Direct Answers - Column for the week of January 5, 2004

I am a captain in the Marine Corps. A year ago my wife cheated on me with another Marine. He lived in an apartment facing ours, which I passed every day on my way to work. She was my girlfriend at the time, and she told me because she felt guilty about it. She said it only happened once.

She said she never talked to the guy again except to tell him to leave her alone. I married her even after I found out because I love her and because I feel everyone deserves a second chance. I hold a lot of anger inside about it, especially since I worked on the same base with him. He left a little while ago for another assignment, and the apartment is empty now.

My question is how do you stop thinking about it? I picture it in my mind like a broken record. I don't want to keep hounding my wife over this. I want to get over it and move on. But I just get kind of sick when I think of his hands on her. I wonder if she will do it again, and I wonder if I am not good enough, especially in bed.

To be honest, I don't know why she cheated other than she was unhappy about money and about moving to a new base. She stated she wanted him from the minute she saw him and he was the best looking man she had ever seen. I am so insecure over this it is unreal. I have never and would never cheat.

Monty

Monty, forty years ago Roy Orbison sang, "It breaks your heart in two, To know she's been untrue." Today Puddle of Mudd sings, "