Dear njigirl,
my wife of six years has a bunch of close male and female friends and I don’t bother her about them. But lately I have noticed a closeness with her buddy, Jay, which did not exist before.
At a recent barbecue held by one of her friends, she sat with Jay the whole evening and they were laughing and hugging each other. Other people were embarrassed for me and later that night she didn’t even see what was wrong.
Instead of apologizing, she became upset with me and went out “clubbing” with Jay to make herself feel better. Am I losing my wife? I feel like I have lost control of our marriage.
ν Sheen
Dear Sheen
It is obvious that your wife is experiencing some type of emotional void and is confused about how to deal with it. I think that she is using “Jay” to protest, stage a world war, or seek your attention. It appears that she is upset about someone or something and you are in the middle of it. What is it that might be causing her to act in this way? Did you do something or did you ignore to do something? Has she spoken to you about it and you brushed it aside? I really feel like your wife is definitely in protest mode over something.
How about you? Do you have friends of the opposite sex? How close are you with them? You need to find out why she is behaving this way. So let’s embark on possible ways to first find out and then solve them.
You may decide to utilize the help of her best girl pal. Let us assume her name is Aussie. Reach out to Aussie by phone (not text) or just show up at her doorstep. Of course she will be very surprised especially since it is known knowledge that you never really did like her. Cut the chase and immediately tell her why you are there. Promise her that coach bag she always talked about and tell her to find out what is going on between your girl and Jay. Give her a timeline like; you will be back two days from that time.
Then call up Jay to play soccer next Saturday with you and your guys. Be sure to practice very well and make sure you beat Jay thoroughly. Then while Jay is trying to fix his broken ankle, ask him what he is doing with your girl. Tell him point blank that you are not comfortable with the intensity of his relationship with your wife and that you do not appreciate him dancing up close and hugging up as they did at the barbecue. So now that you have made your point, the only other thing to do is to be extremely nice to your lady. Do not worry about what exactly you did to deserve this treatment, just apologize and move on. However, buy her nice gifts and take her out to her favorite restaurant. Be very loving and courteous and when you come home, make sweet love to her and just say, ‘Babe I am so sorry I hurt you, forgive me.’ Once she lets her hair down say: ‘Babe I don’t like your friendship with Jay anymore, it looks like he is hung up on my girl.’ Then let it go. You just won the battle or so you think. She is laughing so hard in her mind because she succeeded in making you jealous which was the whole point of the drama. She won too. Now the scores are even. Keep loving each other.
ν Dr. NJ