It's the fact that these days, many modern marriages (the happy ones that I know about, anyway) are based on the assumption not just of sexual fidelity but of strong, abiding friendship between the spouses. LW says they have almost DAILY contact and have shared each other's deepest secrets--that's a far, far cry from a harmless private flirtation with a coworker or old flame, the kind many of us of both sexes engage in from time to time without damage to ourselves or our marriages. But by maintaining this intense secret friendship with LW from nearly the beginning of his relationship with his spouse, Adam has split himself in two, reserving some major portion of his emotional life for a woman he doesn't actually have to live with or navigate the daily compromises of building a life together. Neither LW nor the wife is getting the whole man, and Adam has probably arranged it that way on purpose, at least unconsciously. It's a way of avoiding whole-hearted commitment to either woman, of maintaining a mental escape route. And before someone jumps on me for man-bashing, let me just say that I know both sexes are capable of engaging in this sort of commitment-phobic behavior. I did it myself for a while when my husband and I were first together--I nurtured a few serious, obsessive crushes outside of my marriage and seriously toyed with the idea of having an affair--but luckily I grew out of that habit before doing anything truly destructive. Because in the end, when I took honest stock of my life, I knew I really was married to my best friend, even if we had conflicts from time to time or trouble understanding each other, even if I sometimes wanted to escape to parts unknown.

In other cultures and other times, of course, marriage has been seen differently: as a practical partnership to make children or to boost a family's bourgeouis credentials or to seal a business merger or whatever. If the bond of friendship between spouses doesn't enter into the original equation, then of course no one can fault a man or woman for seeking emotional intimacy elsewhere. But chances are, Adam's wife believes she is the person closest to her husband, and she'll have every right to be furious and to feel betrayed when she finds out about his 7-year-long secret friendship with a woman who's name she's never even heard.

This is tangential but I have to respond to "no name given," who recommends against living together before marriage--

We're all going to answer this question based on our personal experiences but also on the extent to which we've been indoctrinated in the "why buy the cow" mentality by the domineering matriarchs in our family. Given that, I just have to laugh when people insist that living together is somehow the death knell of any relationship. In the past twenty years, at least half if not more of the dozens of weddings I've attended involved a couple who lived together beforehand...including me and my husband (together 13 years, living together 12 years, married 9).

As for the main topic: yes, LW sounds immature, but also genuinely confused and frightened, as I think most people would be in this situation. Cary's response was just right: encouraging him to be brave and ethical without getting too moralistic about it.