Spouse May Look Elsewhere For Attention
“Matt ran away to live with a 50-year-old woman he met over the Internet,” says Claire, 32, a media planner and the mother of 4-year-old twin girls. “He didn’t even tell me in person. He just packed a bag one night … and left a note for me to find in the morning. I can’t believe it! This is a story you read in the papers, not something that happens to happily married couples like us.”
In retrospect, Claire sees there were some warning signs she missed. “Matt had been acting distant and preoccupied for a few weeks,” she says. “That great sense of humor he has was gone, and so were all those hugs, kisses and other affectionate gestures he used to show me. He’d come to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning, after `working,’ or so he said, in his home office… .”
Matt, a 37-year-old software designer, met his new girlfriend, Louise, in a chat room. “She shares my political views and love of sports, and we have a similar sense of humor,” he says. “We started off with innocent conversations, and pretty soon we were sending instant messages to each other all night long. When I told her that my home life was falling apart, she invited me to move into her apartment.”
Despite their 13-year age difference, Matt says he feels revitalized by Louise. “I feel young, attractive and alive around her, which I haven’t felt for a very long time,” he says. “She has a great body and is very spiritual - neither of which, unfortunately, apply to Claire. Louise is divorced and not very eager to get married again, so I don’t feel pressured to make a permanent commitment to her. Sex with her is amazing, too. With Claire, I felt we had gotten into a kind of rut.”
Matt and Claire’s relationship has gone awry since the day they met six years ago. As guests at the wedding of mutual friends, they happened to be seated at the same table. Though Matt was there with a date, he asked for - and got - Claire’s phone number. “I remember thinking he was the funniest guy,” she says. Matt adds: “Claire was really fun to hang out with, very real… . Besides, my girlfriend Toni and I were pretty much over… .”
After that first meeting, Matt went home to Rhode Island and Claire went back to her home in New York. But it wasn’t long before the two were calling each other every night and dating on weekends. After four months, Claire issued an ultimatum: If this relationship was to go anywhere, one of them would have to relocate. Since she was reluctant to leave her job with a high-profile ad agency, Matt made the move. Less than a year later, they were married, and their daughters, Eliza and Kathlyn, were born after their second anniversary.
“Once we were married and our kids were born, I was the happy, fulfilled wife,” explains Claire. “We had a nice home, lots of friends; things seemed perfect. Then Matt’s best friend, Josh, died suddenly of cancer, and Matt was absolutely devastated. He was so depressed that he went to counseling for almost a year to deal with it. I was so proud of him, and I assumed that after this crisis, our marriage could survive anything.”
Matt explains: “After Josh died, I started having panic attacks. Out of the blue, this uncontrollable fear would wash over me. In the evenings, I’d shut myself in my office and cry, sometimes for hours. Claire urged me to see a psychiatrist, and I’m grateful that she did. It saved my sanity and my life.”
“Matt has strayed because Claire has `triangled’ him out of their marriage,” says Bonnie Eaker Weil, Ph.D., a marriage counselor and author of “Make Up, Don’t Break Up” (Adams Media, October 1999). “Whether or not Claire’s aware of it, she has put all her attention into her kids, leaving her husband feeling neglected and unimportant. Louise fills that void for him right now.”
Weil adds that Matt loves the “honeymoon stage” of a relationship, when the excitement and fun is at its peak. But when the initial spark wanes and troubles arise, he looks for a way out rather than staying the course. “He needs to work harder at dealing with power struggles and problem-solving rather than running away,” Weil says. “After the death of his friend, Matt began to question his mortality, and filled his emptiness with someone other than his wife. Louise is clearly a mother figure to him, making him feel important in a way that Claire doesn’t.”
As the couple worked to mend their marriage, Matt began coming home on weekends and taking Claire out for dinner or a movie. The time alone gave them the chance to rediscover what had brought them together in the first place. After a few months, Matt moved back home and took a job with a software firm to improve their financial situation. Now, though Matt and Claire are still in counseling, they happily report that their future looks more promising than ever.