minds of men and women

I wish I could say that I've put the whole suspicion about my husband's work spouse behind me. After all, I do believe that he is an honourable man. I believe that he will not indulge in any infidelity that would destroy our marriage and wreck his career.

That said, what worried me no end, was that he did not believe that there was such a thing as emotional infidelity. I tried to introduce him to the concept that inappropriate emotional closeness was a risk factor for emotional infidelity, which in turn led to the slippery slope towards physical, full-blown infidelity. Nope, he said, then how could men and women ever be friends? Well, I said, do you remember that that was exactly how WE started, by being good friends? I think his insistence that his friendship with her remain was one of the key factors which made me so upset -- because it indicated that his friendship with this woman was important enough to keep, despite knowing his wife's discomfort. He says that I have no right to control who his friends are; while I insist that surely my feelings are more important than an ordinary friendship, unless......? We are at an impasse here.

The second thing which aroused even greater suspicion was the lack of transparency. He actually thought that by keeping the phone on silent mode, and answering messages while I happened to be out of the room, was a good idea. And he would omit details of what they did (eg., breakfast, lunches out etc) or leave out her name when telling me about the people he went out with. To him, I would only get upset whenever he mentioned her or when I knew that she called again, so it was best to keep me in the dark. All I had to do was to trust that he wouldn't ever do anything wrong. To this, I could only say, huh?! I think that "don't ask, don't tell" is a potent breeding ground for suspicion. And to think that this man has even more postgraduate degrees than I.

For a while we have become mired in a circle of defensive accusations -- "you're so suspicious, it would be worse if you knew", "if you were just friends you wouldn't feel a need to hide it from me". And both of us feel equally wronged by the other. Do men and women really think so differently that we fail to find common ground on this issue?

PS: Thank you, f8hasit, for becoming my very first follower. I think one of the reasons why I started writing this blog was to find out what other people thought about this whole thing -- whether I was really a nutcase for believing something was wrong.