Advertisement UExpress LIFE PARENTING HOME PETS HEALTH ASTROLOGY ODDITIES A-Z SEARCH Ask Dr. Nerdlove by Harris O'Malley Latest About Archives LIFE My Wife Has A Crush On Her Boss. Is She Going To Cheat On Me? by Harris O'Malley ASK DR. NERDLOVE | NOVEMBER 30TH, 2021 DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: My wife and I have been together for six years and married for four. We have a son who is about to turn two in a few weeks and we have been having marriage problems since February of this year. No sex and constant fighting. We sought out marriage counseling which has been helping a lot since June and still going. Still no sex though. She wants to and I want to but neither one of us can force it to happen. She has even bought some lingerie to help make it happen. Here is why I can’t and where the advice is deeply needed. I know she has a crush on her boss at work and has been flirting with him for a while. I asked her about it one day and she said it was nothing. I broke the golden rule and looked in her phone and texts. Her best friend and her talk about it and I read about her flirting with him and she told him to run away with her and how she wishes he would touch her. All of this is between her best friend and her. She doesn’t text him, email him, or DM him. I looked there, too. Should I man up and confront her and tell her I looked or should I lie and say at the Halloween party your best friend told me you wanted him or maybe should I take advice from another friend and just let it go? What should I do doc? I have been cheated on before in the same fashion. Girlfriend had sex with a married man who had three kids and this is the same situation but now my wife and I have a son. I forgot to mention how the man is similar to her dad and she says she could never be with a guy like that and he is religious and for several years my wife has said she is not but in her texts with her friend she claims to have some religion in her. She’s Buddhist and this guy is a Christian who goes to church three times a week. Not to mention he has three kids and is having marriage problems, too. I will take any advice I can get. I have been tempted to just walkout many times but can’t because we have a son. Desperate Snooper DEAR DESPERATE SNOOPER: Good for you for going to couple’s therapy! I’m glad to hear that it’s been helping… but your neglect of your sex-life needs to be addressed. Especially considering the root cause is that you went snooping and found out things you wish you hadn’t. First of all, I’ll give my standard disclaimer: I’m against invasions of privacy, whether it means snooping through someone’s email, texts, Facebook messages, computer files, whatever. As a general rule, even if you’re already sure they’re up to some sketchy s--t, you’re almost never going to like what you find and you’re gonna have to live with not being able to UN-know what you now know. Now, that having been said, you’ve gone and done it already and now it’s time to deal with the fallout. So, you say that all you’ve found are texts back and forth between your wife and her best friend – no indication that she’s been having contact with this guy outside of work, no smoking gun that she’s actually cheating on you, just gossip and the indication that she’s at least fantasizing about it. That’s actually not quite as bad as you’d think. It’s normal, even amongst happily married couples, for one or the other to develop a crush on someone – a co-worker, the cute guy at the Starbucks, that hot woman you see at the gym every Tuesday; it’s a heady emotional rush of teenager-y giddiness, especially when you’re in a long-term relationship where the initial passion has faded into a less-frantic but more intimate companionship and love. We’re a novelty-seeking species, and we ESPECIALLY like sexual novelty. New sex partners make us fire off a massive volley of dopamine and oxytocin straight to the pleasure centers of the brain. When we’re in a long-term relationship, that level of dopamine and oxytocin production dips down to lower levels. So when we find ourselves attracted to someone new, we get that chemical rush again and so we develop a crush or infatuation. That doesn’t mean that you (or they) don’t love your partner or aren’t attracted to them. All it means is that you’re a primate with a sex drive. The issue in your case is that when you’re having relationship problems – as you and your wife are – that crush can be more intoxicating just by contrast. This, in turn, can lead to someone having feelings like they haven’t in a long time. You say that she mentioned that she WISHES that her boss would touch her or make a move. That should tell you where things currently stand. Absent other indications – no smoking gun emails, prolonged absences, long nights at the office, sudden changes or improvements to her appearance – I would hedge on the side that your wife is enjoying the flirting and the emotional rush of an office infatuation but hasn’t stepped over the edge into actual infidelity… yet. Confronting her on this would be a bad idea. First of all: so far, you only have gossip to go on. Second: you got this gossip through snooping through her stuff. All this is going to do is turn the conversation from “Are you cheating on me” to “How dare you violate my privacy”, which will only make an already tense situation worse. Trying to cover your snooping by dragging her friend into it isn’t going to help or cover your ass; the first thing her friend is going to do is deny saying anything to you… because she didn’t. And let’s be real here: lying is only going to compound the problem of your having snooped in the first place. I’m not saying that you should only confront her when you have the means to win, I’m saying that a confrontation isn’t going to do anything to help. Neither, for that matter, is “just letting it go”. If you care for your wife and your relationship, then yes, you need to man the hell up up… not by accusing your wife of infidelity but by confronting your problems and working with her to fix them. I know it’s tough, even intimidating; you’re having flashbacks to your previous girlfriend who cheated. But this time you have the chance to stop any potential infidelity before it happens again. Men and women cheat for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being that their emotional or sexual needs aren’t being met… which is exactly what’s happening here. You’re both stressed – two-year olds are nothing BUT stress magnets – you’ve been fighting and, critically, you haven’t been f--king. You want to. Your wife wants to. But going by your letter, you’ve been the hold-out because you’ve got this fantasy of her and her boss in your head. This is what needs to stop. Her emotional and sexual needs aren’t being fulfilled by you, so she’s been indulging her crush. She’s enjoying the flirting because it has all of the thrills of a new relationship – that giddy mix of nervousness and excitement – that she hasn’t felt in a while and that she isn’t feeling in her relationship with you now. If you don’t want her to cheat on you, BE the man she’d cheat on you with. You need to seduce your wife. Remember all of the little things you used to do early on in your courtship when everything was new and wonderful? You need to summon that back and remind her just why she fell in love with you in the first place; the little compliments, the gifts for no reason, the unexpected sweet moments, the passion. Don’t let the sex just happen, make arrangements in advance. Call a babysitter, rent a hotel room, make reservations for a romantic dinner and give her the full-court press. Force the image of her and her boss out of your head however you have to – hold back from masturbation until you’re so horny you could f--k concrete, having a drink, smoking a joint, whatever – and make the moment happen. Sweep her off her feet and back into your bed. Things may look dire, but they’re not hopeless. You’ve got a chance to save your marriage – even to make it better than it has been in a while – if you’re willing to take it. Good luck. Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com VIEW COMMENTS LIFE How Do I Deal With The Fallout From Drama With My Friends? by Harris O'Malley ASK DR. NERDLOVE | NOVEMBER 29TH, 2021 DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: Last summer, some ex-friends and I had a falling out. From since 2014/2015 we’d spend almost every night talking to each other on Skype. Around 2017/2018 I wasn’t in as many of these group calls because I would be hanging with my in-person friends or out on dates. At some point during this time, we discovered that a friend was lying about a lot, and they were pretty much endangering a child, owed some people in the group money and betrayed severals trust. I chose to not get involved and I had no opinion because of what I had going on outside of the friendship. READ MORE LIFE How Do I Stop Being Angry About My Relationships? by Harris O'Malley ASK DR. NERDLOVE | NOVEMBER 26TH, 2021 DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: So long story short I am a single guy approaching 30, never been in a relationship and only went out like 2 dates in my entire life. This all boils down to this major issue. Basically my brother has been in a toxic relationship for as long as I can remember and this relationship has left scars on my self esteem. He is 35 years old, he has been with her since he was 18 years old and she was 14 years old at the time {they are married now with a daughter of 6 months). His wife is a gold digging materialistic manipulator, has never worked a job for more than a couple of months and constantly picks arguments with my parents over bulls--t issues. She always requests either myself or my parents to do favours for her and then she literally kicks our asses to the curb afterwards (and my brother does not utter a word of protest that his family members are being treated like dog s--t). My brother spent Euro 80,000 on their wedding without her paying a single f--king dime and she only found a job recently so that ”my brother will shut the f--k up about their depleted finances already”. READ MORE LOAD MORE ARTICLES Next up: More trusted advice from... 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