Dear Mrs. Bluth,
My mind is racing to places I don’t want it to go, I am so confused and perturbed. I work from home and the computer I use for work, for some unknown reason, has frozen and won’t allow me to open it. Being that my wife just bought a brand new computer for herself so she can do her correspondence after she comes home from her office job, I didn’t think she would mind if I did some vital work on it until I could figure out what was wrong with mine and get it repaired.
You can’t imagine my shock when I opened up her computer and found a very explicit, sexual exchange with another man. I froze and quickly shut it down, my mind racing with thoughts that caused me so much pain, anger, distrust, and the whole gamut of destruction. We have five young children, what am I to do with this? She called me on the phone, surely to find out how I was managing caring for two sick children, but I couldn’t pick up the phone because I didn’t trust myself to speak to her in the state that I was in. What should I do? Call her parents? Confront her when she gets home? Believe her if she says it’s a one time thing on the computer and that nothing untoward really happened? My head is bursting and I need your help right away!
Dear Friend,
We are living in hellish times, where it is not uncommon to lose our sense of better judgement. We get caught up in the web of immorality, false illusions of every kind, that we think will make life better. We dream of life as we knew it before the magayfah. And then we wake up to the here and now with little hope that things will ever change.
Quarantine, robotic faces covered by masks, social distancing, separations from parents, siblings, friends and all the things we love, and we have lost all logic and direction. Some of us, with the need for diversion, seek to create an alter world to maintain balance and sanity. I have a feeling this is what has happened here.
Is there a problem? Yes. Should you call your wife out on it? Without a doubt. Will this put an end to the problem? Probably not. Just confronting her and getting her explanation is only the beginning of what is needed for the underlying problem that caused this to resolve itself in this way.
When a spouse has a suspicion or becomes aware of their partner’s infidelity, whether actual or metaphorically, it causes trust to be broken and that, in and of itself, may cause a huge breach in the marriage. This will take a family therapist and joint counseling to get to the root of why this happened. There are many reasons a spouse will stray, be it in mind or body, and you will need help to understand the ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’ that drove her to it. With counseling both you and your wife will be able to see where the problem started and what is missing in your marriage that would have prevented it.
Trust is a formidable mountain to overcome and to get back. But it is not impossible. Please speak to your wife as soon as possible, without being accusing, and see what can be salvaged. You have five young children to consider, so don’t do anything in haste. I hope you can look for ways to rebuild your marriage, if it’s at all possible.