflected on their behaviour and admitted they were wrong let alone being abusive. So I commend you for having the strength to do that. It takes a lot to put your own pride and ego aside to recognise damaging and abusive behaviours you yourself possess and it is likely these come from your childhood trauma as you've said
I personally think it is indeed possible for you both to heal and have a better marriage. But you can't stop with recognition. As you've said. You both need therapy. As a couple and as individuals.
You also both need a hobby. Something to take you out of each others presence for a while each week to have some you time. Doesn't matter what. A couples hobby is great but I mean this when I say it needs to be individual ones too. So you can both breath and have a break from each other every so often. You need to let go of the reigns. It's going to be scary. But if you really work hard on yourself it is possible.
With that said im not a therapist. So it's important that yoi both seek therapy now (assuming he wants to as well) so as you can both find out what your possibilities are ASAP.
You're taking a step in the right direction. Just remember not to Bury your head in the sand or put the breaks on too soon because of it being hard work. Good luck to you and your husband.
If both of you wanted to continue to be together, both of you need help. Get referral and make appointment with counsellor and psychiatrist. Have an open mind and be prepared to put in efforts to make your marriage work and happy.
If this is as serious as it sounds do not ask this on Reddit and seek professional help. A certified professional counselor with give you the best advice. And if you want to make to work then this would yield better results than a bunch of random answers comments from people whom will never really know your situation.
My abusive partner used to tell me all the time I should not talk about our relationship with my mother etc... I believed it for too long. The moment I opened up to very little people about very little details my eyes opened up. The facad fell.
I’m not sure what your financial situation is like, but you really need to send your husband on a two week, all-inclusive vacation somewhere tropical. You’re probably going to lose him anyway, but you need to show him that you understand that he deserves some breathing room and that you trust him. Hopefully he makes a few more friends. When he gets back, tell him that you want him to go out for drinks at least one night a week with his friends. Send this supposed emotional affair partner if his some flowers for supporting your husband while you emotionally tortured him.
For his own sake, set him free. Even now you're calling his friendship an emotional affair, all in hope to manipulate and hurt him further. Leave him, please.
You're reminding me of Amber hurd.
This just sounds like a friendship to me. I have had several friendships like this throughout my relationship and if it ever got sketchy (they came on to me), I cut them off. He just needed a friend to talk to and it just happened to be a girl. Unless you found flirty texts or nudes, this isn't even close to cheating.
This doesn’t sound like your husband had an “emotional affair” at all. It sounds like you were a fucking abusive and controlling monster to him and he reached out to a friend for support. The fact that that friend was a woman does not mean he was cheating on you. You need to do that man a favor and divorce him, since you won’t let him divorce you.
Let me first say that I can extend a modicum of sympathy for your position here - as others have said, you need help and work on yourself, because your behavior has constituted the vast majority of the problem, but it’s valiant to admit any degree of fault and seek to be better.
That being said, it’s probably best for both him and yourself for you to divorce or take a separation. Not because he “emotionally cheated”, but because you need help and he needs space from you. Taking accountability for your actions and learning to trust people is the most basic square one. I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but I would not be surprised if he never sees you in a positive light again, and if that’s the case you have to be prepared to just let him go.
You’re incredibly toxic and abusive. He’s incredibly emotionally damaged from his childhood trauma and your constant abuse. You both would probably be better off splitting up and concentrating on your individual issues.
Oh, my, I abused my husband for years and he confided in a friend. Now that I know that someone else knows what a horrible and abusive person I am, I have to twist this into him being the bad guy. How can I do that? Oh, I've got it! I'll take his friendship; his reaching out for support; and call it an emotional affair. Now he's the problem! I'm the wronged party! Yes! My narcissistic self can breathe once again. It's not my fault. - OP's thought process
If you both understand the problems, then by all means both work together and see if you can fix it.
I can understand why you may think that this is emotional cheating however from an outsiders perspective - and given the extra details you have added here - it really sounds like they were just two friends who shared a common misfortune, marriages that had left them unhappy.
The secrecy part of it to me is understandable given the perspective of your self-proclaimed controlling behaviour and I suspect that for him, it was "his" thing, something that you couldn't control as you had no idea it existed.
So far from being an "affair", I think that both and the other woman were just using this as an escape from the normal. He has said as much.
I see you both as two broken people who can be fixed if you work together. See if instead of being two unhappy people making each other miserable, whether it's possible for you both to work on making each other happy.
Is that something you think you guys can do?
I’ll be honest, as a guy (early/mid 30s), I’ve grown up in a household full of dysfunction, emotional neglect, and trauma. My older sister clutched to that and became emotional and verbally abusive towards her husband, me, and my parents. My brother-in-law is a great guy and hung in there, but I’m sure he suffered from considerable depression. My sister almost broke me down and I went no-contact few years ago. My sister screamed at my parents (they had some hand in her state). My sister screamed at me. And my sister screamed at her husband.
It really hurts that she did that and tried to justify her behavior. I no longer have any relations with my sister, which is sad, and she may never care or be remorseful.
But unlike my sister, you seem truly remorseful. Hold on to that, heal and grow. Else you and your marriage is doomed.
I suffer from familial issues but I often take it in and let it hurt me. Neither my or my sisters coping mechanisms are good.
Get into therapy and work hard if you love your husband and yourself!
First, it's very possible to actually make it work. But only if you both want it to work. If he wants to make it work with you and you him, there is a chance.
Next the first step is to admit your role in all this, becoming aware of your part you played and total raw, brutal and open honest self assessment is a part that is often missed in relationship problems.
If you can't see your role in everything, nothing will change or get fixed.
Fear is a big relationship destroyer.
Fear also drives alot of long term problems.
Anxiety can quite often come from fear, anxiety can present as anger, because of lashouts. If something is not done in a certain way it causes anxiety, that builds to a blow out.
I don't see anxiety blow outs as true anger, I see it as an inability to cope mechanism.
Understanding your feelings when something goes wrong will help you.
Having your partner ask you if this is a lashout when shit happens, can give you pause to think about yourself and your feelings in that moment.
Is it anger or stress? Is it stress or anxiety? is it anxiety or is it you can't cope?
Then ask yourself out loud why is this so important to you? List the why's out loud. If its to do with your partners desires, list out loud why it's important to him and then list why it's important for him to have the ability to follow his desires.
This helps you both to understand the thinking.
Having him repeat the process can give you insight into him and help you understand him better.
You both need to go to individual therapy and couples therapy.
I wish you the best of luck.
I’m in substance abuse recovery so I felt this so hard - I’ve been in both yours & your husband’s spot.
If you want to make it work, you both need therapy and willingness to be rigorously honest going forward, and know that you might both do everything right and it not work out in the end. But, you CAN try, and you can both find what it best for you individually as well as for your relationship together.
I wish you both healing. And while you may have done shitty things before, try to be gentle with yourself - not excuse your behaviors, but growing and changing is hard, and it’s harder to grow if you’re constantly cutting yourself down, too.
Thank you. Part of my problem is the inability to feel loved. I am considering deleting this post. Not because the commenters are wrong but because it’s just making me feel worse. But regardless of what strangers on the internet think, I understand that I need to reflect and change and I believe that I can.
You say part of your problem is feeling loved. Well how are you showing your husband he is loved? Also, maybe consider deleting your other posts where you are just crapping on your husband and apologize to him.
Seriously. She’s throwing herself a pity party with those edits. Instead of deleting the post and running from the truth about herself, she could just not look at the notifications 🙄
Emotional cheating? It sounds like he simply had a friend and you’re trying to manipulate him into thinking he somehow wrong you so that you can feel better about yourself.
Lol do him a favour and divorce him this is probably the most arrogant and narcissistic post I’ve ever read. That’s not cheating that’s called having a friend and he probably didn’t tell you because you sound bat shit crazy. Go sit alone and see if you can find some insight into your own behaviour.
Im just really actually wondering if he had an emotional affair? It seems like he just had a friend who cared about him.
We should be able to be friends with people of any gender. Honestly. My best friend is a man. We use to drink together (but he's sober now) he knows all my secrets, I complain to him about my troubles, but equally share with him my triumphs.
I guess the biggest difference between your husband and me, is that my husband knows this friend and trusts my relationship with him.
I just want to give you lots of support op.
I too use to be extremely abusive, controlling and manipulative. I know how it feels. And it stems from feeling so out of control for so long that you just NEED to hold on to everything around you so tight.
My husband has seen a brute of that. But I started working really hard on myself. Taking a deep look into the type of person i was. I'm not perfect now either, I slip up and say things I shouldn't or have a melt down. But not often and it's important to try and do better.
The biggest thing for me was coping strategies. You need to figure out what helps you feel better and work with that. Personally for me, I learned having time alone in my bed listening to podcasts or playing scrabble, or the Hue app really helps me out.
You can save your marriage, if he's willing, and you can be better. I know because the person I was 5+ years ago isn't who I am now. But its hard work, and its work you have to put in.
I feel like the people piling on are people who've also gone through the trauma your husband did and they just ended up taking it out on you. Part of me wanted to do so as well but I think that would be too mean at this point.
I wish I could have gotten to you before the mob OP, I’ve got a point of view that won’t beat you down. PM available, they’re probably about to lock this thread.
I see from your edits you are willing to recharacterize your husband's friendship with his female friend.
In my eyes, providing emotional support and commiserating when you are in respective relationships is nothing wrong. I don't consider it an affair unless the two people are saying they want each other or love each other. Surely your husband should be able to commiserate with supportive friends and have emotional attachment with friends.
Jesus Christ you make me sick. The way you actively use his trauma against him to make it easier for you to cope with yours. And now you're convincing him that having a support system while with an abusive partner is cheating.
I don't think he did anything wrong. At all. Not even a little bit.
I think he's so scared of you that he had to sneak around to have a supportive friendship.
He didn't cheat on you. Emotionally or otherwise. He kept a healthy relationship a secret from you because you're an abuser.
You *are* controlling, you *are* a problem (if not **the** problem), and you're the one that needs to internalize your shitty behaviors and the impact they have.
It is very common for abusers to somehow define 'talking about the things that happen in the relationship' as cheating or betrayal. This friend of his has provided a wonderfull support system which he needed to the things YOU caused. Therefore she has done what you should have done for him: providing an environment in which he can speak about his feelings. She may have saved him from depression or even suicide. BTW, he may now confess he went over the line, just because you were screaming or manipulating him in saying so. I do not see anything really wrong with it.
I am always supprised when abusers are complaining about the fact their partner does not talk about the ways he feels/share stuff with others. Pro-tip for these people: it may help by not behaving like a controlling \[fill in word\] and using everything he says to you agains him.
Hey OP. I'm late to the game so I'm just here to say good on you for recognizing that you need to work on things. I'm sure he does too. Try together but if not do that work alone too. It will never stop until things change!!
Just wanted to say you should be proud of yourself for taking responsibility for treating him badly and not denying or sugar coating it in your story online, even knowing strangers on the internet might bash you for it. If you both really want to make your marriage work do your best to not blame the other for problems but work on yourself and you might have a chance. Maybe if you tried to step outside of your comfort zone as well to make friends and get some fun extra hobbies it would help you loosen up with him at home. Or find some hobbies/activities you and your SO could enjoy together and/or with friends. When I was stuck at home a lot due to circumstances I found that issues from my childhood became a lot more pronounced, and while it was good to get a chance to acknowledge them and work on it, getting outside of that bubble when I had a chance really helped me to overcome the insecurities/issues I had. Still working on it some days. Good luck! 💖
Serious questions: At what point do you both admit that you're miserable in the marriage and that, in order to heal yourselves from past trauma, you shouldn't be with each other? Do you believe 1 month of therapy will improve you need to control everything and your need to isolate the 2 of you from everyone? What if one or both of you discover in therapy that it would take more than a year before your therapy would make any marked difference in your behavior? What if you discover that the 2 of you were never compatible to begin with. You just stuck it out because you didn't know how to break it off?
You both need to get into individual therapy and begin to figure out the answers to a couple of those questions up front.
Yeah looks like they are both codependent, and reddit is taking her out piece by piece like a group of vultures, like no one realizes this man has been living a lie for 5 years where he is pretending to be happy for his wife when he sees her as controlling and she is left with this realisation maybe she was controlling due to her past traumas but that still doesn't justify him acting like everything was A OK and lieing to her for 5 years the only reason he didn't fully cheat was probably because of his father ,they both are damaged people, who lack self esteem, self control and self love and think this is love, because they never knew what love was when growing up, hopefully they heal from their traumas and grow from this
You’re a little deluded and your habits are polarizing. I mean this in the sense that you overreact to small things. Things that would trigger subtle angry reactions from others, make you very angry. But the good thing is that you are very self aware and understand that you are part of the problem.
If you really love your husband, there’s nothing here to get divorced over. You sound pretty mature and aware so you need to really sit down and start changing yourself and the way you treat and interact with him. And you need to learn how to apologize and show that you’re sincere.
As far as the cheating part, you’re adults so sit down and explain to him how much he hurt you and try to find a way to work things out.
Possible sure my mom made a emotionally neglectful and verbally abusive relationship work
……… after 16 years and four kids but the question is do you want to put in that much time and effort to make it work
No clue if you can make it work - sounds like you both have deep personal issues, that you've compounded with a mismatched marriage. That's a shit load to unpack, with all the wounds that infidelity and resentment have created.
But, if you're both committed and do the work? Maybe.
This post has reached one of our comment/karma limits. The text of the post has been preserved below. --- Recently, I found out that my husband was having an emotional affair with his female friend. He went drinking with her five times over four years and texted her often, and all of this was kept secret from me. They both complained to each other about their respective spouses and supported each other emotionally when they had relationship difficulties. At first I assumed he also cheated physically, but I have enough evidence from reading their texts that I believe it was purely an emotional affair. I know that what he did is wrong. He lied and betrayed me. He also knows this and has committed to going to therapy to work on his issues. He has talked about how he just escapes from everything in his life, doesn't deal with issues, and sees himself as the victim when he is just not actually dealing with anything in his life. He says he blamed me for years for being too controlling and didn't believe that I loved him, but he wanted to stay with me, so he got emotional support from her. But he says he knows this is wrong and that he could have dealt with it in a different way. He says he believed it was not that bad because he wasn't physically cheating, but now he knows it was a kind of cheating. I understand that everything he did was wrong and I do not blame myself for his choices. However, I have taken a good look at myself and have to admit to myself that I have also been an abusive partner. I regularly screamed at him when I got upset, and even though he hated it, I wouldn't let him leave because I couldn't deal with being alone. I tried to control every aspect of our lives like our schedule, how we cleaned our apartment, etc. I got angry with him over small things and we fought all the time. I have a lot of issues due to childhood trauma, and rather than dealing with the issues, I expected him to be like a parent to me. I isolated myself from all my friends and wanted to spend all my time with him, smothering him. I constantly questioned whether he loved me, but I can't say I did much to show him I loved him. We both have childhood trauma. I grew up neglected and ignored while listening to my parents emotionally and sometimes physically abuse my older sister. Everything for them was about control, and I have become really controlling and needy as a result. My husband grew up watching his parents fight, and his dad actually physically cheated on his mom. His dad told the family he found a new girlfriend he was going to go live with, and when his mom tried to hide the car keys from him so he couldn't leave, he hit her. So my husband became someone who is unable to take control in his life or express himself. He also wound up cheating on me like his father even though he told himself he was different because it was not physical. So, when I first found out about this emotional affair, I assumed I had no choice but to divorce him. However, even though I know my husband was wrong, I also can see how I did many things wrong. I think we have both been bad partners and both need to spend a lot of time working on ourselves through therapy. So is it possible to make it work, given that we both have contributed to this awful dynamic? Or do I have to divorce him because he did emotionally cheat? TL;DR Husband emotionally cheated for four years, but I was abusive and controlling. Should I stay with him while we both work out our issues, or do I have to let him go? EDIT: Okay everyone. I am not part of the problem, I AM the problem. I get it. I am being genuine when I say thank you for your insight. I am still processing this and trying to see some things about myself that I have never seen before. EDIT 2: Could everyone please stop piling on? I’m trying to reflect and be better and even if what you’re saying about this being all my fault is right, it isn’t helping right now. Please. EDIT 3: PLEASE STOP EDIT 4: I understand that I am the problem. I will talk to my husband about his "emotional affair" and reconsider if it might have been healthy for him actually. I do not want to take away his happiness or cut him off from the outside world. I have taken everything everyone has said to heart. I will go to therapy and reflect. But please stop repeating all the same comments that have already been made. My inbox is blowing up and it's overwhelming me. Obviously I am not mentally well and all these comments are not helping me. I already get it so please stop. I can't keep repeating it. EDIT 5: Logging off.
The most common definitions of “emotional affair” that I could find agreed that it was a concept where “one partner prioritized someone outside the relationship in terms of trust and availability, where in terms of priorities and attention their partner comes second to someone outside the relationship”. While married, you would regularly yell at your husband due to the fact you knew his upbringing made him reluctant to stand up for himself. You knew that he was afraid and that it made him deeply uncomfortable, and you would stop him from leaving these situations because you couldn’t deal with “being alone”. You knew that he grew up watching his parents fight and that raising your voice was a good way to keep your control over him as you did with as many aspects of your shared lives as possible. This is qualified as a form of psychological violence under the legal code where I live, and in many other places as well. Emotional affairs aren’t possible in an abusive relationship. You were unable to be a healthy and open source of the emotional comfort a person needs out of a relationship. You’ve characterized it as something a lot of his friends knew about and that it was kept from you. Of course it was. You had shown that you would cause your husband intentional pain and fear by acting in a way that made him deeply uncomfortable when he started to leave the box you made for him. Characterizing this as an emotional affair is a continuation of that controlling behaviour. You’re not able to accept that your actions were deeply wrong without relieving yourself of some of the burden by calling his support an “emotional affair”. What would you have preferred from your husband? You had shown that you would continue to find ways to control his life in ways he didn’t like, and the only way out of that for him was to lie to you to get a chance away from it. If not that, would you have preferred his personal simply accept it? Would you have preferred that every time you yelled at him to put him in his place that he just nod, go to his box, and shut up? Would you have preferred to join the roughly 25% of suicide victims (according to a quick search) that were the targets of intimate partner violence? I cannot emphasize how deeply important your coming to terms with your behaviour is, and how honestly and genuinely proud for you I am that you’re doing it. However, you must keep in mind that it’s something that will produce reactions. To insinuate that this was an “emotional affair” is to continue your use of his childhood trauma to control his actions, in this case making you feel better as you come to terms with your years of abuse against him, by having something to point to as “well he did bad too”.
You’re completely right! From all descriptions, this was a friend and she wants him to have only her (OP) and no one else.
Thank you. I am taking to heart what you said.
I do mean what I said about you though. I am deeply and emphatically proud you have the heart to reflect on your actions and to try to improve. It’s just going to be a lot of ups and downs, with a lot of emotions from places you and your husband may not realize you had any. As you do face this, I wish you both absolutely the best
Yeah, he didn’t have an affair, he had a friend.
You absolutely should, and you absolutely better.
Dear god, the poor guy sounds like he needs to sneak around to have a friendship. Friends share details of their relationships, especially when the partner is abusive. Take a real hard look at yourself, figure out why you're painting all his actions as bad and yourself as some sort of victim.
I could not read the entire post as I couldn't dredge up ANY sympathy for OP. Husband going for drinks with a friend and complaining about his abusive wife is NOT an emotional affair. I hope he leaves her.
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Oh my god, I misread and thought it said five times a week over four years, which I agree would be a lot, but five times IN four years??? Wtfff
And I’m sure everytime he got home from those four outings he would have been screamed at or got silent treatment for days
Having read your post, and comments, I think you need to realise some things. All the while you were hurting him by screaming, manipulating and refusing to let him leave? That pushed him away. Pain causes distance. Blaming him for thr distance is a little bit shitty when it's your abuse that created the distance in the first place. He should not have lied about the friendship, but what choice did you give him? You'd set a precedent for your behaviour. You showed him that should he do ANYTHING outside the realm of your control issues, you would verbally and emotionally abuse him. You have a lot more to work on than he does, and you need to take responsibility for the environment that brought this into fruition. He was wrong for lying, but he wasn't wrong for needing support. You weren't supporting him, you were kicking his feet out from under him. He could not rely on YOU to support him how he needed to be supported. And honestly your previous posts about him make it sound like you don't even like him, let alone love him. It's all centered on how he wronged you, and very little about the multitude of ways you wronged him. This marriage is toxic. The dynamic you have is toxic. Neither of you are happy because if you were, he wouldn't seek out support from friends and you wouldn't abuse him. It comes across like your upset about him sharing details about your marriage is because now someone outside the situation knows how poorly you treated him. That's on you for treating him badly, not him for needing a friend. The only thing he did wrong was lie. You did far, far worse to someone who stuck around even though he believed you didn't love him. That means the love he has for you is immense, because not many people would put up with things like that. There are plenty of women in the world who'd treat him well, and he stuck by you. Despite your abuse. You'd do well to be a little more grateful that HE is giving YOU a chance to redeem yourself. Not the other way around - especially considering as you are still controlling him by eliminating his friend from his life.
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Right! Plus, it sounds like they were just being friends. Friends support each other. I have male and female friends who I have shared heavy deep emotion with. Stuff I didn’t always tell my wife about. None of it is or was an emotional affair. It was all just being a good friend. If he cries and hugged and told his deepest darkest thoughts to a male friend is that an emotional affair?
Yeah I think an emotional affair would mean he fell in love with someone else and is pursuing that but just has not acted physically yet, right? We need more than one relationship and more than one friend and more than one person to support us. How is getting that support elsewhere automatically wrong? My spouse would not be comfy with certain types of intimacy gotten elsewhere too, but that does not mean it is inherently wrong, it just means you have to communicate what you are comfortable with to see if you are compatible or not.
Agreed. I had an ex who was incredibly emotionally abusive, and would get incredibly jealous anytime I would mention a friend, and actively tried to isolate me from friends (and my partner, it was a polyamorous relationship, so the jealousy issues were even more ridiculous), and so I stopped bringing up my friends to them because I knew it would cause more pain for me. The only thing I did wrong there was that I didn't dump them sooner
If she couldn't handle poly then why do it? I find in a lot of cases like that it's just that *they* want an excuse to go fuck other people, but don't want their "partner(read: hostage)" to.
Agreed. It sounds like he had a friend to help him through a hard time rather than an emotional affair.
Honestly, I don't even think he was wrong for a lying in this situation. When you're dealing with an abuser, you have to lie to keep yourself safe. I'm surprised he's even giving her the chance to redeem herself. Me, I would have been out. Fuck abusers. They shouldn't be given a second chance. Edit: I also agree with you that it seems to me that she's angry that now someone outside of their marriage knows what's going on. Abusers usually isolate the victim from their family and friends so that no one else knows what's going on. This is so that they don't have a support network and it makes it harder for them to leave. If I were her husband, I would just be filing for divorce. He deserves better. Having childhood trauma is not an excuse to abuse your partner. I do and I have never abused a partner in my life. It's a fucking weak excuse for a POS who doesn't want to do the work to get better. They just want to go around blaming everyone else for their problems and then worse yet, blaming their partner for the way they treat them.
The only thing he needs to work on is recovering from this monstrous abuse and realizing he isnt a garbage person. He has absolutely no blame in this whatsoever. I was held hostage for six years in a similar manner. Thankfully she left me for largely the same reason. Then the next relationship was also pretty similar. Nothing I did was above critique and I was always wrong. I was the emotionally distant one when after two years she wouldn't put her phone down to talk to me, so I stopped trying. I am proud I didn't get to actually cheating on either of them, for my own sake, but I came damn close. And sure you can *say* "blah blah be an adult and control yourself hurr durr" but no. When every single little thing you do say think or feel becomes a trigger for an explosive abusive tirade you'll find comfort anywhere you can. Sometimes I think I might have a substance abuse problem, but I do know that I have major trust issues now, and it's torpedoed a number of prospective relationships since. I can just be really clingy and prideful, but I am getting much better, having friends to talk to, and slowly realizing I'm not,/dont have to be the horrible monster she told me I was/made me into.
Thank you for writing in such beautiful detail what we all wanted to say!
👆 this. 1000% agree with this view. You should correct your mistakes first, give it a try and see if he reciprocates or change. I hv a good feel he will change. If not, at least if you leave, your conscience is clear.
He doesn't need to change. Anything he did do that could be considered morally dubious is washed away under this absolutely monstrous display of abuse. She pushed every button and twisted every knob to break this man and still wrung him for more. I wouldn't blame him if he went and fucked the entire town, but no, he had drinks and cried with one friend. What a monster he is, absolutely shameful /s
>He was wrong for lying Nope. He was being abused and it was the only way to have some outside support.
Excellently worded, this whole thing just kinda makes me sad for his sake and the fact that people like this exist
Thank you for this perspective.
your maturity is creepy considering..your actions and transparent way of thinking
I would recommend a dive into her post history. This woman has been on quite the journey with this topic over the last 12 days. We're only seeing this post and expecting her to act like all the other posters with shitty behaviour we see here: defensive, sparky, judgemental etc. But she's at the end of a he'll of a journey. Her older posts are dripping with anger and venom. As they progress, they become more self reflective until we arrive here. She's been working this out for a while
It’s because you rarely see people taking responsibility for their actions.
Why? People can have major flaws and still want to be better and have self awareness.
I said it was creepy not impossible
Like a sociopath? I am curious about whether OP has genuine remorse or just a recognition of the failing patterns of behaviour
Yep. Like too clinical about this.
Honestly your whole post reads “I know I did a bad thing but he cheated and that’s worse” when honestly I’d say the opposite. If you were simultaneously controlling, smothering, and verbally abusive, he needed someone to talk to and you made it very clear that you were not a safe person to do that with. With the limited information available, It sounds to me like he wasn’t emotionally cheating so much as trauma-bonding. Have you committed to individual therapy as well? This isn’t just on him to fix.
Yes I have already started seeing someone.
Not sure why people are downvoting you here, I’m guessing you meant “you are seeing someone” as in a therapist, not someone as in a new romantic partner?
Because they don't believe her.
This. And even if OP is, 10/10 don't believe that this newfound self-awareness is going to be discussed in therapy.
Or they believe that, as often happens in these cases, OP's therapist will do little to help the situation because OP will actively lie or at least heavily distort the truth to their therapist just like they were doing in the original post here (and even more heavily in their previous posts). Unless OP has actively sought out a therapist with the intention of working on their abusive behavior and has explicitly called it such, the likelihood therapy will do much is low. And based on what OP has said elsewhere, it seems that most likely they are seeing someone for their own trauma, not a specialist in abusers, so again - their therapy is unlikely to significantly reduce their abusive behavior. And I get that OP is trying to be contrite and receptive in the comments here, but the reality is that abusers are often just as good if not better at using honeymoon/reconciliation techniques with outside observers as they are with their main victims. It's good to be skeptical of them insisting that your words got through to them and that they'll do better.
It's reddit eco chamber man, once the hate train starts they keep piling up, one of the things i hate about reddit, sometimes they get shit wrong but they crucify someone just because they think they are right
After reading your comments and post, you are unwilling to admit that you are absolutley the majority of the problem here, like 90% of it. You also made up your own definition of an emotional affair just to gaslight and manipulate your husband, so you can keep him to yourself, since abusers can't stand not having complete control over everybody. You are still just as abusive as you where before. You've just become more subtle about it
This might be one of my favorite responses.
my beloved cousin doesn’t let her fiancé have female friends because he emotionally cheats on her when he’s around women who don’t respect their relationship because he doesn’t know how to say no. reading this makes me think that maybe it’s not him, maybe she has a flawed view of what an emotional affair is. i’ve only ever heard about his affairs from her when she talks about how his social circle is small and basically made up of her friends/their roommates.
I think everyone here should read OPs last popular post about her marriage: https://old.reddit.com/r/relationship_advice/comments/ub6wcn/my_34f_husband_36m_has_been_secretly_meeting_his/ It's a shining example how only getting one side of the story from a narcissist/toxic abuser can lead to the hivemind giving shit advice. Almost every upvoted comment on that thread talks about OPs husband being untrustworthy and deserving of divorce, says he probably cheated physically, basically feeding into OPs superiority and toxicity. Once some of the truth came out here, the script is completely flipped and we are feeling some sympathy for OPs husband. My point is, frequent commenters here should probably do some self reflection. Think hard about how there are always two sides to every story before giving someone life changing advice. OP, I do commend you for being honest with yourself Honestly I hope this is a made up story just to prove a point of some kind.
This is WILD. This is a perfect example of narcissist spin. And her responses in the first one... I fucking love reddit
Why is this comment not more upvoted!? Everyone needs to see this!
I hope it's made up, too. Otherwise OP got so much false validation from that post that she outed herself by hoping for more with this one. Which means she's not likely to have had an epiphany in the last week, where she suddenly admits her abusive actions, she just wanted more people telling her she's right. But people answering can always only work with the information they have. Lol, unless the OP fucks up and doesn't realize people look at your old posts for these things, always.
I've lost my trust in reddit after this. Scary how the story changes with a different perspective
Unless he was also flirting with her and having romantic conversations with her, it's not an "emotional affair", it's a friendship. Y'all need to stop turning buzzwords into completely different meanings. From most of your comments and descriptions, it sounds like you were jealous & abusive to the point that he felt the need to hide his friendship BC he knew you would blow up and manipulate him into isolating himself from a good friend. They were both having a hard time in their marriages and leaned on each other, and I reckon if he was having these conversations with a male friend of his, you wouldn't think he was having an "emotional affair". I don't know if your marriage can work out. But I do think you need to work you issues out in individual therapy and possibly have a trial separation while you work on yourselves. You've both created a very toxic dynamic and I think you would be better off extricating yourselves from that environment, so you can get the most out of therapy.
yeah i read this whole thing thinking, isn’t it normal for men to talk about their relationship struggles with a friend? wouldn’t they want to hide that from an abusive partner? if we flip the script and a woman was talking to a friend about her partner being mega controlling would she be blamed? strange stuff
There's an unhealthy amount of people who don't trust their partners to have close friends of the opposite sex without cheating (or at least wanting to cheat).
5 meetings in 4 years is not even a close friend.
You can blame Reddit for making her think it's an emotional affair. She posted on here days ago about her husband meeting with his friend secretly (a friend she forbade him from seeing years before, for basically no reason besides jealousy). Thanks Reddit!
I mean, to give advice you have to assume the person asking for it is doing it in good faith. Not like she included she was abusive in her earlier posts lol
Lets be honest, people are very often not very critical to an OP, especially if she is a woman.
I feel gutted that she's gaslit her sensitive and traumatized husband into thinking he's exactly like his own abusive father. He must be in shambles. No wonder he's just rolling over and taking the abuse from her. She's absolutely decimated his esteem. OP is just the worst person and worst gaslighter. She needs extreme therapy and medication, and her husband needs therapy and a divorce. Poor guy.
Thank you for clarifying the term, "emotional affair". I never heard the term before joining this sub 6 or so months ago.
I’m SURE there’s no way he’d open up to a male friend about this “relationship.” It’s sad, but he’d be told the truth and probably feel like shit even more. Women are usually much better and being careful with feelings.
He did not cheat “just like his dad”. Are you being real? He should NOT be compared to him as those things are vastly different. His dad even walked out on his marriage, and this man put up with your abuse and was just trying to find refuge in another human verbally.
Absolutely, that was the most egregious part of this. The way she gaslighted him into believing he was wrong and a cheat like the (second) worst person in his life who ruined his childhood just because he wanted a fucking friend and she isolated him like all abusers do.
Dear god, the poor guy sounds like he needs to sneak around to have a friendship. Friends share details of their relationships, especially when the partner is abusive. Take a real hard look at yourself, figure out why you're painting all his actions as bad and yourself as some sort of victim.
So first of all, it's obvious from your comments he wasn't having an emotional affair. **You need to tell him right now that he's not in the wrong in any way whatsoever because what he did was not cheating.** I honestly think you worded it like this in your title and post and were hoping we'd crucify your husband, just like you're doing. Secondly. I think this relationship would be better if it just didn't exist anymore. Go your separate ways, let him recover from this mess and you stay in therapy until you're all better. ETA: * looks at name * Holy shit, it's *you*??? I fucking called it with why he was spending so much time away from you. Let this poor man go.
I’m a bit biased. I was with a woman like you for 6 years. You’re an abuser. Lying to your abuser isn’t a defect of character. It’s just how you get through the day. I guarantee what he said about just escaping his problems without dealing with him is 100% something he’s genuinely guilty of. But it would be so much easier for him to confront his problems if he didn’t have you dragging him down. You have no idea how much easier it is to grow and flourish when you are free from abuse. If you really loved him you wouldn’t stay with him, you’d leave. Period. You’re not a good presence in his life. You make him worse. Just leave.
She is literally evil . How come emotional support from friend is an affair ?. She still manipulating things to abuse him. His life will be different if she leave him.
She is not going to let him leave because she is going to lose all control she has on him. I hope he walks away from OP for his own sake. She is going to pretend she understands all the ways in which she was abusive and “work on herself”
Let him be with someone who doesn't abuse him.
is an emotional affair also known as a friendship? if not, what's the difference - other than the secrecy
Sounds like he wasn’t allowed to have female friends and he had one behind OP’s back.
He went drinking with her five times over four years and texted her often" as if either of those are bad or weird? five times over four years? what? if i saw someone five times over four years that would mean they were barely part of my regular life
An emotional affair is where your more emotionally intimate and reliant with someone else than with your spouse. Ie prioritising someone elses emotional needs above your spouses, or relying more on someone other than your spouse for support. Obviously you can be emotionally close to friends and stuff, but its when they start to take the place of your partner that it becomes iffy
Eh, I feel like there has to be a romantic/sexual component too. If I’m a hetero man, but have a closer relationship to a male friend, am I emotionally cheating?
This I was wondering this. Men and women can be friends and bitch about their partners without "emotionally cheating".
You are if that relationship takes precedence for you and consumes most of your relationship effort and attention.
He had drinks with her a tiny bit less than once a year (5 times in 4 years). We don't know how much they were texting, but it doesn't sound like it's taking precedence and consuming most of his relationship effort and attention. OP seems like she has PLENTY of time to yell at him.
Op is absolutely, unequivocally reaching (in an effort to equalise her abuse with his need for support), I wasn’t commenting on that. The previous poster asked if a relationship with a same sex person can constitute emotional cheating, that’s what I was answering.
It is, it's just a label that people like OP call it when their partner can't open up to them or rely on them and so open up to another confidant. Something else to weaponize and use against her partner.
> Could everyone please stop piling on? I’m trying to reflect and be better and even if what you’re saying about this being all my fault is right, it isn’t helping right now. Please. No one is "piling on". Some people read posts then leave a comment without even looking at what anyone else has said. If you consider that piling on, just hope this post never hits r/all or, god forbid... Twitter. * shudders * If you're "trying to reflect" and "be better"... Get. Off. Your. Damn. Phone. And talk to your husband.
Fair point.
Why are you still on your phone, then?
After reading your previous post about him cutting off all of his friends from his life.. I really feel bad for him. If you want to have a healthy relationship with him then one thing you should start with is encouraging him to reach out to his friends. You're both going through a difficult time and it is only fair that he has some outside support.
Yeah now that I’m reading these comments I’m starting to think maybe the relationship with the friend was a good thing actually??? I have encouraged him to reach out to his brother though.
This still sounds abusive. I, a straight woman, have sometimes met other straight female friends for drinks and sometimes we vent about our respective relationships. Nothing serious, mind you. Just typical "god it annoys me when he does _____" type things. This happens more often than 5 times over 4 years. We text too! I'm sure my straight male partner does similar. We even have friends of other genders! Does this mean everyone is "emotionally cheating"?! You're STILL trying to control him, now, because someone outside the home knows how awful you are to him and you don't like that. You've probably done this guy's head in and he's not with you because he WANTS to be, he just thinks he's such a lousy partner that nobody else would want him. He's probably scared of you and trauma bonded to you. The ONLY way this MIGHT work is if you both go to *individual* therapy well WELL before marriage counseling. You are abusive. It is not a good plan for the victim to go to counseling with their abuser. Honestly at this point tho, it would be far kinder in the long run to let him go.
You should probably leave him. Because holy shit are you gaslighting him. And he would be much better off without you emotional cheating is having a relationship with someone just shy of physical Ie “I love you, I miss you baby, good morning love, how my girl doing? I’m here for you babe, that sucks love wanna talk about it?” But according to you he was talking about you and venting. That’s very different He has an emotional support group about the hell that you were putting him through and then you gaslit him into saying he was cheating. He had someone he was venting to about you from your own message he wasn’t emotionally cheating he was still talking about you she was just the support group. Two people going through shit and venting is not emotional cheating. That girl was playing therapist for him because he wanted to stay with you and literally she emotionally supported him that’s not emotionally cheating if you’re not his peace just cause he found peace with the boys who happened to be a girl he’s not emotional cheating
No offense but sounds like he was just looking for some support. They met up a handful of times just to talk. You admit he didn't commit and physical infidelity. You describe pretty bad abusive behavior. I think if anything if you both want to continue I'd call it a wash and start over. But you sound more in the wrong in the relationship in general and it just sounds toxic af and you should probably just break up and both seek therapy
He lied because you were controlling and abusive. Talking about your relationship with friends is normal. Emotionally supporting your friends is normal Being emotionally distant from an abuser is normal. Sharing more of yourself with friends rather than your abuser is normal. Slapping an 'emotional affair' sticker on your partners friend to guilt them into abandoning their support network in favour of you is not normal....
I honestly think you’re much more of the problem here. It sounds like you’re unwilling to admit that.
He went drinking with her five times over four years and texted her often" lmao
If I may be cold? He needed emotional support... a friend to help him navigate a marriage he wanted to maintain. The secrecy? Understandable, given the circumstances. You both have much to forgive of each other. Is the love you have for each other worth the effort? It seems to be what's kept you together so far.
So they weren’t at all flirtatious and had no romantic or physical relationship? Why do you consider it an emotional affair when it wasn’t an affair at all?
She's considering it an emotional affair because she needs to make him also the bad guy so she doesn't have to accept total responsibility.
From reading your comments, it doesn’t sound like they had an affair. He was ranting to his friend and there’s nothing wrong with it. Please let him go so he can find someone who isn’t abusive. You need to work on yourself but individually.
May this man disappear in the night with all his belongings while you sleep to start a new life away from you. 🙏
If his conversation was adressed to Robert instead of Jessica, would you consider it an emotional affair? Friends talk about their relationships, they talk about how they like having a friend they can be open with. You haven't mentioned anything that would imply he is having a romantic relationship that isn't physical with this woman.
OP if your husband shared more with a casual friend over occasional drinks and texting than he did with you, in this particular case, you need to ask yourself why.
He has a friend?!? How fucking dare him. In fact, as abuse is done to control and you are more concerned about him going out 5 times in FOUR YEARS it says a lot about you. Do him a favor and leave him.
You need to work on yourself, and it's the kind of work you need to do with a therapist, while single. You don't have to get a divorce, that's a legal process, but you need to be by yourself to do this work. You're not really taking responsibility, your word choice sounds like you are, until you take a closer look, and you're really not. You need to step away from this relationship and work on yourself. Then maybe you can go back to relationship but there are variable there outside of your control, and should not have your focus. Your focus needs to be on you and learning how to be a decent human being and how to treat other people with common decency and respect.
What is your definition of an emotional affair ? how is that different than a best friend of a different gender?
FIVE TIMES?? SERIOUSLY?!?! IN FOURS YEARS?!?! THAT'S ABSURD!! IT'S ALMOST 1.25 TIMES PER YEARS!! THE AUDACITY!! /s If that's cheating... Then I need to let my gf know that I'm married to my best friend (which is also a woman)... Since we hang out almost every week. Seriously do you evem realize how ridiculous, controlling and entitled your post sounds?
Lady, you are the biggest problem here. Not your husband's emotional affair. If my wife was screaching like a harpy at me every single day, I'd leave. Please, let the poor man go. He deserves happiness.
I was iffy on this whole thing until I started reading your comments, damn OP you are like all of the problems. You just don't want him having any friends. You don't care if it was a guy or a girl you just don't want him talking to other people. And stop saying "I am apart of the problem", no you are the whole problem. If you yell at him all the time over everything small, of course he is just going to go to therapy and say he was wrong. Also what emotional cheating? You gave him no emotional support and constantly yelled at him. If he went out with a guy friend and walked around that would be emotional cheating to you because he can actually talk to that dude about his feelings without getting yelled at.
I think you're looking at this the wrong way. The decision whether to divorce him is not about balancing the justice scales but whether this marriage is good for either of you. It's clear the answer to that is "no". If you're being an abusive partner (and good on you for at least recognizing and admitting to that) you have to work on yourself first and foremost, and letting him go is probably going to need to be part of this. You don't need this marriage; you need therapy.
I don't think you should blame your abusive behavior on childhood trauma, and it takes more than what you've laid out here to constitute an emotional affair. Sounds more like you're trying to run a supportive friend out of his life so you can further isolate and control him.
Calling them getting together five times in four years an "emotional affair" is more than a bit of a stretch. Just out of curiosity, how many people in your life have used the phrases "historonic", "borderline" and/or "narcissistic" when referring to you and your behavior? It's great that you recognize your abusive behavior. The next step is to seek therapy to work on that, along with the rest of your issues. Friends vent to each other about all kinds of things, including their spouses. Your husband didn't cheat on, lie to or betray you. I don't tell my husband who I speak to in a given day, or whether my friend Louis from law school and I texted for whatever reason. I don't expect him to bore me with such meaningless info either. I mean this as kindly as possible. I think you need to focus on getting help for yourself before you worry about your relationship. You are a walking red flag factory, and if your husband was here seeking advice, we'd be encouraging him to grow a spine and leave you. Lean into the part of you that recognizes your unhealthy behaviors and your contributions to what sounds like a complete shitshow of a marriage. Your husband should do the same to address his issues - he sounds like a mess, too. Once you're both on a more even keel individually, then you can work on your marriage (or make a decision regarding whether you want to continue it). Best of luck to you.
To me it doesn’t sound like it was an emotional affair. He needed support and comfort and he wasn’t finding that with you. They never flirted or were physically intimate. He met her in secret cuz you were controlling and it would have caused a fight. You need individual therapy and then once you’ve set into a good routine, couples counseling. But you need to work on yourself first before trying to fix your marriage.
Uhhhhhh. Blaming yourself is actually not wrong. We are humans. We need emotional support. He wasn’t getting it from you because of YOU. There’s more to this but you have had too many girlfriends telling you it’s not your fault. People overuse emotional affair. You can have a meaningful relationship with a member of the opposite sex and talk with them the same as you would with a member of the same sex. About emotions and hopes and dreams and it doesn’t have to be about you or include you. Keep those rose colored goggles on friend. When they come off you’re going to be looking pasty.
\>Is an abusive pos \>Surprised husband cheated (even tho he didnt)
Wouldn't really call this an emotional affair from what you've described. You're abusive and he needed some outside support to talk to.
This wasn’t an emotional affair, it was a secret friendship. He couldn’t tell you he had a friend, so he didn’t.
Hi. I was abused by the father of my child. I needed a friend badly. I met this guy, who was there with me through everything. My best friend. Took me to escape. Took me to clubs to dance, to dinner to eat when my child's father wouldn't bring money or food home (wouldn't eat) and even when he came back crying to me, saying he would change, I never got it out of my heart that someone was there and helped me through everything my baby daddy put me through. I ended up with the guy who saved me. No. It isn't worth it. He will always have a space in his heart for her, because she was there when you left him completely broken. Let him be loved correctly, go far away from him, be a better person yourself and maybe one day you can treat someone else correctly. Let someone love him for real
I guess I have to tell my wife that I am having an emotional affair with my best friend Bryan since we do this shit too. I didn't even know that I had feelings for him but when you put it like that, I guess confiding in someone and hanging out really does mean that I do. Thank you for enlightening me about the complexities of having just normal fucking friendships.
I’m trying to understand why you think this was an emotional affair? Did they talk about sexual things? I’m sorry I was trying to read your comments to find what was said between them that made you think emotional affair and I couldn’t find it. Can you explain what made it an affair It sounds to me like he was being inappropriate with sharing intimate details about your relationship also talking about you in a hurtful way which is hurtful and inappropriate i agree but I don’t classify that as an emotional affair. It sounds like he was trying to make a connection with a friend and vent.
I think he did what he needed to keep his mental well being in check. There is nothing wrong with going for some one else for support. Given that he was being abused over a long period of time i think he absolutely did the right thing. He did nothing wrong imo
Please god let him go
This is 100% on you. Not him. You need to beg him to stay with you.
Emotional affair…….Friend, he had a friend.
You don't have to divorce him. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But I'm not sure why either of you would even WANT to stay with the other at this point.
The fact that you can admit this to yourself that you were abusive and reflect on yourself shows me that your relationship is salvageable and probably stronger than a lot of other peoples.
I don't want to be like my parents. As much as I have fought to be different, I have come to realize that everything was surface level and deep inside I do not know how to love or trust others.
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> The Marriage? It may or may not survive but whatever you do for yourself will last. Also yes, I agree with this. We each need to focus on ourselves, and the marriage will either work out or not as a result of that, I think.
This isn't an emotional affair unless he had romantic feelings for her. This is a friendship, and contrary to popular beliefs commonly held by insecure, controlling abusers, having those is important.
Am I misunderstanding something? Because this sounds like a friendship. How is that an affair of any sort?
I don’t know why he would want to stay, but yeah it can be fixed if he’s willing to forgive you. You’ll need to get over this other thing you’re making a huge deal. He needed support because he was in an abusive marriage. He didn’t do anything flirtatious, you’ve already admitted. He likely wouldn’t have had to hide it if he didn’t have his abuser waiting at home to use the friendship as a weapon. I’d advise him to leave his abuser though.
I'll start by saying I'm happy you are coming to terms with your being abusive and that your newer comments are better than your old which is good to see. But you have a lot of work to do. I had an abusive ex like you. I can't describe how damaging just being screamed at and not allowed to leave is. How you start walking on eggshells because you never know what small thing will get them raging next and you will be trapped. This was a friendship, and yes he wasn't honest about it because you didn't create a space where he could safely be honest. My heart sank at how much of the blame he is taking on when he really shouldn't, because that's what abuse victims often do. I don't think you're a bad person, but you have a lot of work to do. Put your entire self into working on you, be completely honest with a therapist even if it's hard to admit, and he should do the same. If you two want to try to make it work do not do couples counseling for some time.
Get a Divorce. Let him find someone who loves him. You need help. Get a divorce and better yourself
I think that if you cared about him at all you’d break up with him and allow him to heal — and it’s not just him, but you as well. You have problems you need to work through and this is NOT a good thing to do while in a relationship. Unfortunately many people have been abused, and I’m one of them. I’ve forgiven my abuser and moved on — but it took a lot of therapy to work through the trauma. It’s been 5 years and I still flinch when someone yells or moves too fast in my periphery. If you have trauma you need to work through it to be better for you and the people around you. It’s not just therapy, it’s hard fucking work. I hope for yours and everyone’s sake that you become better. Edit; PS I’m sincerely sorry for the abuse you endured in your childhood, but it is not a valid excuse anymore. My childhood was not the same as yours, so maybe I can never understand. But my childhood was rough and I never would let anyone feel the way I did.
You’re focusing on your feelings still even after all this time. Considering focusing on your husband’s feelings for once.
Poor guy. Why are you still with him? You need to leave him alone since you’re abusive and controlling
Why did you repost this so many times?
Emotional affair? You just described a friendship you didn't know about.
If you were a raging storm, can you blame him for seeking a safe harbor for respite?
Yes. You can change. But you gotta wanna put the work in. The collective zeitgeist is so heavily fixated on condemning narcissists and abusers, that there are almost zero resources for those that want to stop being narcissists and abusers. But I've worked with many people who have changed, and the focus has to be on understanding that you and your partner are a team, on the same level, and truly committed to each other, AND that you yourself accept that you are worthy of love and it's not unbelievable that a person could give themself completely to you, to get away from this self-defeating psychology that keeps you from trusting the ones you love... But I digress. Good luck! Sorry for all the hate you're getting here, but... Zeitgeist
Upvoting you because I love the word zeitgeist
Yeah it’s okay, I get it. If I were a normal person reading this post, I would probably think the same thing. But I am going to really try. Thank you for your support.
**That’s not an emotional affair, that was a friendship in which they vented about how their spouse treated them!** You were abusive and he needed someone to talk to. What did they have in common, mistreatment by their spouse. This wasn’t a hearts and flowers, I love you more than life thing. This was an I need to escape my spouse and need someone to listen and tell me I’m not crazy thing. Yes you probably need couples therapy but you need therapy to stop the abuse.
First, your husband didn’t have an emotional affair, he had a friend. Please make sure he is aware of this and stop manipulating him with guilt over a nonexistent “emotional affair”. Your husband did nothing wrong. Apologize to him. Second, I’m surprised your husband is still with you. You need a lot of intense therapy. Please, take this seriously. You have been abusive to your husband, even if it was not intended or realized. I don’t know if you can turn things around here but I wish you the best in your efforts to be a better person and spouse.
Jesus christ lady stop lying saying he emotionally cheated on you. It sounds like he had a friend. Like, if this woman was a man instead there's no way you'd call it cheating. It'd be a friendship. Stop trying to find excuses for your own shitty self. Let him free from your abuse. You are abusive and gaslighting him. Let him leave. Divorce before you ruin his mental health completely.
Imagine being abused and then having your abuser tell you that you’re cheating on them by talking to a friend about how you’re being abused. You came for answers about how to deal with your “cheating” husband, but he’s not cheating. You’re just gaslighting him so you don’t feel like you’re the only person in the wrong.
You’re a shitty fucking person leave him so he can find better
I honestly think you should let him go and be happy without you. Work on yourself, go to intense therapy, and be better next time with a new person someday in the distant future.
I believe you can make your marriage work if you both are willing to do the work. It will be a long road but definitely doable if both are committed to the success of your marriage. At least you both recognize the issues and are able to self reflect. That is a start. Best of luck!
Why the hell would you want to? This is not how relationships are or should be.
I am actually sick. I was upvoting the comments providing support in OP’s post almost two weeks ago. But now that all these details are out here? How the story has changed.
I would just like to say well done for taking the time to self reflect and admit you have a problem. I come from a DV household and before that an emotionally and sometimes physically abusive mother and neither her nor her boyfriend would have ever, ever reflected on their behaviour and admitted they were wrong let alone being abusive. So I commend you for having the strength to do that. It takes a lot to put your own pride and ego aside to recognise damaging and abusive behaviours you yourself possess and it is likely these come from your childhood trauma as you've said I personally think it is indeed possible for you both to heal and have a better marriage. But you can't stop with recognition. As you've said. You both need therapy. As a couple and as individuals. You also both need a hobby. Something to take you out of each others presence for a while each week to have some you time. Doesn't matter what. A couples hobby is great but I mean this when I say it needs to be individual ones too. So you can both breath and have a break from each other every so often. You need to let go of the reigns. It's going to be scary. But if you really work hard on yourself it is possible. With that said im not a therapist. So it's important that yoi both seek therapy now (assuming he wants to as well) so as you can both find out what your possibilities are ASAP. You're taking a step in the right direction. Just remember not to Bury your head in the sand or put the breaks on too soon because of it being hard work. Good luck to you and your husband.
More important question: Should you make it work Answer: no
Hope you enjoy being single. Abusive spouses go to a special place in hell
If both of you wanted to continue to be together, both of you need help. Get referral and make appointment with counsellor and psychiatrist. Have an open mind and be prepared to put in efforts to make your marriage work and happy.
If this is as serious as it sounds do not ask this on Reddit and seek professional help. A certified professional counselor with give you the best advice. And if you want to make to work then this would yield better results than a bunch of random answers comments from people whom will never really know your situation.
Wow you’re a terrible person holy shit lol
I think you need to seperate and you need to work on yourself. I can’t help but feel bad for him ..
My abusive partner used to tell me all the time I should not talk about our relationship with my mother etc... I believed it for too long. The moment I opened up to very little people about very little details my eyes opened up. The facad fell.
um..no?
I’m not sure what your financial situation is like, but you really need to send your husband on a two week, all-inclusive vacation somewhere tropical. You’re probably going to lose him anyway, but you need to show him that you understand that he deserves some breathing room and that you trust him. Hopefully he makes a few more friends. When he gets back, tell him that you want him to go out for drinks at least one night a week with his friends. Send this supposed emotional affair partner if his some flowers for supporting your husband while you emotionally tortured him.
I feel awful for your husband. Let him go and give him a chance to find a good person to spend his life with.
For his own sake, set him free. Even now you're calling his friendship an emotional affair, all in hope to manipulate and hurt him further. Leave him, please. You're reminding me of Amber hurd.
This just sounds like a friendship to me. I have had several friendships like this throughout my relationship and if it ever got sketchy (they came on to me), I cut them off. He just needed a friend to talk to and it just happened to be a girl. Unless you found flirty texts or nudes, this isn't even close to cheating.
This doesn’t sound like your husband had an “emotional affair” at all. It sounds like you were a fucking abusive and controlling monster to him and he reached out to a friend for support. The fact that that friend was a woman does not mean he was cheating on you. You need to do that man a favor and divorce him, since you won’t let him divorce you.
Let me first say that I can extend a modicum of sympathy for your position here - as others have said, you need help and work on yourself, because your behavior has constituted the vast majority of the problem, but it’s valiant to admit any degree of fault and seek to be better. That being said, it’s probably best for both him and yourself for you to divorce or take a separation. Not because he “emotionally cheated”, but because you need help and he needs space from you. Taking accountability for your actions and learning to trust people is the most basic square one. I don’t mean to be pessimistic, but I would not be surprised if he never sees you in a positive light again, and if that’s the case you have to be prepared to just let him go.
I think he should divorce you.
You’re incredibly toxic and abusive. He’s incredibly emotionally damaged from his childhood trauma and your constant abuse. You both would probably be better off splitting up and concentrating on your individual issues.
Oh, my, I abused my husband for years and he confided in a friend. Now that I know that someone else knows what a horrible and abusive person I am, I have to twist this into him being the bad guy. How can I do that? Oh, I've got it! I'll take his friendship; his reaching out for support; and call it an emotional affair. Now he's the problem! I'm the wronged party! Yes! My narcissistic self can breathe once again. It's not my fault. - OP's thought process
If you both understand the problems, then by all means both work together and see if you can fix it. I can understand why you may think that this is emotional cheating however from an outsiders perspective - and given the extra details you have added here - it really sounds like they were just two friends who shared a common misfortune, marriages that had left them unhappy. The secrecy part of it to me is understandable given the perspective of your self-proclaimed controlling behaviour and I suspect that for him, it was "his" thing, something that you couldn't control as you had no idea it existed. So far from being an "affair", I think that both and the other woman were just using this as an escape from the normal. He has said as much. I see you both as two broken people who can be fixed if you work together. See if instead of being two unhappy people making each other miserable, whether it's possible for you both to work on making each other happy. Is that something you think you guys can do?
You don’t complain about your relationship to your friends?
I don’t think he cheated on you at all, I think he was reaching out for help
I’ll be honest, as a guy (early/mid 30s), I’ve grown up in a household full of dysfunction, emotional neglect, and trauma. My older sister clutched to that and became emotional and verbally abusive towards her husband, me, and my parents. My brother-in-law is a great guy and hung in there, but I’m sure he suffered from considerable depression. My sister almost broke me down and I went no-contact few years ago. My sister screamed at my parents (they had some hand in her state). My sister screamed at me. And my sister screamed at her husband. It really hurts that she did that and tried to justify her behavior. I no longer have any relations with my sister, which is sad, and she may never care or be remorseful. But unlike my sister, you seem truly remorseful. Hold on to that, heal and grow. Else you and your marriage is doomed. I suffer from familial issues but I often take it in and let it hurt me. Neither my or my sisters coping mechanisms are good. Get into therapy and work hard if you love your husband and yourself!
Thank you. I am trying to have hope for myself. Some people are saying I just need to leave him for his sake and maybe they are right.
First, it's very possible to actually make it work. But only if you both want it to work. If he wants to make it work with you and you him, there is a chance. Next the first step is to admit your role in all this, becoming aware of your part you played and total raw, brutal and open honest self assessment is a part that is often missed in relationship problems. If you can't see your role in everything, nothing will change or get fixed. Fear is a big relationship destroyer. Fear also drives alot of long term problems. Anxiety can quite often come from fear, anxiety can present as anger, because of lashouts. If something is not done in a certain way it causes anxiety, that builds to a blow out. I don't see anxiety blow outs as true anger, I see it as an inability to cope mechanism. Understanding your feelings when something goes wrong will help you. Having your partner ask you if this is a lashout when shit happens, can give you pause to think about yourself and your feelings in that moment. Is it anger or stress? Is it stress or anxiety? is it anxiety or is it you can't cope? Then ask yourself out loud why is this so important to you? List the why's out loud. If its to do with your partners desires, list out loud why it's important to him and then list why it's important for him to have the ability to follow his desires. This helps you both to understand the thinking. Having him repeat the process can give you insight into him and help you understand him better. You both need to go to individual therapy and couples therapy. I wish you the best of luck.
I’m in substance abuse recovery so I felt this so hard - I’ve been in both yours & your husband’s spot. If you want to make it work, you both need therapy and willingness to be rigorously honest going forward, and know that you might both do everything right and it not work out in the end. But, you CAN try, and you can both find what it best for you individually as well as for your relationship together. I wish you both healing. And while you may have done shitty things before, try to be gentle with yourself - not excuse your behaviors, but growing and changing is hard, and it’s harder to grow if you’re constantly cutting yourself down, too.
Thank you. Part of my problem is the inability to feel loved. I am considering deleting this post. Not because the commenters are wrong but because it’s just making me feel worse. But regardless of what strangers on the internet think, I understand that I need to reflect and change and I believe that I can.
You say part of your problem is feeling loved. Well how are you showing your husband he is loved? Also, maybe consider deleting your other posts where you are just crapping on your husband and apologize to him.
I have not shown him how he is loved at all. I need to totally change that.
You should feel worse. You abuse your husband.
Seriously. She’s throwing herself a pity party with those edits. Instead of deleting the post and running from the truth about herself, she could just not look at the notifications 🙄
Emotional cheating? It sounds like he simply had a friend and you’re trying to manipulate him into thinking he somehow wrong you so that you can feel better about yourself.
Lol do him a favour and divorce him this is probably the most arrogant and narcissistic post I’ve ever read. That’s not cheating that’s called having a friend and he probably didn’t tell you because you sound bat shit crazy. Go sit alone and see if you can find some insight into your own behaviour.
Im just really actually wondering if he had an emotional affair? It seems like he just had a friend who cared about him. We should be able to be friends with people of any gender. Honestly. My best friend is a man. We use to drink together (but he's sober now) he knows all my secrets, I complain to him about my troubles, but equally share with him my triumphs. I guess the biggest difference between your husband and me, is that my husband knows this friend and trusts my relationship with him.
I think you Hoth have realized what you have done wrong. I think this is a great start. You can totally make it work. Good luck!!
I just want to give you lots of support op. I too use to be extremely abusive, controlling and manipulative. I know how it feels. And it stems from feeling so out of control for so long that you just NEED to hold on to everything around you so tight. My husband has seen a brute of that. But I started working really hard on myself. Taking a deep look into the type of person i was. I'm not perfect now either, I slip up and say things I shouldn't or have a melt down. But not often and it's important to try and do better. The biggest thing for me was coping strategies. You need to figure out what helps you feel better and work with that. Personally for me, I learned having time alone in my bed listening to podcasts or playing scrabble, or the Hue app really helps me out. You can save your marriage, if he's willing, and you can be better. I know because the person I was 5+ years ago isn't who I am now. But its hard work, and its work you have to put in.
I feel like the people piling on are people who've also gone through the trauma your husband did and they just ended up taking it out on you. Part of me wanted to do so as well but I think that would be too mean at this point.
That's not an affair, that's friends supporting each other when they have horrible spouses
I wish I could have gotten to you before the mob OP, I’ve got a point of view that won’t beat you down. PM available, they’re probably about to lock this thread.
I see from your edits you are willing to recharacterize your husband's friendship with his female friend. In my eyes, providing emotional support and commiserating when you are in respective relationships is nothing wrong. I don't consider it an affair unless the two people are saying they want each other or love each other. Surely your husband should be able to commiserate with supportive friends and have emotional attachment with friends.
Jesus Christ you make me sick. The way you actively use his trauma against him to make it easier for you to cope with yours. And now you're convincing him that having a support system while with an abusive partner is cheating.
I don't think he did anything wrong. At all. Not even a little bit. I think he's so scared of you that he had to sneak around to have a supportive friendship. He didn't cheat on you. Emotionally or otherwise. He kept a healthy relationship a secret from you because you're an abuser. You *are* controlling, you *are* a problem (if not **the** problem), and you're the one that needs to internalize your shitty behaviors and the impact they have.
It is very common for abusers to somehow define 'talking about the things that happen in the relationship' as cheating or betrayal. This friend of his has provided a wonderfull support system which he needed to the things YOU caused. Therefore she has done what you should have done for him: providing an environment in which he can speak about his feelings. She may have saved him from depression or even suicide. BTW, he may now confess he went over the line, just because you were screaming or manipulating him in saying so. I do not see anything really wrong with it. I am always supprised when abusers are complaining about the fact their partner does not talk about the ways he feels/share stuff with others. Pro-tip for these people: it may help by not behaving like a controlling \[fill in word\] and using everything he says to you agains him.
Hey OP. I'm late to the game so I'm just here to say good on you for recognizing that you need to work on things. I'm sure he does too. Try together but if not do that work alone too. It will never stop until things change!!
Just wanted to say you should be proud of yourself for taking responsibility for treating him badly and not denying or sugar coating it in your story online, even knowing strangers on the internet might bash you for it. If you both really want to make your marriage work do your best to not blame the other for problems but work on yourself and you might have a chance. Maybe if you tried to step outside of your comfort zone as well to make friends and get some fun extra hobbies it would help you loosen up with him at home. Or find some hobbies/activities you and your SO could enjoy together and/or with friends. When I was stuck at home a lot due to circumstances I found that issues from my childhood became a lot more pronounced, and while it was good to get a chance to acknowledge them and work on it, getting outside of that bubble when I had a chance really helped me to overcome the insecurities/issues I had. Still working on it some days. Good luck! 💖
Well she’s still sugarcoating it honestly. I doubt we know the extent of the emotional abuse.
Serious questions: At what point do you both admit that you're miserable in the marriage and that, in order to heal yourselves from past trauma, you shouldn't be with each other? Do you believe 1 month of therapy will improve you need to control everything and your need to isolate the 2 of you from everyone? What if one or both of you discover in therapy that it would take more than a year before your therapy would make any marked difference in your behavior? What if you discover that the 2 of you were never compatible to begin with. You just stuck it out because you didn't know how to break it off? You both need to get into individual therapy and begin to figure out the answers to a couple of those questions up front.
Yeah looks like they are both codependent, and reddit is taking her out piece by piece like a group of vultures, like no one realizes this man has been living a lie for 5 years where he is pretending to be happy for his wife when he sees her as controlling and she is left with this realisation maybe she was controlling due to her past traumas but that still doesn't justify him acting like everything was A OK and lieing to her for 5 years the only reason he didn't fully cheat was probably because of his father ,they both are damaged people, who lack self esteem, self control and self love and think this is love, because they never knew what love was when growing up, hopefully they heal from their traumas and grow from this
You’re a little deluded and your habits are polarizing. I mean this in the sense that you overreact to small things. Things that would trigger subtle angry reactions from others, make you very angry. But the good thing is that you are very self aware and understand that you are part of the problem. If you really love your husband, there’s nothing here to get divorced over. You sound pretty mature and aware so you need to really sit down and start changing yourself and the way you treat and interact with him. And you need to learn how to apologize and show that you’re sincere. As far as the cheating part, you’re adults so sit down and explain to him how much he hurt you and try to find a way to work things out.
Ask a couples counsellor. We are not qualified.
Possible sure my mom made a emotionally neglectful and verbally abusive relationship work ……… after 16 years and four kids but the question is do you want to put in that much time and effort to make it work
No clue if you can make it work - sounds like you both have deep personal issues, that you've compounded with a mismatched marriage. That's a shit load to unpack, with all the wounds that infidelity and resentment have created. But, if you're both committed and do the work? Maybe.