What should I do about my wife?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My wife and I dated for two and a half years and got married several months ago. The vast majority of her friends are guys and I am fine with that. However, she has one male friend that I have never trusted. They would text eacher other constantly and she deletes her texts pretty frequently. More stuff happened, of course, but after a few months of marriage she received a picture of his “goods” in her email and I saw it. Needless to say I was irrate. We fought for a while and I asked her to stop talking to him. Recently I checked the phone records and she had been talking to him. Same fight. She said she would stop and I was ignorant enough to believe it. I know she texted him last week but she has told me a few times that she hasn’t been talking to him. I really don’t want a divorce because I do love her, but I need to do what is right by me at the same time. Does anyone have any thoughts or advice on my situation?

I know I’m the person that has allowed it to continue and hope to stop it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

2

Define “more stuff happened.”

3

You just described the events leading up to my divorce. Good luck.

ETA: What kind of friend sends a pic of “the goods” to their married friend? Not the good kind.

4

We had to live in different towns for a few months. One time I got a call from a friend saying he saw her so I went to check it out. I saw her walking up to his apartment and confronted her, unfortunately. She said she had come to town to surprise me. She apparently stayed at his house the night before. This was a few months before the wedding.

She yells and says I’m falsely accusing her and don’t trust her. I have a feeling that’s probably just bogus crap, but I need the view of some outsiders so I know whether or not I am being an idiot.

5

Uhm, sorry, but things don’t go from normal friend to pics of the “goods” like that.

They progress. There are levels of intimacy that must be passed before something like that happens. think about it, if you were dating a girl, how much stuff MUST have happened before you actually send her a naughty pic of yourself?

For me, personally, we’re talking at least months dating and sex AND knowing she would ok with it before I would even consider such a thing.

She either cheated on you with this guy, or still is cheating on you with this guy.

I mean, She’s already lied to you about him SEVERAL times. What more evidence do you need? Can you truly trust her now?

Break it off. It’s only going to be MORE painful as time goes on.

6

Uhm… dude.

7

You build yourself a time machine and go back in time and beat the crap out of your past self for thinking about marrying her.

8

If you think there is any chance at all for this relationship, then I would try couples’ counseling. You need to find out, with help from an impartial third party, if she is honestly willing to commit to your relationship or not (and whatever your issues are will come out too).

My wisecrack answer is that, if you love her, it can’t be for her honesty.
Roddy

9

Why didn’t she come to town to surprise you and go directly to your house?

10

What sort of man sends photos of his “goods” (it’s OK to say penis here) to a married woman and what sort of married woman tolerates that shit? I’ve been married and simultaneously had male friends but I can’t imagine a male friend sending me a photo of his penis, never mind me tolerating that for an instant and shutting the sleaze bag out of my life.

It sounds like your wife is having an ongoing sexual relationship with this guy.

It also sounds like you need to start working on a divorce ASAP because this is not going to end well, so you may as well be the one in control of ending it.

Sorry. :frowning:

11

I am married, and have male friends, including more than one with whom I have a “history.” (My husband is aware of the friendships and the histories.) But if one sent me a picture of his johnson, I might, MIGHT put him on notice to never drink that much again, and I would definitely reconsider the friendship. But hiding the communications from a spouse is the red flag, to me. In my experience with a husband who cheated, the cheating spouse is secretive, and accuses the other partner of their own misdeeds. But I think you’re just asking a bunch of internet strangers to validate your suspicions. For my part, consider yourself validated.

The next step is up to you and your wife.

12

What does she say to explain him sending a picture of his “goods”? You say you had a fight, but tbh, I can’t really imagine what kind of believable response she could give that isn’t “he sent it because I am cheating on you with him”. If she says she wants you to trust her, she must have a pretty good story for that one…

13

Plan A: Marriage counseling, where both of you willingly attend, and work towards the point where she stops seeing him and stops lying about him, AND you feel you can trust her.

Plan B: Resign yourself to a marriage that includes your wife seeing this fellow.

Plan C: Divorce now. It will only be harder and more expensive later.

14

“I’m fucking that other dude. SURPRISE!”

15

The fact the she said she’d stop talking to him, instead of something along the lines of “you can’t tell me what to do”, strongly suggests guilt. The fact that this has come to a head more than once strongly suggests this isn’t a passing thing that will just go away. Your options, as I see it, are to ignore and accept it, divorce, go into major joint counseling, or come to some sort of agreed non-monogamous arrangement. You obviously don’t want the first two.

16

Yeah… all of this.

My friends are about 50-50 male and female, and I’m bi. I’ve never gotten a picture of ANY of their genitals or any naughty bits. If I did ever receive such a picture, there would be hell in all directions.

The only people who send sexually explicit things to each other are people in a sexual relationship. Sexting IS a sexual relationship. He may not be rubbing junk with her, but they ARE having a sexual relationship, right now.

17

You’ve only been married a couple months. Cut your losses now. Because I don’t see her turning into less of a ho.

18

Also ask yourself - why did she marry you, if she’s clearly not ready to commit you and your marriage and definitely appears to have been unfaithful to you right from the get go?

Seriously, ponder this. I don’t get why someone who isn’t committed to a marriage would agree to get married, but maybe there’s something in your history that would give you some insight.

Not meaning to sound harsh and granted I am only going by what you’ve posted, but from what I see it’s unfair to give you false hope that you can salvage this.

19

Stealing from the Red Hot Chili Peppers:

If you have to ask, you’ll never know
Funky motherf–ker will not be told to go
Wow, wow, wow

20

At the very least, there’s a major breakdown in trust in the relationship because she’s demonstratably lied to you and you, understandably, can’t trust her. Of course, she may or may not have actually slept with him, but I’m inclined to think that she probably has, or at least wants to, and if she hasn’t, very well may end up there after a fight.

I think you two need a real conversation, with a marriage counselor and you need to be comfortable if/when she divulges things, both with what she divulges and that it’s actually the truth. If you’re not, the relationship may or may not be irreparable, but it’s impossible to say until you’re in that spot. However, how she reacts to the idea that you should get counselling probably says more than the counseling would. Unfortunately though, the outlook doesn’t look good.
And to speak from my own experience, I was sort of on the other side of this in the past. I’d had a female friend I’d known for years and had, in fact, had interest with her but it never materialized and we remained friends. I started dating another girl, and admittedly I wasn’t completely over the first when I first started dating her, but after we got into the relationship, I was happy. However, I did maintain my friendship and we did text often, and she’d want to read them but I’d refuse because I felt it was a violation of my trust with my friend (being in a relationship with me doesn’t get you privy to my friends’ secrets, you have to be their friend too), and I never denied that I talked to her nor did I ever agree to stop talking to her. I actually had hoped that I could get them to talk and they might be friends, but my friend only very reluctantly agreed to try and my then GF just straight refused. I don’t really blame her for being jealous, but I figured being straight-forward about it very early in the relationship would be enough and, well, the fact that my friend was thousands of miles away, married, and had a kid.

Anyway, the reason I bring that up is that I do think it’s possible to have a friend of the opposite sex and not have nefarious reasons for being secretive. I probably didn’t handle my situation the best way I could have, but I definitely wasn’t cheating or inclined to cheat. The main difference between my story and the OP, though, is that there’s clearly deception going on, which means there’s probably something she doesn’t want you to know, which doesn’t leave much room other than cheating, and the dirty picture only makes it that much worse.