[confounded]

I opened my email and realized after I started reading an email from my neighbor that it was actually addressed to my wife! I had opened her email account accidentally as I thought I was the account signed in to windows.

Anyway, the email said "How's YOUR bush?" with an attached picture of the large bushes growing by his house. The guy has always thrown out these "jokes" around my wife, sometimes very racy, about seeing her naked, referring to her body parts or even her intimate parts.

Well, the email got me going. I quickly clicked and sorted so that all the emails from this guy were in a row and started reading them. There were lots of suggestive stuff in them. One had a picture of my wife playing a dance video game he had taken at a party I was at with her. The email said she was his FAVORITE neighbor and will ALWAYS be his favorite. I remember him sitting there watching her dance and videoing the entire dance on his phone. Was a little creepy, but didn't bother me.

As I was reading these emails I could see the history of some of my wife's replies. I was shocked. She was playing back with him in the same suggestive but joking tone. In one email she said she did not have a vajazzle (decorative beaded design on the skin above the vagina) but she said she wanted him to get a "pen-azzle" (same thing for the penis?) and that "he HAD BETTER send her pics of that immediately!"

I also saw some other emails (yes, I was snooping at this point) my wife had sent to a different friend apologizing for flirting with the friend's husband and sitting on his lap at a party. ( I was not at this party obviously!)

IS this just healthy flirting? Should I confront her about it? Honestly, I am jealous about this for sure, but I am also struggling with these strange excited feelings. Is that crazy?

[Cat1864]

I think you need to talk to your wife and be honest. An accident turned into snooping, but it also highlighted an issue that has gone on in person. Find out what her perception of the flirting is.

You don't seem as upset about the flirting as you do the extent of it. If that is the case, let her know the flirting is getting out of hand and needs to be toned down. It's easy to get carried away with something that seems harmless (at least to your wife.) Together set boundaries of what constitutes 'too far'.

It might also be an idea to talk about the neighbor and compare notes about his behavior. He may not be as harmless as your wife might be thinking. While she may believe it is all in jest and a 'good time' (only she can tell you if this is how she views the interaction, but her apology to the friend says a lot about her mindset), he may be trying to 'groom' her into something totally different. By talking about it, his 'creepiness' may be more apparent to both of you.

How much flirting do you do with your wife? Have the two of you maybe gotten a bit too comfortable with each other to where the attraction and emotions are taken for granted? Has fantasy taken a backseat to reality?

Talk to your wife about your concerns about the flirting and be open about what you are feeling. Together figure out where the jealousy stems from. If it is her giving attention to another male or if it is her receiving attention from someone else. Putting limits on the flirting should help either way. However, it may also help you figure out what part of the situation is 'exciting' you. It may open up a new area of shared fantasy between the two of you. I do suggest that if it does, you do not use other people to add more reality to it. Let it be part of a fantasy world you build for yourselves.

Be open with your wife about what you read and see where it leads. Hopefully, you will be able to find a compromise that works out well for both of you. Good luck.

[confounded]

Thanks for the reply Cat. The neighbor had since moved out, but the emails continue. X-rated pictures and other images of a sexual nature were sent to my wife in a "joking" manner, but I really believe you are right that he is grooming her and setting up scenarios where he can engage her in sexual conversations. Eventually I am sure it is his goal to have these "all in good fun" conversations turn into direct sexual dialogue with my wife, where he can get her talking openly with him about sex, and ultimately have an intimate sexual exchange with her online through email or chat.

I am going to talk with her and be honest. Especially about the mixed feelings I have about it. There is definitely an element to this that is a turn on for me.

Our sexual relationship has definitely cooled off since having kids. We used to role play and dress up and do all sorts of things that kept it hot. I have tried several times to talk with her about this and bring these elements back into the relationship, but she is uninterested and unmotivated. She won't easily accept compliments from me either or flirting. She tells me not to be ridiculous, etc. I try and joke with her about sexy things and send her things via email too, but she just deletes them and never replies.

Bottom line is this, when I have tried to engage her on the same level as this neighbor guy, (and other guys as well apparently based on her party behavior) I get a very cold response if I get one at all. But she will play along with him, entertaining his advances and exchanging in a very sexually arousing manner, even though it's all packaged as a "joke". I mean, let's be frank... the guy's last email to her basically asked for her to give a description of her vagina. It is very difficult to even sit and write this now and resist the urge to go and see if she has replied to him.

I think somehow I have become "father of her children" and no longer the man she can flirt with and let down her guard with. Perhaps using this case as an example, she can more easily see how she treats me differently.

She is aware of how it turns me on when other men find her attractive, and she USED to use this as a tool in the bedroom quite often, even though we both knew this was not something we wanted to happen outside our bedroom fantasies. So with that being said, I find it more disturbing that she wouldn't tell me about what is going on and that he is sending her dirty emails, etc. Does that make sense?