Dear Amy: I don’t trust my husband anymore.
We had 17 wonderful, fun and happy years of marriage. We have four children.
I never had reason to doubt his fidelity and total honesty until about a year ago, when I sensed some deceit.
Then I caught him lying about using Internet porn and having a secret bank account.
Now I’m afraid that everything he says is questionable. He has been traveling for his job for the last 10 years.
His cellphone activity is over the top, and I can’t identify most of the numbers. I found some other convincing evidence (makeup on his clothes, sending flowers to someone) that he has been cheating.
I even asked him to take a lie-detector test, and he failed.
Still, he staunchly insists that he is innocent of any infidelity.
He has agreed to individual and couples counseling and has been trying hard to do everything I request to put our marriage back on track. He even switched territories to reduce his travel.
I know that I could forgive him if he were to confess, ask my forgiveness and swear that he is done with it. But his continued denials are killing me.
My greatest fear is that he can’t give up whomever he is risking his marriage over, and that he intends to continue these mysterious habits.
How can I know if he can be the trustworthy man I married or if he has morphed into a hopeless liar and cheater whom I’d be better off without?
– Worried Wife
Dear Wife: A secret bank account? A failed lie-detector test? I can’t pull out a crystal ball and tell you if your husband is cheating, but if he has lied about a lot of things, and you’ve caught him in these lies, then, yes – I think there is a good chance that there is fire behind his smoke screen.
My favorite book about infidelity is, “Not Just Friends: Rebuilding Trust and Recovering Your Sanity After Infidelity,” by Shirley Glass and Jean Coppack Staeheli (2004, Free Press). The authors opened my eyes to the roles that trust and transparency play in recovering from infidelity.
Your counselor should be helping the two of you to negotiate terms so that you can save your relationship.
…
Dear Amy: You have asked how mature, unmarried couples refer to their relationship.
My live-in love of 18 years and I recently attended my son’s wedding.
He introduced me as his mother and Jim as “her ‘whatever-people-their-age-call-themselves.”‘ Everyone cracked up.
– Whatever in California
Dear Whatever: The approximate anagram for your son’s terminology is WEPTACT.
Kind of catchy.
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