Emotionaly drained

[Littlemantate]

My wife of 28 years recently moved to Australia to commence work. I remained in my country to sort out our house and ready us financially for immigration. During the time that we were apart, my wife befriended an older gentleman. She told me about him and described him as an old man. 2 days before I arrived, she called me to tell me that she had purchased a piece of furniture and that she was thinking of asking this friend to help her get it home. I said to her that I was not comfortable with this and that she should wait for me to sort this out. She insisted that it would be fine and after a bit of pushing on her side, I relented and said to her to decide and that I trusted she would make the right decision. Unfortunately,her decision was to get this person to help her. When I called, he was sitting in the house having a cup of tea. I'm not sure that my wife saw the expression on my face when I witnessed this and to make matters worse, she was a little dismissive. I called back a little while later and this time they were walking at local track. This angered me considerably but I thought that I would discuss it with her when I arrived. Two days after arriving, I broached the subject and unfortunately, my wife became quite angry with me, suggesting that I didn't trust her and that I was being overly consumed by the situation. I explained that she invited a male that I had never met into our home that I had even been in yet and that I felt that her judgement was wrong. She became extremely angry at this to the point that I apologized for raising it as an issue. I felt emotionally betrayed by this and it was made to seem that I was being inconsiderate. A week later, I met this male for the first time and my intuition was that he was physically attracted to my wife and he was not the old man that she had described him to be. I confronted her again about this, explained my feelings and fears and once again was blasted and was called emotionally unstable. 

I, since have not being able to rein in my emotions. I am experiencing severe emotional exhaustion and anxiety to the point that I am feeling paranoid. Just looking for some advice. 

[indigo22]

Hi Littlemantate,

Welcome and thank you for reaching out to us.

I am not taking any sides here, but would like to offer some incite from a female perspective.

I guess the first question you need to ask yourself is - do you trust your wife? Has she ever given you any reason to not trust her prior to this? If you allow your thoughts to run away with you, you can come up with all kinds of scenarios that will make you feel insecure. When what you really need to be doing is questioning those thoughts and making a decision about whether or not there is any evidence to back them up.

Women do things differently to men, and think differently to men. What you have described sounds to me like someone befriending a person of the opposite sex in a new country and deciding to ask for some help with a piece of furniture and in gratitude of the assistance, has offered a cup of tea and decided to go for a walk (perhaps the man she befriended wanted to show her some of the nice local places she may like to visit).

Now, I will admit that I could be totally off base with the way I am seeing this, but then again, so could you. Whether or not the man is attracted to your wife is not the significant factor here. What is significant is whether or not your wife has given you any solid reason to doubt her loyalty to you.

If this situation is a completely innocent one from your wife's perspective, the insinuation that she has done something wrong in your eyes, would make her angry because she would feel that you are making an accusation that is unfounded.

Your wife is first and foremost a human being, capable of making her own judgements and capable of learning from her mistakes if she made the wrong judgement. You may not agree with her judgement, but that does not necessarily make it a wrong judgement, just a different one to what you would have made. Partners don't always agree on everything, that's what makes us individuals.

I hope this may be of help to you and please feel free to continue the conversation if you are comfortable doing so. My intention is to support, not judge, I hope you are able to feel that in my words.

Take care,

indigo