"Wife caught herself in the starting stages of an emotional affair."

Yeah, you read that correctly, lol. She caught herself, before she got entangled in one. I am 33m and she is 35f and we have been together for 8 years, married for 4, and we have a 2 yo daughter (I know I am the dad but she IS the CUTEST kid in the world and the SMARTEST too).

Anyways, I have always known that my wife is very interested in travelling, but unfortunately we have not been able to go on many trips together. I am neutral on travelling, and this is how her friendship with the guy started.

He is a colleague of hers, and is very well traveled around the world. This is how they started talking, her asking about his experiences of going to exotic places and gradually they started discussing personal stuff with each other. At first it was strictly confined to office hours but slowly they started talking outside of office hours too. He was having difficulties in his married life and he was confiding in her.

Anyways, we were watching a murder mystery where the killer couple is very good friends with another couple and goes on a vacation with them and while there, the guy in the killer couple makes a joke about them being married to the wrong spouses, and proposes swapping partners for the night. It was while watching this movie that my wife realized what she was doing.

You see, her friend had also joked about them being married to the wrong spouses too. And once he had said if he went with my wife to someplace expensive, it would make sense for them to share a room to save money. My wife didnt reply anything, but now she says she should have shut it down (she showed me all of their messages thread).

He was clearly trying to flirt but my wife never responded to his flirting but she also never shut it down (she told me that she justified it to herself that he is just joking). For her cheating meant doing something physical or having NSFW conversations, but this emotional stuff was creeping up on her because she was not maintaining her boundaries.

She confessed and showed me all their messages and its very clear that their emotional intimacy was just building up and there were only a few flirty messages, all from his end. I was upset but also relieved that she came to me before it became serious. So we talked the whole night and devised future plans of action.

First and foremost, he goes back to just being a colleague and nothing more and my wife will avoid him unless it involves any official work. Secondly we will attend a few couples counselling sessions to reassess the strengths and weaknesses of our relationship. And thirdly and most importantly, we have decided to take at least two vacations every year, one foreign and one domestic.

You see travelling is so important to her because she wants to make memories with people she loves and values, thats why she never took me up on my offer of going on trips either alone or with her friends. She wouldnt have gotten that satisfaction alone, which she would get with her family and loved ones. So, I am trying to rectify my mistakes in this regard. What other advice you have for me?

What do you think she should do? This is what top commenters had to say:

CuriousBit0 said:

I think you are on the right track.

Blade_982 said:

You're lucky you both watched that movie! It's rare that a spouse on the cusp of an emotional affair catches themselves before it progresses to even deeper feelings. It's a good sign she confessed and that you're working as a team to deal with this.

I would reccomend you both read Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass and also look at Love Languages and work out what yours are and what you can do to fulfill each other's needs in this area. You see, her friend had also joked about them being married to the wrong spouses too.

Huge red flag! This guy clearly doesn't respect his marriage. Or yours. Your wife needs to ensure that other than maintaining a working relationship she Grey Rocks him.

Atlantern said:

This was such an interesting post to read in all honesty — I got so invested reading along as if watching a very entertaining movie unfold before my eyes, ahaha!

I didn’t expect such a lighthearted end to the post at all since it sounds like you two really got it figured out, did everything right; you both were truthful, properly communicating, understanding, mature and willing to also get help with counseling and make things right and I very much respect that about this entire situation.

Obviously that situation shouldn’t have happened in the first place, but it did and she was able to talk to you about it early before it turned into something messy and hopefully with the steps you two are taking to better things, it won’t happen again. I wish you two luck in your journey ahead together!!

[deleted] said:

Seems like you guys did everything right. I have a story that resembles a bit this but the outcome was the opposite. My ex wife was really into travelling and me not so much. One of the reasons she gave me why we were divorcing was that I dont like travelling like her.

Well it turned out she had a boyfriend of 6 months. She was planning all kinds of trips wity him. My ex didnt have the character to stop it early. We divorced. The funny thing is that corona hit and she has been unable to travel for 2 years xD

**A month later, he shared this update**

So I posted about 1 month back that my wife came to me and told me that she thinks she in the starting stages of an emotional affair and we talked about it and decided to work on strengthening our marriage. And I am glad to tell you guys that we have done actually that. First of all my wife took an internal transfer to a new role in the company and now she sits in a different location than her colleague.

They have zero contact now. Also she has started therapy to work on her boundary issues and be more assertive overall. We have been doing great as a couple too, our communication has never been better and we can have uncomfortable conversations without the fear of hurt feelings and it feels great. So all in all, we are doing very good.

And last but not the least we just came back from spending a week in a very popular holiday destination in our country, only me and her. Our daughter was with her grandparents (and we were still missing her, you want to spend some time away from them but you keep missing them too, kids man).

It was a really nice bonding experience for us and I am kinda understanding why she loves travelling. And I took about 20000 pictures too, lets not forget that and I was in 5 of them. Anyways this was my update. I received so many lovely replies that I wanted to provide an update on how we are doing. Thank you again guys.