Am I being selfish? My marriage is falling apart and I need advice

I'll try to make this short but I am in desperate need of advice fromy an outside party. We have been married 3 years, together for five. We have an 8 month old daughter. We are in our early thirties if that's relevant. In January my husband's best friend and my close friend died unexpectedly. He left behind a wife and 4 year old daughter. It was an extremely difficult time to say the least.my husband and I have been having difficulties in our marriage and one of which has been the amount of contact my husband and our friends widow have been having. I tried to be patient and understanding as it hasn't been very long. I know that our friend would hAve wanted us to take care of her and be there for her. However, my husband (j) and the widow (k) have been texting back and forth nearly everyday multiple times a day. I've tried to text her and reach out myself but she doesn't really respond. She has asked j to come out to various places like her house,a tattoo parlor when she was getting a tattoo, a golfing venue,etc. She's reaching out to him for emotional support, even to go as far as telling my husband her daughter asks if he is going to be her new daddy. She doesn't seem to go to anyone else for emotional support and I feel uncomfortable because my husband and I are drifting apart in that area and he is focusing on taking care of another woman in that area. I trust my husband but I'm very uncomfortable with the relationship that has developed. I brought it up to j and he got mad and said I'm selfish and bitter. I want j to be there for k. I love and miss my friend and I know it's the right thing to do but I don't know how to appropriately handle the situation and I don't want to be selfish or jealous over nothing. We have other issues and this just separates us further apart. I'm scared for our relationship. Please share your thoughts and advice. Thank you.

Thank you for your response. I agree with you on what you wrote. K and I were never close nor was my husband with her. So it's hard to start up a relationship with her after the fact which I guess is whyshe's reluctant to contact me back. I agree that this should be a team support effort but I don't know how to accomplish that since texting is their communication that I am aware of. I don't really want her to know that I'm feeling insecure and I don't want to make her feel bad especially if this is innocence on her part. I could ask for him to include me on a group text but again this would seem controlling and I fear it would develop their shit into secrecy. and I don't think she's making amove on my husband purposefully but I do think she know she's driving a wedge in our relationshipand I do think she wants to be there for him if it ends. I am certainly jealous of the fact that they are communicating better than I am with my own husband at this at this time. If we were in a better financial situation we would get marriage counseling but it's not covered by insurance and are state and we don't have extra lying around.

"even to go as far as TELLING my husband her daughter asks if he is going to be HER NEW DADDY (= MY HUSBAND)." Oh, come ON! Could the woman GET more transparent! Or is this just what your husband oh-so-helpfully TOLD you she said? Would he BE that stupid, given that you COULD locate and question her (and embarrass him)? I doubt it. So it appears he must be telling the truth (irrespective of the fact he has his own, separate agenda for wanting you to know). RANGERD, I'm with you (the side of you who knows what's really what, anyway). Do we even NEED to spell out all the precise ways of how the conduct of these two is by any sane stretch of the imagination of decent society so overly inappropriate when viewed in its rightful context(s)? 'Scuse French but F**k erring on the side of caution and diplomacy, you haven't got TIME for that. The time for that has been and gone already. Take the bull by the horns. For this IS a bull you're dealing with, not a fluffy-wuffy kitten with the misfortune of happening to feature sharp wickle claws. DAUGHTER ASKED ME IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE MY NEW DADDY(!!!!!). So let's all of us cut the crap. This man has been behaving like a textbook romantic predator, swooping down on this newly needy and vulnerable and CLEARLY very desperate women doing a great damsel in distress act. She, meanwhile, will have been paying the going rate for this daily, stand-in, quasi-husband to ensure he keeps coming back for more, via her no-doubt copious expressions of gratitude, admiration, and flattery ("Oh, you're so big and strong and capable, what WOULD I do without you, you're a life-saver" [blah-blah, PUKE!]. She has to (think about it). She's without-warning or time to prepare, lost a vital source of help and support and probably feels very suddenly alone and lonely in that respect. What I'm saying is, she is USING him...just like he's using her. Punter Type C starts doing regular business with Prostitute Type D. But!...you let this, what (hmmmm) MIGHT have started out innocently enough despite now is an EXCHANGE of favours both practical and psychological go on for long enough - needs getting consistently, accumulatively, mutually filled - and what you're suddenly looking at is a seamless move from mere tacit deal to AN EMOTIONAL AFFAIR. One that has now managed to take root. Which is WHY when you made these first, quite mild versions of 'It's her or me', you got (basically): 'If you don't shut up you'll just be proving you're a nasty, hard, unfeeling, insanely jealous and insecure cow!', which basically translates to this as his bottom-line answer: "I want BOTH!". Right? But it also shows that between your personal needs and hers and the need to protect his relationship with you versus what he has with her, he sees it - despite it hasn't even been going on that long! - that hers take greater priority... so it's, YOU stop/shut up, she can carry on as she is. See it? You are NOT being unreasonable, over-sensitive, paranoid, over-reactive, etc., in what you see, hear and sense all of this means and is meanwhile still developing into/progressing from. HE is! Because throughout the history of mankind, too many full-blown, unbreakable affairs began from this EXACT precise scenario, this so-called innocent 'just being a good, helpful friend' pretext and pretense job. AND HE KNOWS IT BECAUSE (anything else aside) HE WATCHES TELLY, SAME AS YOU DO! He wants BOTH? Well, tough tittie to him, then, because HE'S MARRIED..."forsaking all others". And that doesn't just mean physically. You imagine your husband had become dependent on the bottle and you said, 'I'm concerned about your drinking and I'd rather you stopped or toned it seriously down', and he wanted to neither admit it nor face up to and deal with it. Wouldn't you expect the exact same vein of unfair, unreasonable and uncharitable retort, i.e. that you were making a mountain out of a molehill and, no, he didn't have a problem, YOU'RE the one with the problem (yadder-b*llocks-yadder)? So evidently he's already too fond of and addicted to his new habit. I repeat, this is (or began as) a mutual deal: he gets to feel daily like a real-life hero (yawn), the Big I Am, and she basically gets most of her husband back to the extent where she can shield herself from the fact of her departed husband's side of the bed growing colder and colder with each passing day. Buffering and Blinkering in exchange for Ego Plump-ups *and* the satisfaction of seeing that your nose not only IS out of joint but EVEN STILL COULD BE. Oh, aye, he's got your attention NOW, hasn't he!...and the ego-boosting impression of two women fighting over him! And, oh, her systematic refusals to engage with you definitely says, 'Not you - just him specifically - because despite everyone knows women are superior when it comes to emotional support, that's not purely and solely what I'm after!'. Think about it: Let's say she was a heroin addict and he'd been acting as her supplier ever since her live-in supplier had disappeared. And then YOU come along to offer her a stash, but she blanks you. Oh, really? It's the heroin she's after, is it? I don't think so. CASE CLOSED. The way she's behaving, and by all indication regarding that lead quote up there, I wouldn't be at all surprised if she were indeed prepared to pay the ultimate fee of eventually *marrying* him (or being his bit on the side)! And while you keep showing you're prepared moreover to sit back and tolerate it - where is his reason to stop her OR himself from continuing down that amoral path? This is what I'd say (because I don't take anyone's sh*t, least of all from someone who's supposed to be my other half, and I nip buds, not wait to have to prune ruddy great thorn bushes): "Husband, ...dearest, ...light of my life..., if you insist on seeing through your unilaterally-made, non-consensual decision to redirect a giant portion of what are MY exclusive marriage rights and privileges to an outside third party then you are categorically breaking the very crux of our marriage contract. This is NOT you just helping out a friend's widow; you know it, I know it, SHE knows it, next-door's CAT knows it! Not only that but the only way you could persuade me to CONTINUE abiding by our contract despite this objectionable moving-of-the-goalposts rather than see the contract itself as now entirely sent up in flames, is if I am afforded the EXACT SAME PRIVILEGE. So you have a choice, then, don't you: either cease this, I presume, still only emotional affair *immediately*, right this very minute, and agree to come with me to marriage counselling or I'm off to get myself my own ego-boost-on-the-side. You have 24 hours to decide what the rest of your life is going to be and with whom (if anyone, given she's just temporarily using and duping you into helping her). If you don't like that ultimatum, this inevitable consequence, then perhaps you should have THOUGHT about that before you went and made it wholly necessary for any woman with any self-respect in the first place.'. If he AGREES to the bluff of you getting your own bit-on-the-side then the man clearly no longer loves you nor ever truly did, berbom. If not, yet he AGAIN tries that (basically) 'you're a bitter, jealous, mean cow' nonsense, then if I were you, I'd reply thus: If me wanting to protect and preserve my marriage makes me this/that/this then I think I can live quite happily with that, thanks. I'd rather be a bitter cow than a cuckolded, abandoned one. But if you think there's something WRONG with a wife responding in this perfectly natural and expected way to an obvious outside threat, then I think you'll find you have a far bigger problem than being 'a meanie'. In a nutshell, she's not your problem. She could be ANYONE (well, anyone weakened and desperate, anyway). Plus, she made zero vows to treat you right and abide by the marital contract. He's your problem and she just one of his SYMPTOMS. If she's going to take a mile when supposedly only offered an inch, let her take it from some other poor sucker and piss off HIS wife. Your husband is not the ONLY helpful fruit in her world and there are PLENTY of newly grieving widows out there as we speak, but THEY don't take their situation as their carte-blanche to start luring away or accepting the higher-than-friendship advances of another woman's husband. Right? Would YOU start behaving like that? Even during/after a period of your marriage having experienced 'difficulties'? There you go, there's your answer. HAVE you been neglecting him, even (- not that that's any excuse)? Or is he just a man with an ego problem that can't sit still unless it's constantly being fed? PS: One of the reasons why she, in effect, won't accept your advances is probably because she thinks they're your attempts to get her into a position where you can basically grab her by the scruff and tell her to BACK OFF. So she does KNOW what she's doing is wrong, then, doesn't she. But like I always say, Desperate is as Desperate does. And that obviously goes just as equally to your (so-called) husband. Are you clear now?