Dear Troubleshooter:
I am a woman in my 40s, and I have been married for over 10 years. Recently I found out that my husband went to an onsen hot spring resort with another woman.
I knew that I shouldn't, but I looked at my husband's phone anyway, and that's how I found out. I saw messages from the woman saying "I love you."
When I questioned him about it, he denied having an affair, saying, "She's more than a friend but not a girlfriend, I'm not cheating." But he confessed to going to the onsen with her under a false pretext. He said to me: "I didn't want to be at home. It was a thoughtless act."
For financial reasons, my father lives with my husband and me. At first, my husband got along really well with my father, but after a while, he started complaining about the living situation. During this time, he met this woman while drinking with coworkers. He said that she was able to comfort him by listening to him complain about issues he couldn't tell me.
I thought, "I should've realized sooner that he was stressed," and that I couldn't blame him for going to an onsen with her. I've tried to accept this and move forward, but somehow I can't trust him, and it breaks my heart. My husband says, "We text back and forth, but we're never alone together." I don't know what I should do.
D, Kanagawa Prefecture
Dear Ms. D:
Your husband says, "She's more than a friend but not a girlfriend, so it's not cheating," "It was a thoughtless act." They can only be considered as obvious excuses, don't you think?
It is true that you have to live with your father due to financial reasons, and now you've resigned yourself to think, "It couldn't be helped," and have tried to forget about it. But what it sounds like you're saying is, "He definitely cheated, but I'm going to pretend it didn't happen." Is that right? However, even from something trivial, you remember that he cheated on you.
Now, there are two things you can do to put your mind at ease. First is to make your husband put an end to the messages he sends back and forth to the woman he says is not his girlfriend. Otherwise, their relationship will continue.
The second is to spend time, days if possible, discussing with your husband what he dislikes about living with your father. Your husband said the other woman listens to his complaints, and that was comforting to him. Don't you think it might be your turn to take on that role? Even if you don't come up with a detailed solution, both of you need to spend time talking to each other. If you do that, then I'm sure that your husband will see that you, his wife, are "more than a friend and more than a girlfriend."
Soichiro Nomura, psychiatrist
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