Is there a reason why your wife isn’t working? If she’s able to work she should be working. I think it would be very depressing to sit at home and play games online all day. If she doesn’t get a job maybe it would help her to do volunteer work somewhere.
She’s addicted to the internet but worse she’s up to no good with this guy. It doesn’t matter that they are 2000 miles apart. There have been people who’ve broken up their marriages for online relationships further apart than that.
You were on the right track when you shut off the internet. I hope you do it again and don’t turn it back on.
Thank you all for your responses… I wasn’t expecting so many in just 12 or so hours.
I will try to address the biggest points people are focusing on.
Age: Although my wife is 19, (about 20 now) she is extremely mature. She may be immature in certain aspects, like not thinking something is wrong by talking to this other guy, but this results partly from her maturity. She can’t really enjoy chatting with other girls online (especially her age) because they are immature to her and gossip so much etc. I know there are exceptions but this is the general feeling she gets when she tries to make girl friends online.
Maturity: Her father was taken out of her life at a young age and with her many siblings, she was forced to grow up fast and help take care of them (Being one of the oldest of he siblings). She homeschooled through highschool at a very accelerated rate and has spent a lot of her time, even when she was still at her familes house, online, chatting with others since she was about 12. So although she may seem immature from what I wrote above, in other aspects she is not.
Loneliness: We also moved to a different state away from her family. This hasn’t helped her loneliness. Although she had a similar day while still with her family(Staying on the computer most of the time), she definitely had more people around her. But at the same time, they frustrated her and angered her also(in many different aspects), so it wasn’t all happiness while she was at home and she was happy to leave.
Hobbies: She has hobbies and does other things at home other than the computer, but the computer is the large majority of her time. She does different things on there from keeping in touch with family to games, to studying religious things etc etc. It is used for a lot of good in addition to chatting with this guy and others.
Work: I have a really good job with good advancement opportunites right now (while still not fully having my Associates degree) but I work odd late hours. This makes it hard for her to work because if she worked a 9-5 job, I would almost Never see her. Because she would be asleep by the time I got home, and she would be gone by the time I was waking up.
So the only solution there is for her to find a part-time later shift, or for me to change jobs.
Home: She definitely helps around the home a lot! We both share cleaning duties and when we don’t eat out, she cooks 99% of the time between us. I would like to cook more and SHOULD but with my work schedule I only have two nights a week to cook on my days off, and we often eat out on these days.
She is a stay at home wife, primarily due to us planning to have kids before too long and then she’d be a stay at home mom.
Spying: I am not okay with spying and don’t want to do that with things such as a keylogger etc. I feel bad for the things I have already done. This guy who loves her isn’t saying this constantly or anything, 95% of their chat is harmless or game related chat, he just does tell her things as “everytime you say hi, it warms my heart”
Meeting: She wouldn’t meet him alone if he visited, but would visit either with one of her friends or in a public place like starbucks. I just wanted to clarify that, and I still think this would be 100% wrong and the fact that she still says she would be okay meeting him might be one of the things that hurts me the most.
Attention: Although I have my weaknesses in paying attention to her once I am home, I have made an effort to be available to chat online from work and to be there for her once home. I enjoy the computer and my own games also and in the months before this I would come home, we’d hang out for a little while and usually end up on seperate computers for a lot of the night or I’d be playing the XBOX on another room. At the times this was happening, there was almost no objections from her as she was busy playing her games and chatting online. Now that this has all come out she has told me that this is something that bothered her.
Marriage: She originally married me with the hope that we would each bring the other closer to god. Encouraging other etc etc etc, so she is disappointed in our marriage because she feels we have only gotten lazier, and we have. This is also something we are working on right now.
Hopefully that clears some things up.
I still really need help with showing her that it is wrong to continue speaking or interacting with this guy in anyway. She really believes her chat was innocent and nothing was wrong with it (I read logs and disagree with this. She may have changed subjects or turned things into a joke when he complimented her or told her he had feelings for her, but she was accepting of meeting him and didn’t denounce him saying something like he wished he had met her before we got married), and that it’s okay to continue talking to this guy. (Aside from me not liking it, but she feels I’m unjustified in asking her to completely stop)
Yes, children would give the OP’s wife something to keep busy with. However, keeping busy is not the only thing here and I would never advocate having children simply to “fix” these marriage problems. There are many things that should be addressed in this marriage such as faithfulness, honesty, and trust…having children isn’t going to change those problems.
