Dear Peter,
You are in a difficult possition. Here are some questions that are important to your situation.
1. How long have you been married? 2. Did you choose your wife for yourself, or was she chosen for you? 3. Do you have children together? 4. Does your wife love you?5. Did you ever, in the beginning, have a good friendship and love with your wife?6. Are you and your wife taking each other for granted, and forgetting romance and the cultivation of your marriage and relationship with each other?
7. Is your wife faithful and true in the marriage?
8 Do you encourage your wife by your appreciation for her efforts, such as to look pretty for you, or to please or surprise you in some little way. Do you compliment her and show appreciation. Are you watchful and aware of such attempts? Does she appreciate the things you do for her, too. Do you try to do things to please her? Did you ever? Did you overlook her attempts, until now she has given up?
9. Are you sure Jacy loves you? Could you be seeing more into her feelings than really exist? Office romances are very common. Each sees the other groomed and prepared for work, and doing things that are familiar to them and for which they were trained. Office flirtations are very usual. It is possible to get into trouble by taking them seriously.
10. Is it possible that Jacy is what we would call a "femme fatale", and is enjoying the flirtation with you, but doesn't inten to break up her marriage over it. Do you know why such lovely women can be femme fatales? It means "fatal women." Think about that
11. Is Jasy your employee, and are you her boss or work superior? Here, a relationship like that is not allowed. There are possible legal charges against a person who uses their superior position. Often it is called "sexual harrassment," and is considered very serious, when the man or woman is the superior. Even when people who are not each other's superiors make certain kinds of remarks it can be termed sexual harrassment. Often the one who does it never realized that it was serious because they were not enlightened on the subject. All companies are now abiding by such laws here because of the penalties and publicity involved when they don't make it clear to their employees that they have company rules against dating, remarks, touching, and so on, in the office. These laws are in place here because there was a need. Canadians are not so different from Chinese. Eventually you may also have such laws.
Please just think about the above.
Heres some advice:
1. Always keep the door to your office open when she is there.
2. Say nothing to Jacy about your feelings until you carefully think through such questions as the above, and others that may occur to you, such as what collateral damage would be done to the rest of your family if you break your marriage.
3. Is this infatuation? Remember, if you were married to Jacy you would see her unwashed and ungroomed, and in various kinds of unattractive situations. There would be days when you two would not agree. You would become familiar with each other, and find that some times your marriage had become a little stale. This is a normal state. Marriages need tending by both, just as a garden needs tending.
When you feel this way, and you know you have been a friend and lover of your wife in the past, it is best to find ways to renew your relationship with each other.
4. Don't tell your wife about your feelings for Jacy until you are sure that you are willing to break your marriage.
5. Remember, it has happened often enough that one of the ones who divorced comes to "rue the day". They decide they wish they could have their former wife or husband again, but it is too late for that because the wife or husband has found another mate, or simply is no longer interested in taking another chance, so it is not possible to go back and they have to live with it.
3. When there is a vacuum in a marriage relationship someone will always come in to fill it. There must be a vacuum in your marriage for this to have happened, and if she is really turning to you, probably in hers, too. Where and what does yours consist of?
I have seen a vacuum in a marriage because one was under a lot of stress for a long time at work, and was constantly crabby and miserable at home and the mate felt the vacuum. In the case of the other party, the mate was beginnina a mental illness and that's why there was a vacuum in the other marriage. The two who were suffering from the crabbiness and the strange behaviour from the illness turned to each other. They mistook it for love. The one who had the mate with the mental illness ended up divorced and I didn't hear what happened after that, except that the one with the mental illness recovered, raised the children and found another mate. The one with the crabby, unpleasant mate ended up remaining married, the mate was able to adjust job situation and behaviour. She says she is glad she didn't marry the other man and lose her husband with whom she had previouisly had a good relationship, and managed to rebuild it.
The situation you find yourself in is not at all unusual. In physics there is the law that "nature abhors a vacuum." Where there is a vacuum it tries to fill it. You need to understand the nature of the vaccum in your marriage.
6. If you ever had a good relationship with your wife there is a good chance it can be recovered. Think about this, too. If your wife is faithful, and Jacy has a husband, but would accept you, who is the most faithful woman? Should a faithful one be betrayed?
I'm not telling you what to do. You will have to figure it out for yourself, and Wenxia's thoughts should help. Try to be a noble man. Clearly you aretrying to be, or you wouldn't have brought the subject up here.
Be careful, friend. We have these sayings that show how old your problem is: "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence." "Forbidden fruit is sweeter." "Act in haste and repent at leisure." Even, "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush."
Warmly, and with best wishes, Mary
