I'm writing to you with a completely shattered heart. I've known my wife for over five years, and we got married last August. It was a fairy tale wedding, everything we always wanted, with about 200 guests. Everyone said by the look on our faces they knew we were in love.

For years before the wedding, my wife was completely into me. We spent every night and all weekend together. Our perfect weekend would be a couple of rental movies and a night out to eat. Six months after the wedding I threw a 30th birthday party for my wife and invited all her friends. She had a blast but got very drunk. People were shocked to see her like that, but I was just happy my wife was happy.

After the party I noticed she acted different. My wife didn't seem to care about things we made a priority in our life, like having a baby and buying a home. One Saturday morning I found her secretly checking her voice mail messages. I guessed at her access code and guessed correctly. The message I heard was her boss saying how much he missed her and needed to hear the sound of her voice.

I started shaking and felt nauseous. He is the same age as me, in great shape, and definitely her type. I went upstairs and confronted my wife. She denied it, but I could see the lie in her face. When I suggested we listen to the voice mail together, she confessed and we both cried.

She explained he was there for her because I wasn't there emotionally. She said they only kissed once or twice but never slept together. I want to believe her, but I don't. She seems cold and distant and isn't the same person anymore. Part of me wants her back, and part of me thinks she's too far gone.

Doyle

Doyle, just because you cried together it doesn't mean you were crying for the same reason. A teenager stealing a CD from a store may cry when he gets caught, but if he succeeded he might hold the CD aloft and boast to his buddies. His tears are not tears of remorse, but tears because of his predicament.

Nothing in your letter suggests you weren't there for your wife emotionally, yet she isn't lying when she makes that claim. Who was emotionally disconnected? She was, from you. She doesn't feel the closeness, the loyalty, and the bond you do.

Your connection to her would prevent you from doing this to her. She was so disconnected from you she didn't consider you before becoming involved with her boss.

She claims you were emotionally distant. She wants you to accept blame for something she never told you. She did not come to her husband and talk. She started dating her boss and hid it from her husband. If she was that miserable, she should have told you.

Fidelity is the definition of marriage. What does that mean? When two people decide on marriage, dating stops. Intimate relationships with other people stop. Otherwise, why get married? Your wife is dating again. That kills a marriage.

In one of the Upanishads there is an ecstatic passage which begins, "This earth is honey for all beings, and all beings are honey for this earth" That passage always reminds us what marriage should feel like. A husband should be honey for his wife, and a wife honey for her husband.

Home should be a refuge and an oasis. The one who shares that with you should love you simply and completely.

To move forward, sooner or later you have to get to the truth. How do you get from where you are to where you want to be, with a woman whose first response was to lie and point the finger at you?

Wayne & Tamara

Direct Answers - Column for the week of May 3, 2004