I have been married for a year and have begun to worry about my wife’s fidelity. She used to be in a relationship with a guy that ended a year before we began dating. It was a long relationship; from the time she was in school until she began working well after graduating. Everyone in her family assumed she would marry that guy, and she believed it too, so the break-up affected her very badly. When we got together, she said she had moved past her feelings for him and was ready for a new beginning. We fell in love and decided to marry, but I constantly feel as if she is pretending to be happy with me while her thoughts are still with her ex-boyfriend. She hasn’t spoken to him since the relationship ended, but I recently found her looking at old photographs of him and her together. She says I worry too much, but I don’t know if this is just something she is doing because she wanted to forget him. How do I get past this doubt?
When you say this is ‘just something she is doing’ you conveniently ignore the fact that the ‘something’ in question is a pledge to spend the rest of her life with someone. If she wanted to forget someone and move on, she could have simply tried a short-term relationship and not commit to anything. What she chose instead is a lifelong promise. All you have to bolster your doubt is her history, and the fact that she was looking at old photographs. Is that a crime? Is this reason enough to doubt her fidelity? If she says you worry too much, aren’t you doing her a disservice by ignoring what she says and wilfully assuming the worst? Why not give her the benefit of doubt, give both yourselves time and space to get used to the idea of being a married couple, and see how this relationship evolves as you spend more time with each other?

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