I will grant that Cary seems a bit out of his gourd here (and if an account of a troubled relationship send you teetering over the edge of sanity, maybe giving advice is not the best line of work for you? Unless all of your readers really get off on you waxing poetical [or whatever that was supposed to be]), but the relationship does not sound so crazy to me. I would not describe the relationship as "crazy" at all, rather as quite straightforwardly: shitty.

Not to get too technical and all, but this is a clear-cut scientifically sound example of a shitty marriage, featuring a shithead of a wife doing shitty things. Where is all this helpless madness Cary is blathering on about? This woman is hysterical, in the classic sense of not being able (or willing) to contain her wandering nether regions.

And as for the um "platonic" thing, let us dispatch with that quickly with 2 basic facts:

1) Even if she is not scrwing these guys, she might as well be...

And on top of that:

2) She IS screwing them! Seriously! There may be 1 or 2 she has kept it um flirty with or whatever, but she is definitely boning the rest and probably DOZENS YOU HAVE NOT EVEN HEARD ABOUT!!!

All of the LW's "Somehow I believe her when she says she has not had sex with them" can be described as: Denial, to a pathological degree. Anyone other than someone utterly paralyzed by fear of leaving this woman would have divorced her cheating ass years ago. LW has created delusions in order to be able to justify not leaving.

Can't imagine why the counselor is supporting her, unless she is boning him too.

Cary: wake the hell up and treat the LW's troubles like the real-world, blood-and-guts troubles they are, not as a jumping-off point for your self-indulgent tripped-out prose poems.

To the Anonymous who posted the above: Don't hope. Get out now! A man who would do this has much more wrong with him than merely lying and cheating. Sorry, my dear, but you are married to one of the really bad guys.

is don't hold out hope for your relationship with your husband. Also, get out cleverly.

I knew a woman who ignored this sort of behavior and her husband was playing for time while he transferred and hid assets. He filed for divorce. Don't just get out, get smart about how you get out. Protect your rights.

I'm glad that these letters have helped you and I hope you extricate yourself from this boyfriend of yours, soon!

But as to marriage, mine is going great thanks and I start off with a deep sense of mistrust because of people like this wife and my lying bastard of a father, it took me years to 100% trust my husband while we were dating and I didn't marry him until I did trust him.

People screw up, people make mistakes, people have crushes and blur boundaries, the people you love will hurt you, people wonder if the one they are with is the "one". The way married or people with respect for one another can work through these things is how the person acts after the catching or the suspicions over mistakes that arise. How do they react to your pain? Do they give a shit, are they sorry?

What your boyfriend is doing and what this wife is doing are disrespectful, emotionally abusive actions. They know about your pain and just don't care, their needs are more important.

The people we love hurt us, it's unavoidable, it's the apologies and reperations that matter. Lies and victim blaming are not I'm sorry, I made a mistake I'll do better.

This wife is never going to change who she is most likely and she has shown that who she is, is someone who constantly needs proof of love but is unwilling to return the same. She needs proof of love from these Bill's and John's, they want her even though she is really off limits. She needs proof of love from hubby by screaming "I want a divorce" just so he'll say baby, baby, no I love you, don't leave, it will crush me, I'll do anything. The jealousy she creates on purpose is also a proof of love act. This cycle will not stop unless she decides to trust that she's actually worth loving.

I think the LW needs to realize he is loveable too, that this drama and spying is just too much work, it's exhausting and it's bad for him and his daughter. Oh and the therapist is really shitty, it's okay to continue a friendship with someone she was having an affair with and you should just trust her when she's done nothing to earn that trust back?

So I agree with the advise that unless he can accept that his wife will always threaten to leave and need other men in her life and maybe he should get some honeys of his own, he needs to start stealth divorce. On the surface do everything the same, behind her back, get that PI, visit with all those divorce lawyers, do whatever you can to not leave this young girl who is forming her sexual identity alone with a manipulative abuser, who will most likely demand proof of love from her own child by forcing her to pick sides and demonizing you. Have you been perfect, no, I'm sure you haven't, the spying, any passive aggressive acts, but don't ever let her use your mistakes as the reason why she is allowed to go off and find these other men for intamacy considering she's been doing it all of her relationship life. If she's unhappy she would follow through and actually get the divorce, so you have to because you are unhappy. You've been dancing this pain dance for over a decade, it's time to get some joy into your life, you deserve it!

Then you should probably get some help to try and understand why you put up with this crap for so long and how to find and keep a more stable honest woman in the future.