'My wife said another man's name during intimacy. How do I navigate this?' UPDATED
"My wife said another man's name during intimacy. How do I navigate this?"
I’m (27M) in a fight with my wife (27F) after an incident during intimacy.
For context, we’re high school sweethearts married for 6 years. We have a child (3M). We’ve been through a lot together. I love her deeply.
Our marriage is in a rough patch. Our quality time as a couple is struggling. We’re in counseling.
We’re working on making time for each other and reaffirming our bond. That’s our current focus in counseling, and we’re assigned intimacy exercises.
Part of these exercises is for us to make a consistent, conscious effort for each other.
We had a staycation to celebrate our anniversary while our son spent the weekend at his grandparents.
The trip was largely nice, and we got to better focus on each other, but it took a turn. The night of our anniversary we were cuddling, and it turned into more. My wife initiated. Then out of nowhere she moaned another man’s name who’s in our friend group.
We stopped immediately. There was no mistaking what she said. She looked stunned before recovering and treating it like a texting typo or something. When I questioned why she’d say another guy’s name, let alone one of our friends, she swore it meant nothing and that she was just consumed with what I was doing to her.
I couldn’t buy it. I don’t believe it meant nothing. Not the passionate way she said it. I believe she was fantasizing about him while being with me. She insisted it wasn’t like that and was only a slip of the tongue. I asked why his name in particular. First she didn’t know, then said maybe because she was replying to his texts earlier in the group chat.
When I pushed back, she got defensive. She said I was making something out of nothing and how it didn’t need to ruin our anniversary.
I told her nothing she was saying was reaching me, and I needed some time. She tried kissing me and initiating again like nothing happened, but I turned her down. The incident put a damper on the rest of the trip.
We haven’t been intimate since, and any steps we’ve made forward with our exercises have taken a significant leap back.
We’re in a cycle of awkward silence even in front of our son or her ignoring the elephant in the room.
She’s being extra affectionate now, but I can’t shake what happened. I never thought twice about their friendship, but now I’m seeing past interactions differently. I love my wife. She and our son mean the world to me. I’ve been committed to working on our marriage, but I’m at a loss here.
I feel my wife isn’t being honest and is attempting to rug sweep by pouring on affection. I’m left reconsidering everything. I don’t know how to navigate forward. I need outside perspectives.
Here's what people had to say to OP:
Definitely need to save conversations on this for your counseling sessions. I highly recommend using a therapist certified in The Gottman method.
And the way the wife responds to him telling the counselor will say a lot about where she is in all of this and whether she’s taking it seriously or just going through the motions.
Damn, that’s rough to hear. Especially, since intimacy is the focus in counseling. Let your counselor know - you’re paying for this assistance. See what tools they can provide to help you navigate this. It’s a safe place you can vent out and say all this on your mind - even saying you’re left reconsidering everything.
If anything, it’ll be good for both of you to see what comes out here and if you’re both willing or not to find a path forward.
Ooof, this may be one of those times where you need to take the low road and do some snooping.
You know his phone number, or it's in her phone. I suspect you can access her wireless bill. Check to see if his number appears more than it should?
This is exactly how I caught my ex wife...
Also in the recently deleted texts folder if she has a phone like iPhone that stores these I’m sorry you’re going thru this painful experience
Don't even need to snoop. He can just ask to see her phone. If she gets defensive and refuses, it was almost certainly more than a fantasy or verbal slip.
8 days later OP came back with this update:
Thanks to everyone who reached out. I couldn’t reply to everything, but the outside perspectives helped. A general consensus was that my wife and I’s issue should be tackled in therapy. I knew that’s what I should’ve done, but I delayed. I was too embarrassed.
The thought of bringing up what happened in counseling made it worse, but I knew it needed to be done.
My wife didn’t initially take kindly to it. She was defensive and accused me of throwing her under the bus.
I disagreed. I wouldn’t throw her under the bus either. The truth is, we never arranged topics in therapy beforehand.
We argued over each other. Our therapist came through as a referee. She called for a time-out for us to recollect and to reflect on the objective being working towards a solution, not going at each other.
We were able to actually talk once things cooled down. My wife was asked how she would feel if the roles were reversed. She admitted if I had said another woman’s name while we were being intimate and on our anniversary, she wouldn’t have handled it well at all.
She apologized for downplaying my feelings. While I appreciated her acknowledgment, I still thought she wasn’t honest about why she said that guy’s name. So I pressed. She said she didn’t want to hurt me more than she already did. I told her she was hurting me by lying.
She confessed that during a stint where we weren’t being intimate, she had engaged in fantasies. One of them was of our friend. I knew the stint she was talking about. Intimacy as a whole has been a struggle, but there was a point where we were abstinent.
We weren’t even sharing a bed at the time. We’d argue, then leave to separate rooms, or our son (3M) would share the bed with us.
I asked how long she’s been fantasizing about him. She said off and on. He wasn’t a constant fantasy. It wasn’t necessarily about him but more about the taboo.
She swore that the fantasies meant nothing. That they were just scenarios to get her there and nothing she would ever actually want.
It was tough, but I tried hearing her out instead of shutting down. Arguing wasn’t getting us anywhere either.
I can’t relate to her about this. She’s always been enough for me during good and bad times. I was always focused on her during intimacy. I told her that while I knew our marriage wasn’t perfect, I thought we were getting to a better place, and we were engaging in various forms of intimacy again.
She claimed she doesn’t indulge the fantasies anymore. I called bull because she did just that on our anniversary of all days. She insisted his name was only a slip of the tongue because she was replying to his texts in the group thread that day.
She said she was consumed with what I was doing to her, and in the heat of the moment, his name slipped out. When I asked why she didn’t tell me all of this after the incident, she said she felt guilty and afraid for our marriage.
She said our marriage was already in a state of recovery, and she didn’t want to blow everything up over a stupid mistake. She kept saying she doesn’t want him or anyone else, she only wants to be with me, and that’s the whole reason why she’s fighting for our marriage.
The session was a lot. I was mostly quiet after she finished. She asked me to please say something, but all I could say was I needed some time. I’m still sorting through how I feel. I believe she was more truthful, but it’s difficult, nor do I see things between her and our friend the same.
I would like to work on my marriage. My wife and our son mean the world to me. I want the best solution for everyone involved. Thank you again to everyone. I appreciate the support.
Here's what people had to say after the update:
I feel for OP, there’s absolutely no way to forget hearing that.
You are not wrong...40 years later, still stings.
This is 70% over. There were a lot of problems before this. I'm a couples therapist.
I think next thing is you need to do is schedule another therapy session and discuss tools for rebuilding trust. At this point, you bring up your trust was shook because she kept trickle truthing and how can you know she isn’t hiding more from you? That you don’t want to distrust her but you don’t know how to rebuild.
Allow me to be blunt about some uncomfortable truths. Everyone fantasizes. It is if and how we act on our fantasies and if we allow our fantasies to impact our “real” life that matters. Keep your focus on her behaviour not her fantasies.
Trust is similiar to reputation, in that once it is broken, it is hard to rebuild. But it can be rebuilt. Trust is always a leap of faith. It is build on little acts of consistent reliable behaviour, but at its heart it is a leap of faith.
The little voices in your head, OP? the ones going “But what if she is secretly in love with friend? But what if she thinks he is sexier than me? Etc. Yes those voices. Nothing your wife can say or do will be able to silence those voices. That is a battle for you and you alone. You need to figure out how to self-sooth those voices.
This woman lies a lot.
"She kept saying she doesn’t want him or anyone else, she only wants to be with me, and that’s the whole reason why she’s fighting for our marriage."
This is clearly not the case.
She is trickle truthing him. I mean she even knew how she sounds when she said it would hurt him to answer. Meanwhile, not 5 min before that statement, they had to drag out of her how she would feel if the roles were reversed, and OP said another woman's name during intimacy on their anniversary.