Anu, Request you to keep my identity anonymous.
I am a 40 years old guy, happily married with two kids. I have a lot of friends and I have invariably introduced most of them to my wife.
While with a previous organisation that I worked for, I met this girl (say M) and we became very good friends. M is 2½ years younger to me, is married and has kids. Much like with my other friends, I introduced M to my wife. M has also been home a couple of times during festive occasions.
While so, during a family day event at office almost 5 years back, during an apparent conversation between M and me, we were engrossed in the conversation and my wife was standing right next to me. My wife thought that she was deliberately being snubbed/ignored and got offended with M's behaviour.
Since then my wife developed some sort of a hatred towards M. Many a times I tried explaining to my wife that M's behaviour was not offensive and even if it was, was unintentional.
It's been nearly six years since this happened, but that animosity still continues.
The more I try to explain to her, the angrier she gets.
We have had a lot of fights whenever this topic arises. I am scared to even pick M's calls when my wife is around.
What this has done is that I started speaking to M discreetly.
I had to delete all photos that I had with her. I constantly keep deleting all WhatsApp conversations and call logs that I have with her.
I do not want to do all these secret things especially when I am not doing anything wrong.
I want my wife to give M one more chance. My wife does not think I have a relationship with M. Her point is that I should not talk to someone who has insulted her (my wife). I think that it would not be fair for me to stop talking to M.
My question is how do I instill sense into my wife?
How do I convince her to give M one more chance? I don’t want to lose a good friend.

Hello, Firstly thank for your time, Well I am looking for some guidance regarding my married life, I am 40 yrs old man, married for 9 yrs, with a 7 year old daughter, ours was a love marriage with some ups and downs initially, but with time both of our families became supportive of us and the relationship continued. But 3 years back I caught my wife red handed having an affair with someone who worked for me. This broke me totally, made me feel embarrassed and since then it has been really difficult for me, but what broke me even further was my wife blames me for she taking such decisions in her life, she also shared rumors about me among our common friends, in society where we live behind my back ( I discovered this when I discovered her messages). She keeps blaming me or my family for even the smallest argument that we might have had in our relationship in the past and keeps maintaining the distance with me. Once the affair was discovered I was really upset and we had a huge fight over it, and it had some impact on our daughter ( who was almost 5 then), realizing that it would affect our daughter's life we mutually decided to give the relationship another try for the sake of our daughter and also our families came together to support this decision, now the problem is things aren't the same anymore, I always get a feeling of no regret from my wife and I feel embarrassed about what had happened, this has totally changed me as a person, once a man with lot of hope in life have become a person with no major aspirations in life. My daughter too is very much connected to my wife, this breaks me even more as a man/father. I tried to speak with my wife about this and her only point being I should hear what she feels and I do not understand her feelings etc... I do not understand how to deal with this, can you guide me? I want to become a better version , an example for my daughter again...I feel demotivated. Thanks again.

Hi, I m 54 year old married person, Last couple of years I am in contact with my 25 year old friend ( Age 50) Who had earlier severed relationship with us under the pressure from his wife. he is undergoing his divorce process now and hence he again reunited with us. Last 3-4 years my relationship with my wife ( Age 50) got sour due to one or the other reason and fault/negligence from my side. Meanwhile My friend and My wife are in close contact and they usually go for outing and he also come to our house regularly for chilling. I know this age is not for attraction/carrying out extra marital affair but last few months My wife always quote her name, make comparison between me and my friend how he takes care of her as compared to me etc etc. Also our small routine arguments gots heated when she utter a word "Separation/Divorce" etc etc. I feel very hurt when I am being threatened again n again for this. At this age I cant force my wife to cut down all relationship with that friend and also can't tell that friend to stop contacting my wife as they both are 50 year old matured person. I am just keeping calm 9 out of 10 incidences but that 1 incidence I am worried that everything will be ruined. We ( (Me n my wife) have struggled a lot to make our life stable and came out of deep financial crisis. Now at this stage I cant see or don't want to face this type of problems. Can u suggest any way out. Please.

Hi there, i am going through a difficult phase in my life, i dont know where to start but here my story goes. i work in UAE and i had a balanced and peaceful life until last November where i got married (arranged). we first met last year in march through marriage broker and everything matched, family also liked and we got married in November 2023. Before marriage we used to speak for 10-15 mins almost everyday (all casual talks and i thought everything was ok and she was the perfect match for me and my family). so after marriage i travelled back to uae and was supposed to bring her to UAE in Jan 2024. I had one past relationship for 2 years and we had broken up last year February as she was a from north of india and i was from south India and our families were against it and she wanted to go against family and get married but i was not ready as for me family became priority and we broke up. And after this relationship ended then only this match happened and after one month of my marriage my ex reached out to my wife and shared our relationship details and my wife got very upset and went back to her home. I travelled back to india to console her and tell her that it was my past and i am no longer in relation with my ex and our family involved and sorted this issue. My wife came back to us and everything was normal after that. My wife came to UAE in January 2024 and we started our married life here. All seemed good until i noticed a pattern of her taking to a person on phone everyday when i am out for office and also being very cautious with her phone. On confronting this she told its is her friend and i told her what is the point in talking to him daily for which she cried and told that i am controlling and she dont have freedom to talk to her friends. I left it as she was at home alone and bored and she was also looking for job here and may be with time she will change but still the talking continued until one day in May i was uploading her resume for her job and had access to her google photos and was shocked to see her photos with the guy whom she calls friend. There were photos of her with him after our marriage and also photos with him the day before she came to UAE. I confronted this with her and she cried and told that previously she had relation with him and parents did not agree and later she married me and had forgotten him but since she came to know about my past relationship she continued to stay in contact with him. She is not telling the complete story as i saw their photos before our marriage and even before our match happened and I have also seen her google location timelines as well. I told her to stop this if we want to continue our marriage she told ok but she still talks & chats to him through watsapp & botim because she is very secretive of her phone. She takes good care of me and tells she loves me but I am not sure she really loves me or just faking it. Now she is 3 months pregnant. I am thinking she will leave me for her ex giving me the baby after the baby is born as she mentioned this during one of our arguments. This is one side of my story and between all this my mom fell sick and upon consulting, she was diagnosed with cervical cancer stage 3A and I tried to get her the best treatment (chemo) but the cancer has spread widely and because of her age also she cannot take the treatment. Tried ayurvedic and herbal medicines but nothing can be done and doctors have told max she will live is 6 months. She is bedridden now and in pain everyday. I have a decent job in Dubai with decent salary where I have built my own house in my native and managing my home (parents in india & wife is UAE) but currently my finances is also effected very badly as I spent lot of money for our marriage and for my mothers treatment and I have loans and multiple credit cards as well. I am very stressed and all these things are eating me up daily and i don't know what to do and what went wrong and where? Even i cannot focus on my job as well. Please advise how can i go about these situation. i cannot share these to anyone also, Please advise.