SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

How do you know when your wife loves you / what makes you feel loved?

I ask, because before I found out about my WH's affair, I said, "I love you," to him, and his response was, "yeah, right." I was so shocked. I've always thought he was the perfect man for me, and that we were meant to be together. I had always felt so lucky to be married to him, and I thought he KNEW.

We did have an argument either that day or the day before. It was so long ago I don't remember what the argument was about.

Have you seen the 5 love language stuff? cHECK OUT http://www.5lovelanguages.com. (I have no connection with the site or with Gary Chapman.)

Chapman argues that there are 5 ways of expressing and experiencing love. He's got a free test to see what your primaries are. A lot of SIers and their spouses have taken the test and found the results very useful.

My primary is 'physical touch' BTW. My W's is 'acts of service'. I used to touch her a lot; she did things for me. Now she touches me a lot, and I do things for her.

Fortunately, she's come to like being touched a lot, so touching her is one of my acts of service. Worked out pretty well for us....

Really - check out the site.

I said, "I love you," to him, and his response was, "yeah, right."

As a husband, I never doubted my wife's love for me. Surprisingly I guess I should have doubted it a little bit more during her affair.

Was his "Yeah right" response during his affair? I ask because during my wife's affair we were out to dinner with the family and she told me that none of her friends would be surprised if we got divorced.

I was floored. I had never imagined that our marriage was in trouble, much less that it would ever end. Of course, looking back she was involved with OM at the time, and our marriage had all of a sudden become shitty.

Did your husband typically respond to "I love yous" with "yeah sures" before the affair?

It had to have been during the affair that his "yeah, right" response occurred. Before that incident, he would respond with "I love you, too," but that was also during the affair.

Our marriage became more stressful than usual when he lost his job and refused to look for work. We were living off our savings, and I knew that wouldn't last all that long. Every time I'd mention the job search, he'd get angry and defensive. He saw me as the enemy.

We had to contend with the job loss, and I had the added stress of his affair a few months later on d-day. Suddenly, the job loss didn't matter, because without our marriage it wasn't really relevant.

If it was during his affair, it was probably his way of validating his actions to himself - it had nothing to do with you. As long as he could make himself believe "yeah right" then in his mind his affair was justified because he wasn't getting what he needed from his wife. What is his response to "I love you" now?

[This message edited by Tred at 8:09 AM, July 13th (Saturday)]