I need advice

[Lam]

My husband lied to me three times about a supposed "insignificant" texting friendship that I caught him in. He has never lied to be before that I know of in my 28 years of marriage. He says he wants to work on our marriage, and fix our problems.Our marriage does need help. We have been to marriage counseling twice now, and the therapist does not seem to help with this situation. He wants to work only on opening up more and trying to talk to me about things he used to keep from me. He does not want to discuss this texting issue I discovered. He says he"handled" the situation, but when i tell him I need him to help me be less insecure, and help me to instill trust in him by anwering questions about this, he dismisses me. I am supposed to give him the benefit of the doubt on his wonderful track record up to now. He says he loves me, and wants to get through this. The problem is: he gave me minimal information and now refuses to answer any other questions that I have that I need for closure.He did say he felt embarassed about the situation. I have tried everything. I questioned the insignificance of the relationship since he will not talk, and had to lie to me 3 times. We are at an impasse and he thinks i should forget his, and move on to our real problems.I should also mention, that he has always been extremely distant to me over the years, and he has trouble showing emotions, so this is nothing new. He is overly obsessed with exercise in the last year, and his diet. He is not a talker nor has he ever been with me, so this is really nothing new. Over the years, I have always expressed to him that I needed more attention, and I felt that didn't improve. We raised two great kids, and I guess ignored these problems. Do I have a right to know if for example if this person has tried to contact him in the past few weeks, if he said he has handled it? I have told him that my imagination is probably worse than what had happened, and I have not had peace of mind now in almost 3 weeks, and my stomach has been sick as can be.

[chosen]

Lam
I am like you, in that openess and honesty are vital for me. If I thought my husband was keeping something from me, I would be very unhappy like you are. I do feel that he needs to be open about this and what happened, but you cant force him to tell you if he is refusing to. Its very hard to move on and let it go, when you dont even know what happened. How can you forgive if you dont know what to forgive?
The exercise and diet situation may be a mid life thing, or it may have been because of his interest in this other women and the need to feel young and virile again.Do you know if this relationship was more than texting? Do you know who it was with?

Have you thought about trying a different counsellor?Maybe this situation could be dealt with in counselling.

[Lam]

Thanks for responding Chosen... No I don't know who this person is that my husband was texting... He lied to me three times about who it was. When you think that someone is totally honest with you, and you find out it is not the case, it is such a shock. I am hoping counseling will help. I may have to switch therapists. I'm just getting confused as to whether I have a "right" to my questions being answered since my husband doesn't want to answer anything about this insignificant situation. He wants to just focus on our "problems" that we do have.

[chosen]

Well this is part of the problem surely. His secrecy is a problem. He may think it is insignificant but it isnt is it, not for you.

[Raymond]

That's what I thought as well. Focusing on our problems surely means facing up to this misdemeanour which is a problem to you and surely opening up to each other means that as well. He is obviously embarrassed about it and thinks he can handle it alone. There is not much to go on. How did the contact happen do you think? If he is not a talker one does wonder. Would it be an internet contact? Maybe he does want to close it and is not finding it easy.

[Lam]

Thank you Raymond and Chosen for trying to help. I don't know how this first contact happened. He feels he has given me more info than he initially ever wanted to. He could have met the person anywhere. I am going to a therapist this afternoon to try and get some help for me. I am very unhappy about, not so much about what he says is nothing, and insignificant, but more so, with his dismissals, and not trying to help the person he says he loves feel better...