Response to some questions

I am grateful to the feedback I have been getting, both from males and females.

It gives me an opportunity to reconsider my own thinking, being fully aware how humans can get things so wrong sometimes.

I am also a very insular kind of guy, so I have no one to talk to about these things. In my world, men unfortunately just don't talk about these things.

(1) Regarding one suggestion to talk to NaiNai, well in some regards there is a lot of merit in this, as she yields enormous influence over her daughter. NaiNai is also very strict with her daughter and I believe would not approve of her daughter risking their current "status" over something as short lived as a fling, for instance.

Of course one problem is that they are mother and daughter, and NaiNai comes from a completely different world to me, so I really don't know how to approach it, were I to try and speak to her.

Secondly, I fear that she will also be dismissive of what I may say, which will mean that I will lose "face" in front of NaiNai, further diminishing any respect she may have for me.

Finally and most importantly, NaiNai only knows two words in English, "Sankiou", for Thank you, and Bye-Bye.

So any talk with NaiNai would need to involve a third party to interpret, and this just makes it too complicated and too risky.

(2) Regarding the suggestion of requesting relationship counselling, well this is of course a great idea, because bouncing your concerns through a neutral intermediary makes communication of sensitive issues all the more effective.

Now I actually suggested this to my wife when we spoke, and although she originally indicated an open mind on this, for some reason she quickly decided that it was "just silly!". I got no further explanation as to why it was silly, despite my repeated efforts.

(3) And finally, I am not sure if I mentioned this, but my wife spoke to James, the lawyer, because she claims she became afraid when she read an article in the newspaper about Australia's Shared Parenting laws.

These laws place an emphasis on separated parents having joint custody of a child, rather than the typical situation where the mother gets sole custody.

I asked my wife how these laws affect us given that we are not separated, but she did not explain herself well. She just kept on saying that as a mother she was concerned because of many newspaper articles claimed that mothers were forced to shared their children with the father, and she wanted to know more.

This was a digression from the issue, but I asked whether this meant that she believes we will be separating soon, and her response again was that I was just being silly.

So anyway, some truth from her but it just doesn't gel together.

It is actually quite draining when someone simply can't give a straight answer, and I have decided that rather than get into an argument, that if she resists answering then I should just leave it be for now, as I am sure more details will reveal themselves soon enough.

So I will try and answer some more questions soon, and I will try and explain why I don't think she was involved in a physical relationship with anyone. But this doesn't really lessen the issue for me, but it is a process of paling away the layers and seeing what's left.

Marriage in Distress

Well, a lot has happened since my last post.

For the longest time it seemed that I simply would not muster up the courage to raise these lingering issues with my wife.

However an opportunity arose by chance, when mother-in-law decided at the last minute to visit Brisbane for a week, in order see family. We decided that it would a great holiday for our son as well, who was on school holidays.

So as a result, we were alone for one week, without any disruptions or distractions.

So I finally spoke up when we were alone at home.

This was the beginning of a conversation that lasted a few hours. It was not frenetic nor was it aggressive in any sense. It was a calm discussion, mostly driven by me. I calmly addressed the issues, one by one, that I thought needed to be cleared up.

The responses from my wife were the most honest she has ever been to me, but not entirely honest.

I know for a fact that certain claims she has made were simply untrue.

I know this for two reasons.

Firstly and as they say in the poker industry, she has a "tell".

When she lies to me she tilts her head in a submissive type of display, she also touches my hand affectionately, but in all such cases she can never bring herself to look in my eyes. This has been a very consistent "tell" from her for many years.

But secondly and more importantly, I know that certain claims are untrue because I checked up on the details before-hand.

For instance, she claims to have only spoken to this lawyer two or three times on the phone. This is untrue. She has called (and/or texted) his number in the hundreds of times, on some days up to six times a day.

Secondly, she claims to have only emailed him two or three times.

Again, this is simply untrue.

Firstly, I witnessed her deleting emails in bulk from her sent folder recently, and this was from her private hotmail account. I knew that this was the email address that she would have used to correspond with him.

But more damning is the following.

A few months ago, she asked me a very strange question.

I did not think much of it back then, but I realised not that long ago that there was a connection between this lawyer, and that question.

She had previously asked me whether anyone at the university I teach at could intercept or recover any emails sent to the university.

I was perplexed by this question and simply answered by saying "I don't know"

But she asked again, with an element of tension in her voice, and to boot, she would not look me in the eyes while asking.

I thought little of it, until I realised that this new friend of hers teaches at the same university as I do.

So I followed this up with the IT section at the university.

Now my wife has never sent me an email from her hotmail account to my university email address.

However I mentioned to the IT person that I wished to recover an email my wife sent me with some important details, but was not sure if she had sent it to my university email address.

Now, although this was not strictly legal, I was told that 98 emails were sent from that email address, but not to me.

So, progress, and a little bit of relief because I was no longer completely in the dark, but also distress because this deception was growing bigger by the day.

Having said that, my wife told me certain things that I do in fact believe.

First is that she only met the lawyer once in person.

Second, she explained to me why she met the lawyer. I will go into this in a later post.

Thirdly, she implied that nothing went on sexually. We did not discuss this explicitly, but it was there between the lines. I also believe this, for good reason. I will explain this as well in a later post.

For now my thinking is all over the place and quite chaotic.

So, in an effort to help my thoughts settle and fall in place, I would ask for those reading this blog to ask me some specific questions, if you wish to, which will force me to think clearly about aspects of my circumstances that I have not given due consideration to yet.

This will help me be more rational in my thinking, as I am a complete emotional wreck right now and wish to ensure that I do nothing stupid while in this state of mind.