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.
