My husband of ten years recently deployed to Iraq for six months. Once he was there, he called me to say he wanted space and needed this time to work on him. He wasn't sure if he wanted to remain married or not. I was devastated. Why wait until he was overseas? I couldn't understand and still can't.

Come to find out the following week, he has an emotional affair going on with someone he meet right before deployment. I confronted him. He denied. He doesn't exactly know how much I know about the EA. We fought a few times over the phone and on IM, then I just decided to go dark. No contact. It has been two weeks since that decision. About once a week he calls and if I don't answer, he will usually call four or five times.

Again I haven't answered or responded. Today again he calls four times, leaves a voice mail saying, "what's wrong with your phone? I have called several times." When I checked our phone card, right after he made all those attempts to call me, he calls the other woman and talks for an hour.

Please help me decipher his actions and if no contact is still what I should be doing. Am I pushing him further away?

So what do you want, If divorce, file and serve him

If you want to work it out, tell him what you know and what happens

I don't know at this point if I want a divorce. Right now, I just want him to stop his emotional affair and see where it goes from there.

He DID call you first, didn't he? Then he called her as you were not available. This is only "helping" him make up his mind. Who knows what he was going to say to you when he called, but it's too late now.
Next time he calls up, be nice and warm with him and not cold and silent. Ask him what's on his mind and then LISTEN to the man. He may have had a change of heart being in combat realizing that you are who he wants and not her. But if you are not answering the phone you don't give him a chance to express what's on his mind.

Talk to him, then decide what you want to do. Apparently he may have felt inadequate somehow prior to deployment and sought her out as she may be more of a sympathetic "ear" than you are. Ever think of it like that?

He waited until he was gone because he thought it would be easier to break up with you over long distance than in it would be face-to-face.

By pulling this stunt, he's told you everything you need to know about him.

The emotional cheating might be one thing you can overcome by talking it through and understanding each other, but not having the courge to tell you in person before he left for his deployment is just plain cowardly.

Thanks all for the responses. I did answer his last call, last night. We had a good conversation but just about things in general, no relationship talk. I was cheerful and could tell he missed me, though he didn't say that. I made sure to end the call first, while we were on a good note. Now today he has texted four times, and is calling again but I haven't reaponded or answered.

Here is the thing, I don't want to and can't just be friends with him. It is way to soon (a month since he left) and I still feel betrayed and hurt. I am not even sure that I want to be married to him anymore since the very foundation of our marriage has been shattered.

If he truly doesn't want to be married then I need this time to move on. Not to take two steps back whenever he contacts me. He has to give up his EA relationship and truly use this time to figure things out for himself. I guess I should just tell him, now I am the one who needs space?

I can not tell you what is in his mind, but having dealt with many who has served in the middle east and from my own experiences in years gone by, He may have all sorts of fears, he may feel he is not coming home alive, he may have reached out to someone else, that he felt he could tell things he could not tell you. ( not an excuse but it does happen) I know my wife was not there for me when I went off to service, we had no cell phones, no emails and she wrote perhaps 2 letters a month, most of the guys were getting one or more letters a day from their love ones.
The odds of me returning alive was far against me, and I know I could not talk to her about it,

If you can, see a counselor and see if that can help, at least help you with how you feel.

Then if you can keep it together till he gets back, both of you do the counseling together.