‘Is My Wife Having An Emotional Affair? Is She In Love With Her Colleague?’

MAYBE girls can advise whether woman can have such feelings…. to me it sounds like my wife is in love with her colleague but she claims she is not…. 

   I discovered my wife wrote a rather intimate goodbye email to her colleague. Now this colleague she used to talk to me about a lot, how he had a sad childhood and his character resembles to our first child and that is why she feels a lot of sympathy and connection with him. And how he is also very protective in the office and she feels protected with him, how he has charming behaviors, and he jokes and makes the whole office environment jolly, and is straight forward and speaks his mind out without fear etc. 

    And he recently married, she herself encouraged him to marry because he was alone and nobody to take care of when sick etc. All these things she tells me all the time. Since she told me about him and was frank in praising him, I didn’t feel any way except maybe a little jealousy. I believed her attraction to him was innocent and natural, especially when she had a difficult female colleague in her previous job. And she talks this way of one or two other male colleagues as well. She also praises them this way, how she is jolly and like-able and how she enjoys their company. She has been very happy in her new job.

   So this guy is switching his job and I discovered my wife wrote him email in a way that upset me rather big time.

  So in her goodbye email, among other things, she wrote something like, ‘I am sad you are leaving. I like the way you speak, you work, and you behave, even when you are telling lies. I like to hold hands with you. I worry to death when you are sick and do not come. The day is bright when I see you and work does not become like work, the day passes easily. I wonder am I in love with you? Sorry I cannot control my feelings. I know my husband loves me and what will he think of me if he finds this out. You are lucky you found a better job. All the best for your future life. You can get in touch with me if you have anything to share”

   So I found out the email in her draft box before she sent it. I confronted her, she said she was sad to see him go and when she wrote it in state of sad emotion it turned out that way and it was not meant to be that way and that now she can see how it sounded like and she edited out the email so that it didn’t sound like a love letter. I checked other emails she had sent before and this was the only one that was this personal, others were all usual mass email forwards for good luck, health tips etc. 

    So I confronted her if she was in affair with him and what exactly she meant by the email. She said I took it the wrong way, it is true that she likes his ways, his behavior and everything she wrote, but not in the way i am taking. She insists she had always had a lot of sympathy for him, for his sad childhood, broken first marriage and alone life (until he married last month), so yes she cares for him and has love for him but not the way I am thinking. She never denied this. 

    What about the day being good with him etc and she says he is a jolly person joking all the time and helps a lot in the work, easy to work with, so work is very easy and passing time is easy when he is around, that what I mean, she says. So ok what about the touching part I ask. She said it was insane if I ever thought she was in any way physical relationship with him or anybody else; that she never liked when any other opposite sex colleague shook hands or came into physical contact with her (we are from a conservative social background), but with him she doesn’t feel bad or guilty when shaking hands or doing high-five etc and that’s what she meant by the touching thing. So I asked about the ‘I wonder am I in love with you?’ she says it was a joking / flirting thing and not a serious sentence, all the colleagues in our office do innocent flirts to some level and it was one of those little flirts, to make light of the serious sad occasion of saying goodbye.

   It has been over week now and I have not been able to entirely believe her explanation. We have been married for 15 years with three teenage children and have very good relation and I thought we were in love but after seeing this mail, I don’t know whether that’s true. I have been asking about this email almost daily, and she has been giving me the same explanation and said sorry to me for writing it the way it looked but it was not that way and that she already edited before sending it (she showed the edited one to me).

    But still, my mind does not rest and I have been wondering how long and deep her emotional affair has been and whether she has been involved in an affair.

    Now whenever I try to raise the issue, she tries to avoid it, says she truly regrets the way she wrote it, it is not at all the way it looked, yes she loves and cares for him but not the way I am taking it, and that she feels that way for any person who has suffered or is suffering (she does indeed have a very sympathetic and emotional heart) and she wants to forget about the whole thing and she assures me she loves me and my place in her heart is not taken by somebody else.

    I am not sure whether to believe her or not. I have no doubt she will stay with me, she is a devoted wife and mother but I am feeling shocked and devastated that my wife wrote such intimate letter to somebody else and my trust in her is now shaken and I feel deeply hurt. She insists I am making a big issue out of minor issue, is ready to take any punishment if I think she wronged me and it is better to forget it otherwise it will damage our relationship if I continue to dwell on that one email to reach such negative conclusions about her. But I don’t know whether to believe her explanations and how to handle this pain I am feeling and whether I can forgive her.   So so confused!!!!