X,

 if there are three of you in your marriage, isn’t it “a bit crowded”?; and for still another, even if there are only two of you, what kind of marriage (I mean marriage of what quality, satisfaction for all parties involved, etc.) can you really call a marriage?

Haha, this made me laugh because for a handful of years now, I felt like my marriage has been way more that just the two of us. Whether it is my Mother in Law, or Jay. The one thing that all of these responses have shown to me has been that dysfunctional defines my marriage and it is truly amazing that my wife and I can still talk to each other.

I do believe that I have many conflicting ideas inside my brain. For a long time I suppressed so much, and checked out. There was too much input in my life and I did not have take the time to decompress, so I pushed everything down and carried on. 60+ hr work week, travel, newborn, new step son, In-laws living with us, and a wife that fought severe depression and pill addiction. Looking back on it I should have been more assertive, I should have taken more time for myself, I should have put more value on my feelings. But I was on robot mode, and got to a point where I wasn’t giving anyone anything they might have needed from me, including myself. But you are right, I no longer want to live that way. Moving forward I want to be at peace with myself.

Could you elaborate a bit more how exactly your trying to fix her instead of working on yourself to become a better person were destroying your marriage?

I placed the blame on all of our problems squarely on her shoulders, It was the ambien, it was the not being able to get out of bed, it was always having to cancel outings because of her anxiety, I thought it was her fault that my in-laws were still living with us. I was rather shitty with her for some time, at the time I couldn’t see it. I could have handled so many things differently that would have been more supportive of her, trying to understand the position that she was in. We were newly married, and when things got complicated I threw in the towel.

In your “situation update” post from Oct. 3, you mentioned all the possible developments that could rise of Jay being in your wife’s life. I didn’t see the one where she is so happy to have two men by her side, that she decides to keep them both indefinitely.

I don’t know if she wants an open marriage or just wants to explore, we have talked about it and she is still on the fence. I still think that the attention and adoration that Jay gives her, makes her feel alive so to say. She has said that to me. Where that goes, I am not sure. Too  early to tell. I don’t know if it would make her happy or if it would confuse her to the point where the depression kicks in harder. We have talked about all of the possibilities. I told her I think part of it is that she is bored, and this is just an escape. I do think there is more to it, but I don’t know how that will manifest.

So my question kinda boils down to the concepts of sex and love. Can sex and love be separated?  If during one of my extended work trips, I got drunk and had sex with a woman I met at a bar. In terms of my wife and my marriage, what is the most damaging aspect of that situation. Is it the sex ( lets assume that is was the safest sex possible), is it the other woman who I would probably never meet again, or is it the trust that was broken? My thought is that it woould be the damage to the trust.

Now lets take this one more step, what if it was a place I traveled to frequently, and I slept with this same woman once a month.  So now does love creep into the picture and influence anything? What if it is just physical attraction, does it naturally  evolve into something else?

When you were a mistress, did he love you more than his wife? Did the hole that you filled interfere with the love and support that he had and gave to his wife? Physical needs are interesting, I can go get a normal massage once a week by a member of the opposite sex with no issues. Now that masseuse would make me feel amazing, high on life sometimes, but there are no issues with that. Now if I fell in love with my masseuse that may start to cause problems. So now the problem seems to be Love,  I am talking in circle now and I can’t quite finish formulating this thought. I will have to come back to it because there is something there.

I don’t know if my wife will decide to have an affair, and actually go through meeting with Jay, she may well decide not to. I know that I will try to treat her in a way that she no longer feels like that should be an option, and that is about all I can do, Right?

I feel like there is so much, and it is nice to be able to throw up all of this information onto the page whether it makes sense or not, it really helps de-clutter my brain and formulate better thoughts, and for that I thank you for reading and responding.

Matt