DEAR EMILY,

My husband and I married four decades ago in our early 20s. Like other couples, we’ve gone through a lot of trials. We’re now semiretired and enjoying life traveling.

Though my husband has been loving and devoted, he has been a disappointment as well. Ten years into our marriage, I found out how he eagerly courted a girl 15 years his junior. This was nipped in the bud before anything serious happened. He begged for forgiveness, but it took me years to forget that incident.

Then two years ago, I again discovered he has been flirting with a staff who is 35 years his junior for about two years. He was sending her love messages, burning the telephone lines for hours and even giving her expensive gifts during special occasions.

This time he admitted he was in love with her, and vowed to stop only after I threatened to leave him and let the office know of their love affair. Despite his promise, he seems not to have totally forgotten the girl, who still works in his office. He has secretly kept her number in his phone after promising to cut all connections with her.

In one of their exchanges, he said to her, “I love you the way I love my wife.” He told me he said that just to make her feel good.

What did he mean? Although he said it’s me that he cares for and loves, I can’t bring back the trust or forget what he did. It haunts me every single day. Just the mere mention of his office gives me the chills. As long as the girl is still there, I will never have peace of mind.

Although he has been very good to me, his actions belie his words. I know that, as much as possible, he still wants the line to her open, if not for my threat. Does he really love me, or he is just staying with me to have peace in the family?

UNSURE WIFE

Marriage really is a mirror image of nature. There are no straight lines anywhere. Death follows life. After winter comes spring. And all interesting factors such as joy, pain, sadness, hate, kindness, love are constantly thrown in the mix.

What you thought would be a pleasant hop and a skip to the sunset with your husband is becoming that dreaded insecurity of being alone emotionally at this late age. Coming at a time when you should have already graduated from all these upheavals, you find yourself still full of apprehension and endless questions!

The word “propinquity” comes to mind as the root of the problem involving your husband and this woman. Unless one of them disappears from each other’s life, there is no telling where their relationship is going—inadvertently exacerbated by your jealousy and threat. There is nothing more suffocating than the fear of a threat.

Let go already. Pretend there’s nothing happening, as probably there isn’t. He has been a good husband, hasn’t he, though he is acting like a dirty old man in your mind? Find peace within yourself and hold your imagination in check.

As long as he doesn’t moan her name in his sleep, obliterate his family or drain the conjugal coffers for her, let him be. Just keep him on his toes—that he should leave this adventure, imagined or not, by the mat outside the door.

It’s unconscionable to you to say pity the guy. But he might truly be most pitiful for what he has done to himself at this stage.

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