gracielee
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- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
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I've been accused of being honest to a fault myself - but when I suspected my wife of an affair - the anxious part of my brain took over and I started to monitor her online activity (including her email). Human beings are emotional creatures by design and under extreme stress we do things that we otherwise would not. I'm not proud of that behavior and in hindsight I ask myself "what were you thinking, dude!" - but there was something about my brain that couldn't deal with "not knowing". Heck - my wife did the same with me when I got too cozy (virtually) with an ex-girlfriend I reconnected through Facebook. In stressful situations like that we're driven to do things we normally wouldn't - monitoring email, following our mates to their secret rendezvous points, and in some cases unfortunately...violence.
I've told this story many, many times with various divorced folk across the country, and a vast majority sympathize with this story with many adding - "been there, done that."
The way I've always felt is, you can't *make* somebody love you or want to be with you if they don't want to. I don't believe somebody can 'steal your man/woman'. It drives me nuts when a woman blames husbands secretary, or some such thing, for *stealing* her husband. He's not a child, he participated, ya know? We've been married 42 yrs. some rough ones in there long ago. But we've never been separated, worked through what we each needed to feel good. We're retired now, don't get on each others nerves, actually enjoy being able to spend every day together. We spend a lot of time working together on projects, gardening, woodworking, etc. We seldom fight, argue, we grew up together. I trust him, he trusts me. I'm not interested in reading his email, can barely find the time to read and answer my own. And he feels the same. There still aren't enough hours in the day to find the time to read and do eveyrthing we want to. I guess I can understand your feelings, I just don't have them myself. If my husband wanted somebody else, well, it would break my heart, but IMO spying wouldn't help. What would I do if I found something out? Would it change anything? would he love me again if I found out? If he didn't love me, went looking someplace else, well then, what would me finding out change about that? JMO, but it's the way I feel. I've never been one to follow him around, checking up, and neither has he. MOO