Dear Prudence,
I have been happily married to my wife for 20 years. I met her when she was in grad school. I’m a decade older than her and was working a successful career when we met. We hit it off right away and were married 18 months later. We have two kids and it has been a wonderful, mutually caring, supportive, loving relationship.
Recently, my wife began talking in glowing terms about “John,” a new male colleague. I thought nothing about it, but then discovered they had been texting frequently outside work hours, and not always about work. I asked her about it and she said it was just work-related inside jokes, funny memes, etc. A few weeks later, we had a casual conversation with my in-laws about buying a vacation property. My wife got excited and immediately started texting John about the possibility of buying the vacation home so that John and his wife could vacation with us. I asked point blank (but calmly) if she was having a physical or emotional affair with John. She denied it and said she understood why I was upset and that she should have talked to me further about the vacation home before discussing it with anyone else. I believe her.
I don’t believe she is having a physical affair, but I remain worried she has slipped, or is slipping, into an emotional affair. They continue to text every day at all hours, including outside work in early morning and evenings. She continues to tell me they are just “good friends.” After I saw another text from John, she revealed that she had been talking to him about stressful issues at work and how they might be affecting her mental health. I conveyed that I was hurt that she hadn’t shared this, and she said she only talked to him first because he is a colleague and he understood the work issues she was going through, whereas I understand little about her field. This was cold comfort. I’m not sure where to go from here. Am I overreacting? Should I just take her at her word?
—Is She Having an Emotional Affair?