He Found Out His Wife’s Been Having An Emotional Affair With A Speaker She Met At A Work Conference, But His Wife Blamed Him For Creating This Mess By Being “Too Restricting”
This 39-year-old man recently learned that his wife, 40, has been engaging in an emotional affair after 14 years of marriage. The affair began three months ago when his wife went to a conference for work in their state’s capitol.
The conference was pretty large, with attendees coming both from their home state and abroad. It was the type of conference where a lot of people staying overnight in hotels drank, partied, and networked with others, and others were hopefully hoping to hook up.
He was thrilled that his wife had the opportunity to go to this conference. It was a great way for her to advance in her career and network with others.
Plus, he knew that she would be passionate and happy to hear the topics that speakers would be presenting.
For each day of the conference, his wife took the train into the city while he took care of their three children (they have a 9, 7, and 1-year-old), and he picked her up from the train station at the end of each day when the events at the conference were over.
One of the speakers who flew to the city from Germany for the conference was a man named Dave. Immediately, Dave was interested in his wife when he met her.
He understood why since his wife is gorgeous, hilarious, sweet, and incredibly smart. When the conference was drawing to a close, Dave wanted to be able to stay in touch with his wife.
So, she and Dave exchanged contact information, and Dave reached out to her on WhatsApp. Throughout his marriage with his wife, they have always been open and honest with each other about who their friends are, and they are even more clear when their friends happen to be of the opposite gender.
“We have clear, agreed-on boundaries. My wife initially assumed the friendship was work-related, but Dave quickly stopped messaging about work and focused on his personal life: his family history, his sporting interests, his personal health, his frustrations with his wife (he’s married with two kids), and he started flirting with my wife,” he said.
georgerudy – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
His wife was aware of the fact that this would have upset him and made him uncomfortable if she’d been honest and not hidden the communication with Dave. But since she enjoyed the flirtatious banter with Dave, she allowed it to progress.
This was leading up to her 40th birthday, and she was struggling to wrap her head around entering a new decade of her life.
She was in the midst of an existential crisis, so in order to cope with her feelings, she became hyper-focused on her health and body.
His wife was constantly working out and made sure she was eating a balanced diet so that she could get into even better shape than she was already in.
In addition, his wife was interested in trying new things and finding better, more fulfilling friendships. She worried that she had lost out on some life experiences that others have had by her age.
Since she grew up in a religious and traditional household, she didn’t explore hooking up with multiple people and dating around as some of her peers did.
“When Dave started complimenting her, telling her she’s gorgeous, sending encouraging quotes, pictures, and GIFs, my wife didn’t tell him to stop,” he explained.
“She changed Dave’s name in her phone to ‘Mel,’ and then later changed it again with a different last name, ‘Deeds,’ so that it would appear that she’s talking with a girlfriend instead of this guy she met at a conference.”
Over the course of three months, Dave and his wife kept talking, and she constantly deleted their messages and any attachments that Dave sent her so that he wouldn’t stumble across them. She and Dave grew closer the more they talked.
One night, while he and his wife were sleeping, he woke up during the night and saw that his wife’s phone was getting inundated with a ton of text messages from a contact named “‘Mel Deed.'” Since his wife was asleep at the time, he read the messages because he was suspicious.
It was clear to him right away that Mel was a man. Mel was discussing his favorite sport and told his wife that he was looking forward to hearing from her when she woke up.
Also, he messaged her that he was excited for them to begin a business project together so that she could finally change his name back to “‘Dave'” in her phone instead of “‘Mel.'”
He confronted his wife, questioning her about who Mel was. According to his wife, Mel was someone she met at the conference three months ago, but she assured him that Mel was a woman and they were only friends.
In response, he said that he knew that was a lie and was aware of the fact that Mel was really Dave. When he asked her to quit with the lies, they started fighting.
His wife repeated her claim that she and Dave were only friends and that nothing was going on between the two of them. She told him he was being overdramatic and that it was ridiculous this was a fight in the first place.
He argued that if nothing was happening between her and Dave, it didn’t make sense that she was sneaking around and lying about their communication.
While he’d been able to read some of his wife and Dave’s correspondence, he didn’t think he’d found all of their conversations.
After the fight, he came up with a plan to come up with more evidence of the fact that his wife was engaged in an affair because he felt like she was gaslighting him by pretending that nothing was going on.
In order to do this, he took his wife’s phone and began texting Dave, pretending to be his wife. He did this while she was sitting next to him, witnessing him do it.
When he sent Dave a message asking for him to send a happy photo, texting, “‘I’m sad,'” his wife jumped up and raced to the other room so that she could message Dave from her laptop, texting, “‘IT’S MY HUSBAND!!!'”
Later, he and his wife took a walk and talked for a few hours about the issue. He told her she needed to block Dave on social media.
However, his wife was so persuasive and earnest when she said that she never reciprocated with flirting back when Dave flirted with her. His wife added that none of their conversations crossed the line.
“She just didn’t want to be embarrassed. She also says that she felt so restricted and controlled that she had to change his name in her phone to just have a friend who is a guy,” he shared.
“I created this issue because I’m restricting her, and she needed to talk to Mel/Dave.”
Now, he doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t know if he should believe his wife’s side of the story, but he thinks that she had an emotional affair, no matter how much she tries to minimize her behavior.
What advice would you give him?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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