Well, take it from someone who has suffered from his wife's infidelity, it may start as a friendship, but what you are contemplating is an Emotional Affair.

I would encourage you to visit a website called MarriageBuilders.com

Read some of the articles there, study the materials about meeting emotional needs, and perhaps you and your wife can do the questionares.

I'm not an expert, but the fact that you think about this woman means you are not getting something you want/need from your wife.

I wish you well, my marriage is over except for the final paperwork. I regret that I didn't know more, or value meeting my wife's emotional needs, and she felt she had to have an affair.

However, the decision to lie, cheat and have an affair belongs 100% to her.

However, if you love your wife and family, then she deserves to know, in a loving, non-judgmental fashion, that you have needs that she is not meeting. You also owe her the opportunity to ask her if there are ways you can better meet her needs.

Marriage is not about you, it is about what you are going to do for your wife. Likewise, you hope that it's about what she is going to do for you.

There are a couple of key concepts outlined at marriagebuilders.com

1. The love bank, you make deposits or withdrawls from your spouses love bank, if you overdraw, your spouse may decide it's too "costly" to remain in the relationship with you.

2. Love Busters, these are behaviors and habits that cause withdraws from the lovebank.

3. Emotional needs, meeting emotional needs makes deposits in the love bank.

4. The Policy of Joint Agreement, you and your wife decide not to do anything unless there is ENTHUSIASTIC agreement. If you can't decide, or the discussion becomes emotionally unsafe, you table the discussion for later.

Check it out, it really opened my eyes. Sometimes I wish I had this information before my wife started her affair 18 months ago. I did love her, and had not idea she was hurting and unsatisfied.

Well, she has returned the favor, and did the most hurtful thing I believe one human can do to another, break faith and trust.

If you have unmet needs, and you are not sharing how you feel about them with her, in one sense, you are lying to her, by omitting how you feel.

Openess and honesty with your partner is more than just telling the truth, it is making the truth known and not hidden from her.

HTH,

TB

"Seems like our society is more interested in turning each successive generation into cookie-cutter wankers than anything else." -- Jato 8/24/2004