Dear Amy: My husband has been keeping a secret friendship with a female friend from his past.
They have maintained a connection by cellphone for two years without telling me or her husband. They always call each other’s cellphone when they know the recipient of the call is not with their spouse.
Now that I have confronted him, he uses the “just friends” explanation and insists it meant nothing. I was just as devastated as I would have been had they been involved sexually.
He doesn’t feel I have a right to demand an end to this relationship immediately and completely. To me, this is a classic example of emotional infidelity. Your thoughts and advice? — Brokenhearted
Dear Brokenhearted: Friends invite one another over to the house to meet the wife and kids. Friends call on the home phone and chitchat with the spouse until the friend comes to the phone. Friends go bowling, attend ballgames together and share family vacations.
That’s what friends do.
Your husband’s relationship doesn’t pass the friendship smell test, and furthermore, I suspect he knows it.
You and your husband can pull yourselves back from the brink, but only if you talk this through and agree to be completely open and honest with each other. He needs to tell you what’s going on and why — and you need to listen to his story and then tell him how you feel and what you think should happen next.
A marriage counselor will help you two have the conversations you must have.
Dear Amy: I’m responding to a letter from “Shy Nude.” Shy’s friends were encouraging her and her husband to join them on a vacation at a nudist resort.
I’ve never had a “buff” body, but in the ’70s I lived, and participated, in a clothing-optional apartment complex when I lived in Texas.
There were 79 units inhabited by families, couples, single men and single women of assorted sizes, shapes and ages (the oldest was in her 60s, the youngest a newborn). After the first 15 minutes of being nude, it felt like the most natural way to live. No one pointed, snickered or made any untoward comments to anyone else regarding their physicality. It was the only place I’ve ever lived where I knew all my neighbors.
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