Thank you Tessa.  I would like to talk to a counselor more.  I did have a bit of a relationship with his wife--we were friends on Facebook and we had sent lots of messages back and forth and regularly made comments to each other and enjoyed looking at each others family pictures.  I talked to her on the phone one time but it was pretty brief, but friendly.  I also always sent Christmas cards and baby announcements, etc. to their whole family and sent them lots of gifts for their new babies and Christmas and so on--I don't have any nieces and nephews so I kind of treated their children like my niece and nephews.  I never sent correspondence or gifts just to my friend--always to them as a couple or to their children.  Likewise, she sent me a few things.

I don't want to contact my friend and violate what he asked me to do or violate her trust of him and cause them more problems but at the same time I feel like I need a little closure, which maybe is selfish, I don't know.  I thought about writing them both a short note just to say I am sorry this is what happened and I didn't mean for it to be that way and that if things change in the future I would still like to be friends with their whole family.  She does not know the Lord so obviously there is a lot to consider in making sure her potential faith is not attacked.

Thanks again!  God bless!

Again, that is why I came here instead of having a knee-jerk reaction of responding to my friend.  I have tried to look at it from the direction of how his wife and my husband feel--that was one of my first thoughts--and I told my husband and my friend that I had to remove myself from that level of involvement because of my husband.  My husband is attractive and the boss in his work environment and until the past few months has been the ONLY man in his department--usually with very young women who don't have the best morals.  His last job was the same thing just a different place and the husband of one of his employees told my husband not to contact her again in an accusing way (even though it was only rarely and in a professional development capacity).  So, it's not the "same" as a friendship but it was an opposite-sex, close working relationship and I totally trust my husband that there was nothing else going on and I supported him that he was innocent on that and he has told me a few times since then that he does feel bad over that situation that he can't talk to her anymore and help promote her career--in a sense "mourning" the loss of the relationship they had.  So, from the perspective of MY relationship with my husband, I think we are in good understanding about this, although he thinks that I overreact on this, as with pretty much everything else--I am more emotional than he is and relationships with ALL family and friends are a bigger priority to me.

However, I can see that my friend's wife doesn't want me around and I can see that for the sake of my friend's relationship/family, I need to be out of the picture and not a thorn in their life.  That is why I came here to talk about it more and to not act selfishly to satisfy my needs over my friend's greater need.  And exactly what you said, I know logically what is right and what God says about these things but sometimes it is hard for your brain to communicate that to your heart.  I'm sad about it.  I have had relationships with female friends that went sour and they continued to be an issue until I resolved them--I was deeply hurt and sad by those too but at the same time, there was resolution--in one case after waiting 7 years.  So the thought that because this was an opposite-sex friendship, there was such a serious accusation, and there are important people involved (his wife and my husband) but who aren't the friends, makes it something that probably will never be resolved and that is a bitter pill to swallow.

I know God's Word holds true, His precepts are right and if I follow them I will stay out of trouble (although maybe not attack) and that eventually He will right wrongs and clean up the messes we've made--even if it's not until we get to eternity.  I came here to get some perspective and encouragement to continue doing what is right and not act on emotion.  I want God's comfort and peace and I've been seeking it but it hasn't come yet.  And I pray that my friend and especially his wife, who's not a believer, find God and what He wants them to do.

FHL, I will pray for you too.  What you said rings true for me too--I think men and women have ever-changing relationships and it didn't really become that painfully obvious until now.  I think society has told us one thing and God has told us the truth and we have let the world creep in and then we let ourselves get tangled in something we shouldn't have.  And like I said before, for myself, my brain knows the logical truth but it gets hard to live it out due to the heart's emotions.  My husband doesn't have really any of his own friends and the couple friends we have are from me meeting the wives first so it didn't really occur to me that bringing my male friend into my married life could be a potential problem because I was the "friend" person in our marriage.  Never in a million years did I even think about the possibility of this happening.  I have another really good male friend that I met as a teenager and have a huge history with--but he is my second cousin.  That friendship and my problem friendship didn't seem any different to me but one is "safe" because he's family and the other one got massacred because he wasn't officially family.  I never saw them as different in that capacity until now.  They were both men, both came on the scene about the same time and both have been extensively involved in my life since I was a teen.  The relationship with both changed after I got involved with my husband out of the natural desire for me to be with my love!  There was some intrinsic change with both because my priorities changed as a wife and then as a mother but I guess I was too oblivious that maybe my friendship should come to a natural end with my non-family friend.

My marriage has some strong aspects but it has issues like everyone else's.  I have learned a lot in the past year about myself because God has taken me on a big journey with things about myself and has shown me a lot about who He wants me to be and how I am not meeting His standard.  I have had to take some serious looks at my marriage and how my spouse is not me and that God has things to work out in him but also that He made my husband in His image and made some really great unique things about him and that I need to back off and fix me, not him.  At the same time, I do feel a little alone because my husband does not talk about anything, good or bad, so I feel like I have had to deal with a lot of things alone, which is why I came here.  I tell him everything about what is going on in my life and am an open book but he doesn't really give me a lot of support and feedback in that area.  So, while I do make him aware of everything and try to talk to him first, I feel like I do need another outlet to get the Christian feedback I am looking for so I came here to seek it.

I want to do what God wants--what is right for everyone--and move past this successfully and in a healthy way.  So that is what I am seeking most: God's help in emotional/spiritual help. 

Yep, it sounds like we can relate.  My husband is very smart, handy and attractive and he's a really hard worker.  And works mostly with women in a high-stress environment that tends to have crazy opposite-sex dramas.  I totally trust him because he has high standards and is a straight shooter but at the same time, he is not a very open, vulnerable person with me and that is hard for me because, while I understand that men are typically not as chatty and emotional as women, he seems to almost go out of his way to avoid telling me things.  He'll give me a 30 minute rundown of his day at work but when we were having a really difficult, long-term situation with his parents, he would not talk to me about it unless I really got in his face and was upset.  And he tends to seem indifferent when I come to him with things that are upsetting me as far as parenting or friendships or family or whatever.  Yet he'll tell me about inappropriate comments/topics his coworkers bring up, how he is the "token male", how so and so is a "little cutie" and in the past, he's mentioned his "girlfriends" (a bad habit he got from his dad--it's only in jest but I found it undermining and he seems to have gotten the message).  You can tell he enjoys the attention and it hurts when I am bending over backwards to get his attention and he tends to blow me off.

I think marriage, as God defines it, is a very high goal to reach.  Bringing 2 intrinsically selfish people together and having them remain a united front is hard to achieve--especially as the world around us bombards us more every day with basically how to be more self-centered!  But at the same time, I have seen what it can be.  My grandparents were married 65 years and I saw them fight and get disgusted with each other but I also saw them so comfortable with their mate, and how even after 65+ years together, my Grampa still thought my Gramma was gorgeous and that he won the lottery by getting her--the same with my parents.  And even some of my friends who've been married only a handful of years.  I have seen it and I know it's out there.  I've been so frustrated because I have been trying to force my husband into a corner of cooperation with me in reaching that goal and it doesn't work.  That's why I have been focusing on fixing my issues and letting God deal with him and things are better with that.

I didn't realize that things would be so hard friendship-wise in marriage though.  I think women are designed to need other women and we crave those friendships but they are also very dramatic at times.  My husband gets a little irritated with me that I talk so much with my best girlfriend but then he won't talk to me and I don't know what he wants.  He doesn't seem to need friends or much of an outlet but I do.  We talk about relationships and parenting and being women and he doesn't want to talk to me about that so...  ??  The few male friends I have had have been different in that we talk about "neutral" topics like current events, eschatology, science, religion, etc.  My husband doesn't like to talk that way either so again, umm...  ??  I don't feel like I have crossed a line with either of my male friends by talking about no-no topics because that's not what we ever talked about.  But at the same time, I see how someone could gravitate towards a person that fulfills a need they have and aren't getting in their marriage.  I still don't think I was doing that with my friend but maybe he was with me.  ?

I don't have any other male friends that aren't part of a couple so hopefully this aspect of things can't happen again.  I wouldn't go out of my way to befriend a non-couple guy now that I am married, probably part of the reason I didn't see this friend as a problem since he was there looooong before I even knew my husband and was married himself.  And 1000 miles away...  I have things that slap me in the face--I have 15 years worth of pictures of him in my picture books, his kids' pictures up on my fridge, books he gave me over the years, and other little things that remind me of him.  How to approach that, I don't know.  I have tons of pictures and things from my best girlfriend around my house and I can't imagine how hurt I would be to remove those things too.  What do you do?  I don't want to erase him but how do you suppress things that remind you of someone?  Every time I see an iris, I think of my Gramma--her favorite flower.  How do you suppress things that remind you of a dear friend you don't have anymore?

But thank you for your words--you were very understanding but said the right thing too.  I appreciate it.