I'm terrified to talk to my wonderful wife

[ReineD]

You’re afraid to lose your wife and that’s understandable. You love her and you don’t want to hurt her. You feel guilty because you know that she will feel betrayed when she finds out you’ve CDed behind her back, after she specifically asked you to be honest about it.

It sounds as if up until your desire to CD increased, the two of you have had a very close and connected relationship.

So what to do.

I’m afraid there is no other choice than to be completely honest even if it risks introducing a behavior in your marriage that she will not like. She wants to maintain the high level of intimacy and connectedness between you (which is impossible to have without complete honesty) and so she deserves to know everything that’s going on with you … even if she won’t like it.

When she finds out that you keep CDing behind her back (and she will eventually find out), she will feel as if the CDing is your priority, and not her. This will be much, much worse for your relationship than having her dislike the CDing. If she knows about it, then she at least has a chance to begin to wrap her mind around it. But she won’t be able to do that if you keep lying.

So gather your courage and be honest, even if it turns out that the CDing will change your relationship. You cannot keep pretending to her that it doesn’t exist when it is becoming a significant obsession. Hopefully you will eventually make the choice that she is more important to you than the CDing, and this will help you to keep things in balance - to think about her needs as well as your own. By not being honest, you are currently only thinking about your needs and not her needs or your relationship needs.

I suspect that she is willing to think about your needs too (she did ask you to be up front about it - she did not ask you to stop), even if it will take a while for her to not feel threatened by the CDing. But again, the more you lie, the more she will feel threatened, and the connectedness between you will begin to erode.

Good luck.

[Lauren4444]

I agree with a lot of the posts about NOT bringing the topic up from a defensive position. If your wife wants to do everything together, then wait for the right moment to bring it up and ask her to go shopping with you and help you pick out something TOGETHER. Give her the chance to deny you before you answer in the negative for her. She just may surprise you if you bring it up in a positive way.

[Cheryllynn]

Lots of good advice here so far, take it to heart! The two things that caught my attention were your wife's desire to do EVERYTHING together. We all need some space, and to me that would feel like she was attempting to control my every move, or that she didn't trust me for some reason. My wife is accepting, although I do not dress around her she knows that I do and do not take issue with it. Usually I make a clothes purchase every few months and she is well aware of that as well. The other more important thing- GET YOUR OWN CLOTHES. I cannot stress this enough. There is literally NO chance that she does not know you are wearing her stuff, and that complicates your situation as you are not being open with her about your situation as she has asked.