Is my wife cheating?

[Unregistered]

We have been married for three years and had a very rocky first 18 months. We went to counselling and everything was better until a year ago that my wife said she did not love me. We went back to counselling and we got closer than ever. Two weeks ago after sex she told me that again and this time she does not wabt to try only leave. Everything was fine until she resumed speaking with a guy at work a month ago, she invited him to a dinner with friends the Saturday before she made her announcement. She says nobody is involved but she says this guy is a good listener. I checked her cell phone yesterday and saw a strange number twice, doing a reverse check I foung out it was the guy's brother. He is christian scientist and has apparently been slowly "helping" her with teachings. She says she lost her love months ago but in my heart I don't believe that, this happened in the past few weeks. She is afraid to try anything because she knows she will probably give the marriage one more chance. Any ideas would be helpful.

[Liz]

Your wife is searching for something if she is getting drawn into the Christian Scientist teaching, but it is always dangerous if it's a member of the opposite sex who's "helping" her. If she has indicated that being listened to is important then there is a challenge there to you to develop your own listening skills.

Speaking as a woman, I think we women want our emotions to be listened to and accepted. We don't necessarily want solutions offered, but to know we are loved and accepted as we are. Questions that can help when you are listening are "Tell me more...?" "What does it feel like...?". You can also try to feed back what you are hearing. "I think you are saying this, have I understood you?

Some of the barriers to listening are allowing conversations to develop in our head, thinking we've heard it all before and preparing our answer instead of listening. We may try to do something else at the same time instead of stopping what we are doing and showing by our body language that w e are concentrating on our spouse. We may take the words at face value rather than trying to sense the feelings and words behind, trying to glimpse the special person behind then. We may just listen for the facts and try to solve the problem or make our partner "feel better". There may be things in us that make us less open to hear what is being said, fear of being challenged to change our attitudes or behaviour because of what we hear, fear of having to admit some mistake or failure, fear of the words stirring up pain from the past. We may have attitudes of thought patterns from our past history that make it hard for us to listen, eg money should be saved not spent, emotions should be hidden not expressed.

If there are things your wife expected to find in marriage and hasn't then discovering what they are and doing what you can to respond to these will take the desire to look elsewhere away.

Your wife is experiencing that her emotional needs are not being met, so she interprets her lack of positive feelings about you and the marriage as meaning she doesn't love you anymore. In the end love is more than romantic warm feelings, it's a choice and a decision to act lovingly towards someone. Feelings vary, love can be steady if it's understood. To read more about Feelings look here (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/relbasictopic/feelings/) and love look here (http://www.2-in-2-1.co.uk/healthclub/relbasictopic/loveis/).

All the best

Liz

PS The team have seen your other posting. Keep in touch.