@99: "She wouldn't need to get detailed about it. She wouldnt need to tell me what a failure she was... that she had "issues"...etc"

That's the kind of thing you hear when you torture people for information, and then torture them more when you don't like what you hear. The odd thing is that people are surprised that more torture never produces the answer you do want to hear... when there just isn't any answer you want. Simple process, everyone: Is there any answer that would make you happy? If not, then stop trying to extract an answer that would.

That's like demanding a detailed answer to "why are you breaking up with me" after rejecting the first answer. The odds that forcing an answer out of the person will make you happier are pretty slim.

@54 Donny.... your post had me picturing you pulling down an old wooden box from your closet shelf... blowing off the dust... and opening it up to look at sepia toned old west nudes....then working your way to the newer pics... short terry cloth robes and farrah fawcett haircuts...

real pictures are way better than digital ones anyway. In 20 years... i will not have a shoebox with a flash drive in it to peruse my past sex life.... and i sure as hell won't print out every nude pic i've been sent.... because i don't want to be the guy in this letter... lol

Having a rough patch, does that mean they weren't having sex? And in the future, rough patches will come along again.. Say during pregnancy, this give the guy a pass to go get more naked pictures of co workers. Cause, you know, we were having a rough patch.
If some men can't really commit to a monogamous relationship, wired that way as Ghost said way way up
Yonder, then why the hell do they pretend?
A rough patch in a relationship is not a reason to go playing with others. Like we saw in the letter on Friday, if a baby gets thrown in the mix.. These very loose boundary issues can be counter to some serious work ie raising a child.

@1 - Yes, but Dan's original article that he linked to wasn't about academic grades. It was about rounding a fraction up to 1 (as in, "she's the one"), or down to 0 (as in, "she's a big fat zero in my book").

I don't think she was snooping if her characterization of being tasked with deleting old photos is correct. I even give her a pass for trying to make sure confidential info wasn't stored in a discarded electronic device (though why not just delete the email box entirely?). But I think the rest of Dan's advice is otherwise pretty sound.

But maybe I'm just biased in favor of dick pics being shared. It's something I encourage.

@96 Funny! (Despite the fact that my husband's issue is with heavy flirting/sexting/"cheating". Ugh!) Humor is such a good emotional salve. :)

@95 COBT, my grandfather was a wooden boat builder. He was an extreme techie. IMO, it's a techie endeavor or allows techies to channel some of their strengths.

@vennfan
>My husband recently discovered behavior of mine that disappointed him. He asked me to stop and I didn't. I lied and/or omitted, in part to spare him agony/disappointment, but also because there wasn't a way for us to have a rational/meaningful/actionable discussion to entertain any other idea besides quitting said behavior cold turkey. >

Are you planning on staying married? Do you hope to reach an agreement on what activities of yours he's allowed to control?

Hi Erica! I was just reading your comment to Mr. Horton about online affairs. That was my drug of choice. Well not affair, but friendship, commiseration with some sexual pix/short videos. It wasn't meant to replace my marriage, just supplement or amplify. No disease, no pregnancy. (My friend's mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer and she found out that her husband had been cheating on her and gave her HPV. Miraculously, she survived, but the whole scenario haunts me. My husband is devastated emotionally, but for whatever reason, it my head that's not as bad as a horrible disease). He's far, far away, so no risk of the online morphing into real life pleasure/pain. It seemed foolproof, but for proactive snooping on hubby's part.

I have a child, so staying married and working through things is an option. Many days, I want to make it work and almost any cost.

Other than this transgression, I've been a saint in every respect and tolerated a bunch of bullshit. No physical abuse, but almost infinite selfishness (though admittedly, there's no desire on his part to physically cheat - for now. Entertainingly enough, his e-mail was on the AM hack list. He has a very common name, so I don't think it was him. He's very honest and I have no reason to doubt him. We have issues, but I don't think that's one of them.) We are in counseling (couples and individual). He's asked for me not to send e-mail/videos for now (that's the part of my behavior that most aggravated his pain/frustration). He'd asked me once before and I didn't oblige. He snooped again and he escalated things. It's the escalation that bothers me the most. We didn't negotiate the stopgap, he'd demanded it. Anyway, now that I'm complying, I have to figure out what I need. Neglect a spouse long enough or take him/her for granted for so long and it's hard not to have more needs/wants than when we made our initial "agreement" with marriage. Luckily, our child is young enough that I have some time to take things day by day, week by week until I/we figure some stuff out.

It's the control aspect that weirds me out. What I liked about my online activities is that they seemed private (and frankly harmless, though I guess that's selfish or naive or both). I equated it almost with porn, though I know it's more than porn. Anyway, I'm a bit confused and numb for now. Okay, now for some funny timing... I have to go, b/c I have a therapy appointment! (I don't have time to reread this. I hope there aren't that many typos or errors in logic...)

@95: "the way she conveys her absolutely crushed soul in her letter... makes me wonder how she reacts when her husband forgets to take out the trash."

So forgetting to take out the trash is like exchanging pussy shots with a coworker?

I swear, there have been such weird analogies lately in the rush to demonize the LWs.

@99: "I guess i am a little confused as to what his final explanation actually was... For me, having my partner tell me she was questioning our relationship, we had hit a bump, etc... that would be plenty of an explanation for me. She wouldn't need to get detailed about it. She wouldnt need to tell me what a failure she was... that she had "issues"...etc"

Besides, by being direct and not "saving her", he wouldn't have to lie again and again.

109 - undead - you seem to need to stir up shit sometimes. You pulled only the part of my quote that suits your need to contradict. Surely.... when you read that entire paragraph (not just the part you snipped)... you can connect the logic dots.... right?

"Forgetting to take out the trash is like exchanging pussy shots with a coworker". Maybe i will get that emblazoned on a tshirt and wear it to the next savage event....

vennfan @108: when you were having your online affair, did you feel closer to your husband, and treat him lovingly? Or did you just see his flaws even more?

If the latter, then maybe the online affair was just your saner self trying to explode the marriage and give you your life back? Seriously, why stay with someone who is "infinitely selfish", makes demands you see as unreasonable, and "escalates" when you don't obey? (What does "escalate" mean, by the way?) You don't seem to like him much. Is this the relationship you want to model for your child?

Being "harsh" is not the same thing as telling a monogamous woman she's being crazy for being upset about sexting, and making her feel like naked pictures of coworkers are normal. They're not.

Vennfan, I'm sorry you're going through this. You know that you need to figure things out, so I just wanted to point out that in any affair, taking a break will give you perspective. So for you, not just for him, take some time for yourself and don't engage with the online affair person and see how you feel in a few weeks. If you can, take some time away from your husband, if only a few days. Distance makes things clearer, and some clarity will help you make your choices. You are clearly harboring some major (possibly deserved) resentment. Congrats on therapy for yourself - it has helped me tremendously and I'm sure you'll benefit. Good luck.

@111: "109 - undead - you seem to need to stir up shit sometimes."

Well, I don't generally reply preaching to the choir, so I usually comment if I disagree or have something to tack on :)

"You pulled only the part of my quote that suits your need to contradict. Surely.... when you read that entire paragraph (not just the part you snipped)... you can connect the logic dots.... right?"

Not even on re-read? It comes off as rather glib/callous in the context you provided it in.

Is it true that she is overreacting? Almost definitely. Is it also true that jealousy is a very real thing that is very hard for many otherwise confident women to deal with? YES. Let's not forget that.

undead- i am certainly not immune to being glib nor callous. I just object to my post being used as an example out of context. In this case, the context is my overall approach to these letters. I do my best to never vilify only one party. This letter makes that a bit more difficult...as her language implies bright lights and an police interrogation room and a need to "get to the bottom of this"...as though her husband were a perp and the answer he gave would have to be accepted by a judge and jury. Not once did i get the impression that she was trying to understand her husband's motivations. It sounds like she asked him "Why?"... he said "we weren't doing well and I wondered if we were going to make it" and she said "not good enough, try again" and so it went... over and over until he was sobbing and copping to issues he may or may not even have.... just to get it over with.

it paints an ugly picture to me....

"Not even on re-read?" I am not sure i follow what this means. Are you asking if i was trying to say my post was totally and completely without malice? That i was missing how it could be seen as pure contempt for the LW? nah... i'm not that dense. The truth isn't always pretty.

I think you missed the mark. I'm going to stick up for BRIDE here. She wasn't snooping; he asked her to go through the files. His little sexting fling may have been years ago, but it's new to her, so it's not old to her. He compounded it by lying. And let's face it, claiming he stayed in touch because he didn't want hurt her feelings sounds like bullshit to me; he probably wanted to keep his options open in case things didn't work out with BRIDE.

Also what #116 says.

@39 hahaha! As I read this post, I totally thought "Ven is Miss Marpling the heck out of this post", and then read that you put that hat on yourself at the end.

vennfan - your husband (based on what you have shared here and in that other column) doesnt sound like a very compassionate person. He also seems to have fallen into the "now that i am married...i no longer have to try" trap that seems to snag some people. I guess i dont understand why he thinks he can simply ignore all of your sex and intimacy needs (and guessing that includes affection and telling you you are sexy) and have you just sit there and take it. Cheating is such a tricky subject for us monogamous people. But damn.... why does he even give a shit if you have a sext buddy if it takes nothing away from his life? How can he be jealous of something he is totally neglecting? I feel for you. It must feel pretty bleak for you at times... getting chewed out by him over things that technically don't impact his life at all. Personally... i think you might just be better off moving on.... as he sounds like a bit of a control freak at first glance.

Danielle 118 - i think she has every right to feel upset and to feel betrayed and to wonder if she is being horribly disrespected. But i also think one loses their right to righteousness in a hurry if things go overboard.

"At first he couldn't be honest with me. He admitted that he had the pictures, but thought he deleted them a long time ago. [They were on his OLD phone... and he had her check the phone... so he obviously really DID think he deleted them - translation: honest] He played the blame game a bit, saying we were in a rough spot in our relationship and we weren't having much sex and that he wasn't sure where we were going at the time. [how is this dishonest? this all sounds true] I believe that he did delete them from his new phone, but the old phone still has that folder.[only reinforces that he was being honest]

Long story short, after a few days of crying and many interrogations, he came clean about the whole thing. [he had already come clean by saying "saying we were in a rough spot in our relationship and we weren't having much sex and that he wasn't sure where we were going at the time."] It only lasted a couple of weeks. It started out as innocent flirting and it escalated to sexting. In the heat of the moment he emailed her pics to himself and deleted them from his phone. He said he thought he got them out of his email box. [none of this contradicts what was already established by her] He never made it clear to this girl that he made a mistake and he has continued to be friendly with her since.[as dan said... he was *gasp* cordial] He said the mistake made him realize that he really needed to decide if I was what he really wanted in life, and he obviously felt I was because he proposed to me a few months later." [win for the LW!]

in short - she quickly undermined her righteous anger by going on the warpath. This is not to say her husband is without fault. But... and i would say the exact same thing to her if the roles were reversed... he super fucked up by not covering his tracks better. We all have private lives in our own heads. Our partners are not ENTITLED to those private lives at all times. We share those when we trust our partners. Easy to see why he kept this entirely to himself and i dont think he should be divorced over this one thing. If he is habitually disrespectful and always making her feel this way... she certainly didn't allude to that in her letter. She made it sound like an enormous surprise... which would lend more credence to it being a one-off problem.

Chairman, your private life "in your own head" may be hobbies, your porn or masturbation habits, etc. Your right to have a private life, in a monogamous relationship, doesn't extend to a private sex life (sexual secrets) with other actual, interacting people. That's my understanding of monogamy, anyway.

I'm really curious about how many men seem to think this is cool. Is it because they don't see these other women as "real" and so it's more like porn? I have noticed some men I know treat women like they are just for fun and be all surprised or upset when the woman, based on these types of conversations, wants more, or threatens to tell the girlfriend/wife when she is disappointed. Do these men simply not play it out/look ahead in their heads because they don't intend to go there? Or do many men think that as long as there's no physical sexual contact that sexting, naked photos, etc are harmless? Do men and women really have such different expectations of monogamy?

Just maybe take one step back from demonising this woman to consider - what would the comments section look like if we exchanged the genders? You seem quick to say that the anger is borne out of jealousy and that the husbands answers should be good enough. Are you sure that you would have the same conclusion if a man found naked pics of his wife's coworker in her phone and she answered his questions with crying and lying? Are you sure you wouldn't assume his anger is righteous and that the crying is manipulative and the lying wrong? I would say that it was a transgression, it is more serious than flirting and it is weird that he cared more about what the coworker thought about him than his gf. Sure it's in the past but she just found out about it and if it's over why wouldn't he just cop to it and apologize rather than lie? Even if she has massive jealousy issues she already found the pictures so clearly nothing was to be gained by lying. FWIW I think attitudes would change if the genders were exchanged - even on these comments threads (which are generally enlightened in terms of sexuality, sex, etc.) there is still the misogynistic attitude that it's worse when women cheat and that our feelings are always rooted in instability and hysteria while mens are perfectly valid. This is my opinion only and please feel free to disagree but I ask that you examine how you would feel if your close guy friend told you his wife lied to him about having naked photos of a coworker on her phone and then make your judgement call on her behaviour.

secretagent - i phrased some of that poorly and wish i could edit it. I am in agreement with you that bringing another real person into the mix crosses the line. I was referring (with the private lives part of my comment) to his having doubts about their relationship and should've re-read my post before hitting the button...as i see now that it misrepresents my opinion on that part.

chaste- my own opinion would not change if the genders were reversed and the husband was the interrogator. Nor would it change if it were my own partner... and she copped to having doubts before we committed.

She also doesnt explain where he lied. It sounds like he tried to minimize it (and i cant call that an outright lie as he obviously minimized it all in his own head already too)...but that isnt quite the same thing.

The red flag here for me is, when they were having a rough patch, he dealt with it by turning to this woman.. Not sorting it out with the LW. Or breaking up with her.
He justifies it all by saying he wasn't sure he wanted her in his life.. That is not a good enough reason for turning to a co worker and exchanging naked photos. What had the texts between them been like, before the pictures came thru.
Yes Chairman, I can see her style of interrogation is a bit suspect.. Still, she does need to know if going forward is an option If he turns to this sort of behaviour to deal with a rough patch.
Did some magic happen when he decided he wanted to make a life with her, if that's what she wanted as well.
Why didn't he respect the boundaries of their relationship then? Does it indicate he'd go this way again?
Rather than sitting down with her and having that talk.

I agree that Dan was a bit harsh in his presentation, if not in his actual advice. It was a little jolting after a lot of his recent answers have been so diplomatic.

I have a hard time casting what she did as snooping, not because she didn't possibly go looking for things beyond what she'd been tasked to look for, but because I don't think he had a reasonable expectation of privacy*. If you hand someone your electronics and say "go through it and do X" and they come across Y, that's your bad for keeping Y there. Further, I don't see evidence that BRIDE was trying to find anything incriminating. I don't know why neither of them thought to just reset the devices (unless part of the photo purge was backing up anything important, in which case I certainly don't see anything wrong with investigating a folder marked "Work"), but there you have it.

Beyond that, while her actions may have been a bit heavy-handed (interrogate?? he's not a murder suspect, he's your husband!) but I don't think her concern or emotional response is the problem. Sexting is not the same as flirting, and not something I would consider ok within a monogamous relationship. Husband's explanation for the slip up seems reasonable, but really seeking confirmation from Dan that what he did was unforgivable (and it really does seem like that's the answer she was looking for) seems pointless. Only BRIDE can decide if she can live with knowing about his transgressions.

*I'm not advocating taking an invitation to use someone's phone or computer as an opportunity to see what dirt you can dig up (and it's certainly not something I do - when I use someone else's device I am quite careful to avoid touching anything I don't need to touch), but if I let someone log onto my computer, I don't feel I have a reasonable expectation to privacy for anything on there that isn't behind a password. And even that protection kinda goes away if you leave accounts signed in or share your password. But then I live very transparently and have very little to hide, and next to no interest in delving that deeply into anyone else's business, and I understand that's not how a lot of people approach their digital lives.

Chairman - I don't think she wanted to hear that it was her fault too, they had a bad relationship and she didn't realize it, re the blame game wording. I think she wanted to hear that he had a problem, it led him down a stupid path, and he solved it long ago. But, as Dan said, perhaps he was saying that he didn't like where the flirting/fling was leading, that he wanted to speak up about his sexual needs within the relationship instead, and once he felt comfortable doing that, he proposed. She'd be the best judge if that story made sense. This might be a good chance to explore each other's needs more if they don't drive each other crazy in the process.

Am I the only one who noticed the "looking for paystubs" thing? Am I reading too much into it, or does this suggest a lack of trust/openness about financial matters? If that's the case, then her snooping and his exchanging naked photos with a co-worker are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this marriage's problems.

A married couple is an economic unit. You need to be able to come to some basic agreements about how you handle money as an economic unit. That doesn't necessarily mean that everything goes into a joint account, but you need to trust each other and be open with one another.

@Chairman: Undead ayn rand reads terribly poorly--like the time he/she read the line "Torso shots" and spent hours pretending that it said "Dick pics," even though it didn't. Don't take it personally.

@123: We did the gender-swap a couple days ago. Everyone demonised the guy, much, much more than they are the LW. As always, the team of usual suspects who insists that women can do no wrong, insisted that women can do no wrong--and, as usual, insisted that their standards wouldn't suddenly change if the genders were reversed. As usual, they were lying.

I said the woman had been an asshole, and that the guy was handling it like an asshole, in failing to either get over it if he could or leave if he couldn't. Same as now, only with the genders reversed. As usual, I was lied about relentlessly because of it. Because apparently you guys all think the best way to fight misogyny is to make endless false accusations of it--I guess you believe it's productive to teach everyone that hearing the word "misogyny" is a red flag for lying?
If you need to lie in order to claim to've found misogyny, why not stop, and instead be happy that there doesn't seem to be any here?

Well, some commenters on this board don't believe that misogyny even exists, so I guess we're even?

@121: "We all have private lives in our own heads. Our partners are not ENTITLED to those private lives at all times."

Sexting someone exits the domain of fantasy and enters public-facing life.

@130: "We did the gender-swap a couple days ago. Everyone demonised the guy, much, much more than they are the LW."

Keep making shit up! It sure proves some sort of man-hate conspiracy.

@131: Again, lying. Name a commenter who doesn't believe misogyny exists, without lying. You can't, can you? If you were telling the truth in the first place, you could.

@132: Conspiracy implies secrets. Pro tip? You're really, really not doing well at keeping it secret. And yelling "No, you're a bank robber!" as you rob a bank isn't as effective a cover story as you think.
You and JibeHo both overestimate the value of lying. It's really not as useful as you're hoping. Why not try something different? Who knows, you might like it. Honesty feels pretty good, even though it'll require making some decisions differently on your part.

@127- Xilo - I agree that this particular snooping is pretty mild. Easy to give her a pass for what was likely a moment of weakness...rather than some well thought out plan.

If one of my male friends came to me with this problem (that his wife had some old sexts that predated their engagement (but not their relationship) and he proceeded to tell me how he had gone about torturing the confession out of her.... you can bet i would chew his ass out. Compassion is a two way street... but i have low tolerance for such ugly displays... and the person who does them gets lets compassion from me - male or female.

Philo- agreed. but "I think she wanted to hear that he had a problem, it led him down a stupid path, and he solved it long ago" sounds like what she DID hear. It is pretty much impossible to tell your partner you were having doubts about the relationship without it feeling like blame on some level. And if her husband really did place blame (by saying something like "YOU were treating me like shit and YOU were refusing to fuck me")... she certainly downplayed that language quite a bit by only saying "blame game". When i see words like blame game - it makes me think it was generic "our relationship wasn't going well".

In the end, LW needs to decide if husband has always made her happy in general. If yes, then she should choose happiness over righteousness. If no, then she should move on - but she doesn't need to go out of her way to him feel like the world's biggest lying asshole on the way out the door. She can just say "this incident has made me realize that i am unhappy. I need to move on"..... not "if only you hadnt done this to me, everything would be fine..."

@133: What matters to me is the context of what a person does and how they frame the issue, nothing here is about male and female.

Your constant MRA-lite freakouts claiming persecution reflect poorly on you. Not me.

@undead - I just skip over Eudaemonic's posts. He has some weird fetish, especially about "lying" that makes me think he thinks he's some dark hero typing away in a tower exposing the sordid masses for their rank dishonesty, shining light into the hypocrisy of women with his elevated discourse. I just hear trumpets "dun dunna dun!"

@134 Chairman - I'm having a hard time determining if BRIDE's writing is truly descriptive of the events or an exercise in poorly-chosen synonyms. Because if you sub in the most common language, it goes more like "found naked pics on his phone, asked him about it, he repeatedly denied anything going on (or at least denied his involvement with her was wrong), but after 2 weeks of questioning him about the lies, he came clean." Which makes the lying about any wrongdoing much more apparent and doesn't make it sound like they have some weird prisoner-guard thing going in Gitmo that makes her look like she's torturing him, perhaps even after he came clean.

I don't see a big problem with continuing to ask about the pictures so long as he's denying he had any kind of illicit sexual(ish) relationship with this woman. Whereas I do see a problem with continually interrogating her spouse when his truthful answers aren't good enough for her.

Essentially her letter makes the relationship sound very adversarial, but just the way it was written it feels to me like an embellished writing style rather than an accurate portrayal of the events, if that makes sense. At best, she still has to decide if saving her marriage is worth getting over something that he got over two years ago and he needs to work on not lying when he's obviously busted, and at worst she has some serious work to do on her conflict resolution skills and still needs to decide whether or not she can get over his indiscretions of the past.

Ms Xilo - All the confrontations and interrogations make me think of Mrs Dashwood's saying, when Elinor thinks she will like Edward in time, "I can feel no sentiment of approbation inferiour to love."

Given how frequently Mr Savage has trumpeted his views about forgiveness of affairs during marriage, LW's presenting as a presumable regular follower in combination with her expecting him to find Husband's conduct unforgivable seems more or less on a par with letters from straight men who similarly claim to be long time followers and who write in expecting Mr Savage to agree with such things as oral's being F-on-M only. Or, imagine Mr Limbaugh's response if a caller claiming to be a long-time listener sincerely thought he would agree with the suggestion that the Obama presidency has been good for the US.

@137: Right, someone who blew smoke up your ass until they "confessed" is going to be grilled harder than someone who didn't lie and responded directly. His answers indicating she could not trust him to respect and be honest with her are why she didn't trust his answers.

Why give more sympathy to the liar than the victim of lies? Even if you suggest that sexting someone right before getting married is not that big of an infidelity, she has a right to be pissed off, and wanting more steady conformation of the extent of his wandering eye (and possibility of wandering body as well) is not being "mean".

Casual dismissal isn't called for, take your partner seriously for crying out loud.

@138: Infidelity may be tolerated and Dan encourages couples to work past it, but seems quite odd to compare it to a must-have for relationships.

@138 Venn - I definitely think she was fishing for a condemnation of his actions in her letter, and she clearly didn't get it. I disagree that sexting and flirting are one and the same, as Dan seems to feel, but I do agree that his mantra of forgiveness is warranted and expected. I don't suppose your can frame your analogies in terms of genetics and neurochemistry? My expertise is definitely weighted in that direction, and I seem not to have found my way to the same classics you have. Or perhaps we can stick to Brave New World and Wuthering Heights?

@139 - Agreed. Her emotions are completely valid, and I think Dan minimized the degree of his transgression, both during his sext-fling and after he was found out. There's no free pass for lying to a direct question, even if you fear the truth won't be handled well. If she did, in fact, interrogate (rather than question) him, then some degree of defensiveness is understandable, but that points to a much bigger fundamental problem in their relationship than the pre-cheating, namely that they both lack communication skills in such a way that they exacerbate each other's immaturity. In that case, the advice should be get thee to a marriage counselor who can teach you both how to communicate like adults.

Ms Xilo - That was funny; 138 addressed 127, and crossed 137, to which it could seem a reply.

I'll agree that a lot of people take the Humpty Dumpty approach to vocabulary, or else are so poorly educated that they don't know what a lot of words mean. (Shades of Dumb Witness in which Poirot originally presents as an historian with Hastings as his secretary and the latter's exchange with the suspicious Miss Peabody:

"Can you write decent English?" "I hope so." "Where did you go to school?" "Eton." "Well, then, you can't.")

I'll admit that I take enough of a dislike to people who incline to using aggressive words such as "confront" and "interrogate" a bit too readily that they're going to get dinged one way or the other (like Charlotte Lucas when she accepts Mr Collins' proposal). Perhaps you're a little too inclined to believe the best. I like Miss Marple (as Mr Alan has doubtless already thought to himself), tend to believe the worst, for it's so often true.

undead/xilo

"Why give more sympathy to the liar than the victim of lies" - In a vacuum, my sympathy is always with the victim of the lies. In real life, i try to look at the big picture.

I'm curious... if we take it as truth that emotions are always valid... at what point can that be undermined? I see this LW's scenario as twofold. 1) she has a right to be pissed. Valid emotions. 2.) what she DOES with that anger/sadness does not just get grandfathered into the original cause without looking at the big picture.

That's just the way i approach these letters...and the dilemmas of friends and family in real life.

Ms Rand - That wasn't intended as a direct comparison, just as an example of a similar offence.

Ms Xilo - We crossed yet again. I don't recall having expressed any particular opinion about sexting and flirting beyond personally not being fine with sexting, so am not sure, if you think so, why you think you're disagreeing with me. Please don't think my cross-examination of LW implies that I've taken up Husband's brief. As long you don't venture into the dreaded evopsych, you are welcome to frame your arguments as scientifically as you like, but I agree with Miss Brodie that Art comes first, and then Science.

Chairman - "I think she wanted to hear that he had a problem, it led him down a stupid path, and he solved it long ago" sounds like what she DID hear.
Not necessarily. She doesn't say why he stopped trying to get w coworker. It could be that he learned to bring up sex needs in the relationship. She might remember that. It could be that the coworker found out he had a girlfriend. Or a friend threatened to tell about coworker. Or he could have moved it to the physical realm and never stopped it, he didn't sext any more because he was getting laid. He said the relationship was bad enough for him to hit on his coworker but not bad enough to confront his girlfriend about his problems. To me that means it'll happen again if the conditions happen again, so she needs to know those conditions well, and he doesn't seem to be forthcoming about them. Interrogation to find the info she needs, or accepting his outside dalliances, or leaving, seem to be her choices. The commenters seem to hear interrogation and torture as synonyms, too many movies imo. It is a way to search for information when another has reason to hide it; building a rapport works the best.

Point is, we don't know how he solved it. Could have been circumstances, or perhaps he could have grown/changed, there seems to be no evidence in either direction here.

It is pretty much impossible to tell your partner you were having doubts about the relationship without it feeling like blame on some level.
I disagree. It's impossible to tell your partner you were having doubts about the relationship and that's why you mistreated them by doing X, without it feeling like unfair blame on some level. Because it is, people are solely responsible for their own actions. He could also have left in those conditions, which would be more understandable imo.

Or he didn't solve it, she just moved past whatever stress was decreasing her libido, and the next time stress decreases her libido, she can expect it to happen again.

@142/144 Venn - Something about her letter sounds like the vocabulary was contrived, leading to that adversarial tone, doesn't it? If I read it literally it paints an odd picture of someone who, as you said, purports to be a long time reader but has seemingly no clue how Dan's mind works. Or perhaps my faith in human nature is just running a little high these days. I swear, it's temporary and not terribly reflective of my usual state of mind.

I'm not disagreeing with you in regard to the sexting, but inserting an important caveat to my acceptance of Dan's advice. It's meant to frame my own position rather than counter yours. I'm also having some difficulty tracking my own conversations at this point after coming off my third night shift in a row and I have not yet reached my minimum necessary dose of caffeine.

@143 Chairman - That's a hard question. I agree that it's not the emotions that are important, but the actions one chooses in response. As I've been discussing with Venn, the way her letter reads, it feels like we got the overly-dramatized, direct to DVD movie version of events. Her writing style to me just screams that she was trying too hard to write a compelling letter (see 137). So I'm taking the verbs she chose with a grain of salt. This leaves the possibility that her actions were not nearly as adversarial as they came across. Again, that's just my read on it, and if I'm wrong and her word choice is accurate, then the bigger problem with their relationship is their mutual inability to communicate like adults. That will be a far greater hindrance to a happy, loving relationship with current husband or anyone else than a briefly considered bout of infidelity.

I would suggest that healthier responses to emotions can be trained, and to a certain extent, an emotional response can be altered, and perhaps should be altered if one's current response is prohibiting one from maintaining a healthy relationship with a partner they wish to stay involved with. Essentially, if the relationship is worth keeping, it's worth working on yourself in order to keep it.

Phair enough. I can't (and won't) argue with any of that reasoning.

(I'll argue with myself slightly to redact "communicate like adults" with "communicate in a healthy way" since, obviously, adults can and do communicate poorly an awful lot of the time.)

Redact . . . AND REPLACE WITH... Goodness. The second cup of tea is ready but too hot to drink yet. First day off the night shift stretch is rough. Especially after three solid nights of the populace going nuts and drunkenly attacking each other.

Maybe she could try to see his side of things, and find a nice local friend to sext with during this rough patch. Hubby can take the pics so there's no question of who else was there.

irony:

he was able to break through to an Iraqi insurgent over a shared love of watching the TV show 24 on bootleg DVDs.

"He acknowledged that he was a big fan of Jack Bauer," he told PRI. "We made a connection there that ultimately resulted in him recanting a bunch of information that he had said in the past and actually giving us the accurate information because we had made that connection."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archiv…

Ms Xilo - It didn't seem that contrived to me, but then I've read my Rumpole.

@vennfan: Wow, sounds a lot like where I was some years ago. Good luck. The only definitive advice I can offer is don't stop doing anything that makes you happy, whatever your husband says, until he takes some responsibility for your happiness.

Oh, and his selfishness? That just makes him all the more vulnerable to losing you, which is something you can and should leverage.

Xilo 147 - I happen to share MrVenn's opinion on words like confront and interrogate.

I saw those words and it never occurred to me they could be accidental. They seemed deliberate. But no matter.... i think we've pretty much covered all bases anyway... haha

Oh I agree they were deliberate, but not chosen for accuracy than for dramatic effect, as it were. In that sense they were a poor choice, if my take is at all accurate. Reading it just reminded me of bad creative writing, where no common word could be left un-synonymed, every verb requires an adverb, and every noun needs at least two adjectives.

"She sprang mightily at his tender, pulsing jugular vein, ripping ferociously at it with her startlingly white, perfect teeth."

...And this is the failure of this particular forum. When one would love to continue the conversation because the company is good, but one no longer has anything left to reply to directly, and the chain of responses either dies abruptly or lingers with half-hearted mutterings of ascent or understandings of differences, but can't quite make the leap to a different conversation.

pity the main column this week is just more of the Ashley Madison hack... I dont find conversing about the ethics of cheating all that interesting. I have more of an "if it works for you, fine" approach to it. No judgment either way. It just isn't for me.... because of how it would make me feel about myself as much as how my partner would feel.

Exactly. I didn't find a single thing that compelled me to comment (which has more or less been my problem ever since I signed up for an account ages ago, albeit more in the "I have waited far too long to jump in and if I did I would have far too much ground to cover" sense).

I wonder how many commenters would be interested in a facebook group where the format would be more free form and interesting conversations could continue at the forefront as long as they remained relevant. Personally I have no hangups about losing my anonymity (which as I've previously established I have long since abandoned by making my online self so very easily searchable) but that could definitely be a factor for others I imagine.

I cherish my digital anonymity too much. Googling my real name reveals only the tiniest bit of info on me...and i have a full name that is literally unique (supposedly the only one in the world). :)

Im too private to willingly show up in searches. Though i do think it would be nice to have a side board of sorts when the topics veer of the letters.

I agree Chairman, re SL this week. Over it already. Though the weekly thread can veer off in all directions.
It is interesting, though, to read different ideas re intimacy, lies/ etc.. I lied to myself thru my marriage, a lot. Realizing that more now, than at the time.
Like Future, I'm staying well clear of any new deep entanglements, for the moment. I don't want to find myself lying to myself every again, and a relationship can get so messy, so quickly.
People's expectations vary so much about what it entails, and I just don't need one enough to push thru the scripts people carry.
Happy to have a general and relaxed meeting with another, a feeling of care and trust, some sex.. Just not the whole catastrophe.

Hmm, that could be a possibility, though I doubt my own ability to keep track of yet another website outside one I already frequent. Maybe the Powers here are listening, and something can be integrated in. Even just a chat room could be fun. I haven't frequented one for years, but I practically grew up in the OregonLive chat room (ironically while living in WA, and now I frequent the WA-based SLOG while living in OR), so there's a lot of nostalgia there.

Also, I said it before in a dying thread where it might easily have been missed, but congrats on the impending miniature donkey.

Also also, I was listening to NPR while heading up to Bellingham weekend before last and was ridiculously disappointed that during one of their shows (can't remember which - it wasn't one that I normally come across on the Portland station), NONE of their participants could explain the difference between accuracy and precision, nor restriction or constraint. As one who is maybe a teeeensy bit preoccupied with clarity, it was painful to listen to them floundering.

Out of town, sure this has all already been said, so will keep it brief.

This was NOT a "big nothing burger." This was a crossed line, and a very big shock to its discoverer. You find something like this -- and no, sending nude photos to someone you're not sleeping with is neither harmless nor typical flirtation behaviour amongst OS people, nor should it be amongst colleagues -- does no one observe the "don't shit where you eat" rule anymore?? -- and of course you're upset. He didn't do "nothing." He screwed up, which is evidenced by how contrite he is about it. (However, minus points for not coming clean straightaway; delayed confessions can indicate having taken some time to craft a less damning story than the truth...)

He didn't fess up at the time because what he learned from this sordid experience was that his wife-to-be was, in fact, the one he really did want. He made the right decision, not to cheat. Happy ending, until his past caught up with him. She's right to be upset; but she should accept his confession and put it behind them.

Thanks Xilo (for the congrats). Dan posted an other AM related article...but its rather heartbreaking and not asking for advice on what to do about a cheater. This hack has really been a horrible thing.

Yikes. That's a rough one.

BRIDE snooped. Wiping a phone is a one-step task that *does not* involve reviewing every little bit of data stored on the damn thing.

The ONLY reason to look at texts was curiosity. You would never delete texts one-by-one. I have thousands of texts. Would you delete emails one by one? Of course not.

You wipe a phone all at once, or not at all.

@163: "Dan posted an other AM related article...but its rather heartbreaking"

The horrifying thing about this all? They killed themselves over a site they joined that had MAYBE 12000 real women on it (versus employee accounts) of which. Worldwide were only 1000-1500 actually checked their account at least once.

Literally all of the rest of the 5.5 million female accounts were faked and checked by employees. It was all a facade.

to add to that undead.... it sounds like the fake accounts were NOT even checked by employees. There were dormant entirely. Like a car dealer that leaves an enticing ad up for a car that sold weeks ago. Its all seriously fucked up and i wont shed any tears if the people who run AM are ruined by this.

@167 CotB - How about saying something like this: "If there's one thing I've learned from this crazy Ashley Madison hack, it's that a lot of people are seeking extramarital affairs. I want you to know that if *you* ever choose to pursue outside partners, I would prefer [to know first/not to know/to go to marriage counseling first/to discuss opening up the marriage/fill in the blank with your own preference]. How about *you*?"

oopsie, I posted to you on the wrong thread, cotb...hang on.

COBT, my husband has not historically been compassionate and until he found out about the affair he fully embraced the "now that i am married...i no longer have to try" mentality. However, he's really turned a corner recently. For two reasons: first, he's a father now (a mostly great one) and second, he knows that the marriage isn't sustainable without maturing and developing better coping skills and communication skills (and he's learning these in counseling and on his own).

Erica, there are things I don't like about him, but he's now working on those. I do love him and he's a .90 that I've rounded up to "the one". In the past, sometimes that .10 presented itself all at once - no sex, controlling behavior, selfishness and that's how I found myself in an online affair. The online affair made me happy (I felt sexy and okay with myself. It gave me a high, but also a sense of calm). I didn't treat my husband well during this time, but it wasn't because of the affair. It was because I was processing years or pain and frustration. If sex is glue in a marriage, then the affair (repeat, no actual sex, it was online, but that doesn't matter to some on here and it didn't matter to my husband) allowed me to stay in the marriage to work on being a more forgiving and accepting spouse while still encouraging necessary positive changes in my husband's behavior.

By "escalate" I mean that my husband threatened to out my AP to his wife. That he went nuclear really upset me: I'm not okay with him trying to punish a 3rd party. I'm okay with him directing anger, frustration, and sadness my way. I'm the one who couldn't stop communicating with my AP. I get a lot of shit for not being trustworthy after having this affair (for which I'm making amends). I wish he were also concerned about my trust eroding with such a high stakes threat.

Modeling a mature, respectful, and ideally loving/affectionate (and also fun) relationship is of utmost importance to me. I'd like to teach our child that communicating in a healthy way is a priority. I want to teach him/her that it's important to experience and identify emotions. Also, it's necessary to learn how to constructively respond to/deal with emotions.

Secretagent, thank you very much for your advice and support. I don't talk to friends about this and I have to pay the therapists! ;) Also, responding to your comment @122, I know I don't represent the average woman, but in my F-ed up head, I did minimize the perceived harm of sexting precisely because there was NO physical sexual contact. (Even with therapy, I pat myself on the back for not cheating in person/IRL, though I take a lot of heat for it).

WoofCandy, if you come back, did your marriage survive? I had a hard time ending the online affair because it did make me so happy. And it didn't seem to bother my brain that it was cyber/placebo. If only my imagination were so good that I could carry on an affair in my head. For better or worse, I'm not the type to use game theory, leverage, etc. I just want a minimum amount of sex, respect, empathy, and kindness. Happiness is something I will tackle along the way...

Futurecatlady @168, I love this! I'd always told my husband I'd prefer to know first, ideally. Otherwise, please let me know after because I fear disease. He just seemed to assume I'd never cheat. (And given my fear of disease, I went with the online affair). I forgot to ask "how about you"? Doh!

@167: Depends on how they wired them up, the email addresses may forward to a ticketing/honeypot system where the "interaction team" (or whatever the employees described in the earlier expose call themselves) pretend to be in order to invalidate the "adultery or your money back" $$$ guarantee. That would probably be easier than monitoring new users interactions and then puppeting the accounts that way.

How they simulate real interactions, that facade is utterly fascinating.

@170: "By "escalate" I mean that my husband threatened to out my AP to his wife. That he went nuclear really upset me: I'm not okay with him trying to punish a 3rd party. I'm okay with him directing anger, frustration, and sadness my way. I'm the one who couldn't stop communicating with my AP. I get a lot of shit for not being trustworthy after having this affair (for which I'm making amends). I wish he were also concerned about my trust eroding with such a high stakes threat"

Eesh. Sounds as if he wants this guy to stop taking your calls. Did you continue talking to him after you told your husband that you'd stopped?

vennfan @170, I'm glad to hear your husband is making progress in therapy and that you've seen improvement in his behavior toward you. In light of the painful discussion in the SL weekly column, I won't offer advice, but just my hopes you find a way forward that works for you.