My(M40) wifes(F35) career choice has turned into a social event. We’ve been married 10 years and don’t know what to do. What is the next step for me?

I am not The OOP, OOP is u/No_Educator757

My(M40) wifes(F35) career choice has turned into a social event. We’ve been married 10 years and don’t know what to do. What is the next step for me?

TRIGGER WARNING: alcoholism, infidelity, drunk driving

Original Post  Aug 4, 2024

My wife and I have been married for 10 years and we really do have an amazing relationship. We have two beautiful kids, a nice home, I own my own business and things are great. We have a great sex life and social life outside of our family life with kids. My wife, after years in various parts of the industry, got her real estate license about four years ago. It was something to fill time, keep busy and make a little extra income.

The company that she’s been with for the last two or three years, has a real emphasis on social networking events and it has caused a rift between us. I have attended one or two of these events and I’ve left them all with a troubling feeling. I would say nine out of the 10 people I met rubbed me the wrong way. Many of them are very self-absorbed, could only talk about themselves and their success and are very flirtatious with my wife.  To be fair she is incredibly attractive but approachable and friendly.

The last few events that my wife has attended, resulted in her coming home late and involved excessive drinking. There are two things that really bother me about it, I feel that her professional relationships with men at her company have become more social than professional and these networking events seem more like a excuse to go and hang out with other guys and drink. While many of them are married I don’t trust their intentions.

Last week, my wife attended an event and we agreed she would be back by 12. I even went out of my way to make a point of asking her to be responsible and to limit the amount that she drinks. Well, 2 AM rolled around and there was no sign of her. She wouldn’t respond to text messages. I could see she was still in the general area of the event which was over an hour from our house finally after calling a few times, she answered I could tell she was, extremely drunk she told me she was staying at a hotel with one of her girlfriends and I had to quickly remind her that I had to be up at 4:30 AM to get ready for work. Long story short she took an Uber to the train and ended up driving her car home drunk. As if this wasn’t bad enough, I noticed on her phone, she had very flirtatious text messages with multiple married and single men.

I’ve really had enough of this career choice, she doesn’t seem responsible enough to attend these events and it is causing a big divide between the two of us.

I’m really at a loss for what my next step should be. There was a similar situation to this a few months ago and at that point, she had promised me she was going to control herself and be more responsible, but it’s pretty obvious she is not able to do that.

TL;DR My wife’s job has turned into social hour events, drinking too much, flirting with other men and it’s putting a strain on our relationship.  I’ve addressed my concerns, she apologizes and knows it’s wrong but keeps doing it anyways. Where do I go from here?  I want her to quit.

Update  Aug 15, 2024 (11 days later)

Hi everyone,

I apologize, but my last post was deleted. I didn’t title it properly. I received many requests for an update on our situation. I also want to thank all of the people that had positive and empathetic responses to my initial story.

A lot has unfolded in the time since my wife’s night out. After noticing the flirtatious text messages, I asked my wife to see her phone, I told her I wanted to see what else she had written. She gave me access to her phone and upon doing a deeper dive, I saw that the flirtatious messages went far beyond anything I would’ve expected. The man she was messaging had recently broken up with his girlfriend, and my wife’s response to him was that things aren’t going well in our marriage.

I also found out that while we were on vacation(in the area he lives), she went to the gym and met this man there to workout. This news was devastating to me, not only was I disgusted to find out that she met with him behind my back, but I was blindsided to see she mentioned to him we were probably heading towards divorce. 

We had a difficult week after that, she was ashamed of her actions. The drinking, the messages to this man and the meet up.  She described that she feels like I hate her which really hurt because I feel like I do everything I can to make her happy.

She swore to me that nothing physical had happened. After looking through the messages, I do believe her. It seems that she didn’t find out that he and his girlfriend broke up until he texted her after the gym. He actually stated in the messages that while he is attracted to her, he didn’t want to get in the way of our marriage and that he didn’t want to be a distraction while she and I tried to work things out. (I have to commend him for that) I told her that it was imperative that she confesses if anything physical had happened. I was willing to work through anything, but if I find out later down the road that she lied, then she would not get another chance.

I also discussed the importance if anything happened for the sake of our health and our children’s health that she would need to go get tested. She was also on her period while we were away so I’m confident there was no physical interaction. She has been adamant that nothing happened but she knows what she did was wrong. She did agree to get tested to give me peace of mind and everything was negative.

I had a few sessions with my therapist and she recommended a couples therapist for us. She also mentioned that she believes my wife has some deeper trauma that she needs to work through. It’s obvious that her judgment is off and that there may be some reason as to why she is acting out.

My wife has since seen a therapist on her own and we have sat with a couples therapist. Our first session with the couples therapist was very educational. She did a dive into our relationship from the beginning, the main reason that we sought out her help and laid out a treatment plan. Next week we will be starting individual sessions with her and then couples sessions following that.

We both know that there is a lot of work to do, but we are dedicated to making this work. I myself had a very unstable childhood due to my parents divorce. When I made those vows to my wife, I fully intended to see them through and I believe she did as well. I feel very confident after speaking to both therapists that couples can heal, move beyond an act of infidelity and can come out even stronger than before.

I owe it to myself, my wife and my children to do everything I can to commit to having a happy and healthy relationship. My wife is showing great remorse. She said she doesn’t know why she does these things but she knows it’s wrong and she wants to stop. She is seeking the necessary help and knows she has a lot of work to do.

She’s fully aware of the damage she has caused, she knows I’ve lost the ability to trust her in social settings and it’s going to take a long time to earn that back. She has since ended any and all conversations with this guy. She has offered to quit her job(I’m not sure if that’s going to help) I believe she does get a sense of purpose from it that she doesn’t get at home. If she can’t control herself at these “ work” events then I can’t trust her to control herself anywhere. She had plans to go away for the yearly work retreat(national meeting) later in the year, she has made the decision to cancel those plans.

TL;DR, I found more troubling messages from my wife to another man.  We have taken steps to repair the marriage, we both have individual therapist and a couples therapist. We both want this to work and are committed to each other and our children.

RELEVANT COMMENTS

Throw_RA099

She's doing the right things on paper, but man, she met with another man with the intent to cheat, but it seems like it didn't happen only because the other guy has a conscience. She fed him the "I'm getting divorced" lie so he would sleep with her. Yikes. I would find this hard to overcome. Find this guy and buy him a beer.

She shouldn't stop working, but maybe she finds a job at another office to get away from the party culture of her current job?  The outings after work and work trips should stop until further notice. She broke the trust and it's going to take years to fix. 

Any mention of her going to AA meetings? She shouldn't have a drop of alcohol either. 

OOP

Thank you. We are going to dive into the alcohol issue with the therapist. It’s something my therapist recommended, but when I brought it up to my wife, she was insulted that I said she has a drinking problem(my therapist said she’s not ready to hear that from me and needs to deal with that professionally) As I mentioned in the first post, she doesn’t drink very often and more often than not she can have one or two drinks and call it quits. There is no excuse for the binge drinking and I do believe she has a problem so I’m taking it very seriously.

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jynxthechicken

I'm glad you are trying to work it out.  The only thing I find long term concerning in all this is that she said during an emotional affair that you two were heading towards divorce.  That means she was planning for it until she got caught.

I hope you all are able to make it through all this for the sake of you both and your kids.

OOP

Thank you, That was without question the most devastating part of the whole situation for me. Not that the other things weren’t bad but to hear she felt so differently about our marriage than I did really hurt. She has told me that she doesn’t want a divorce. She doesn’t know why she said that. She reached out to this other guy the next day over the phone to tell him that it was wrong of her to say that, and it wasn’t true. But we are working towards making sure we are not heading in that direction.

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Malevolent_Mangoes

So many marriages end up in shambles because the couple tried to stay together “for the sake of the children”. It just doesn’t work dude, there are countless examples of this.

OOP

And there are people who make an effort to correct course and have a successful and healthy marriage. What we have is worth fighting for and if it doesn’t work and if there are other events that impact our marriage then I can at least say I tried and I can move on. Even if we called it quits right after something like this, how could we possibly have an amicable divorce and healthy coparenting situation for our kids.

Malevolent_Mangoes

Plenty of parents do

OOP

I think it’s more important to try to fix it. Do you want to be the person that had a successful divorce successful marriage.  If something else happens then there is nothing more lost than if I walk away now. 

My mom suffered from a drinking problem after a failed marriage and vicious divorce.  Her fiancé walked out on her because he didn’t want to deal with it so it was up to me to take on that responsibility in my early 20’s she’s since been sober and healthy.  It troubles me to think what would have come if he took steps to stand by her and get her the help she needed. I could have walked away from her and said good luck.

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