I recently found out that my wife of 16 years was having an emmotional affair (Or something) with a long distant co-worker.  She had something somewhat simlair only 3 years into our marraige which cause us to seek marriage counseling and I though was long behind us. At this point I really don't know what this new thing really is.  Let me give a quick summary.  While on vacation I question an email she sent to another person which seemed slightly flirtatious, that was nothing.  Then I ask her if ANYTHING was going on and she freely confessed that she had something going on with a European former coworker.  They knew each other from years back but they had meet in November just to have lunch when he was in town.  From there they started emailing and at one point he said he "liked" her.  My wife has allowed me to look over everything and it really looks like from that point she really start instigating the relationship.  I would say 98% of it was either work related or freindship of sharing what was going on work related.  No remind you, at this point there was nothing that they were working on related to each other so there was no reason for them to be even be comunicating with each other.  My wife is at a much higher position than this guy, and she was going out of her way to give him advice on how to handle certain work situation.  It had never got to any actual sex talk.  In fact he had even stated that he would never cheat on his wife, but that it was ok to have a little fantasy play.  My wife was "fishing" for compliments which I don't think he even returned.  I guess the worse of it was: they said "they would close their eyes and thing of each other" with no details actually spelled out.  He was going to be coming into town once again in May.  Back in Febuary she had already start planning a date where they were going to be doing dinner and go out shopping afterword.  I ask her the nigh of the discover if anything would have happend and she said "I don't know".  Now she is telling me nothing would have happened and she would never have done anything physical.  Let me throw one more item in, My wife lost an additional 30 lbs since there first meeting, she had lost 20 previously.  They did not share any picture except my wife sent one which was just a face shot show I guess the weight loss would have been a pleasent suprise for him.   

  So now, I going through all the trama.  Of course I'm asking "why" over and over.  She is religious (regular church goer, Catholic) and I struggle about her morals and what our marriage vowels meant.  I guess the big question I'm going over is exactly what has happened her.  There was not actual sex talk.  They knew each other was married.  They never said they loved each other.  Their was only an implied talked that they wanted to be initmate with each other.  There was a plan to meet with each other but My wife claims it would not of progress to physical (although not initially).  And probably the worse of it was she admitted she though of him once while we were kissing.  Also once more thing.  It seemed like everything in our marriage was ok at least to me.  We were going on monthly dates, had sex weekly (I would have like more).   We are going to marriage counselling, she had told me that she did wrong, and it was mostly just a fantasy on her part.  That actually she was making it out to more than it actually was. Toward the end it had come to where she was even IM over the weekend (even in front of me), and that their had actually been about 3 phone calls at work where they had talked to each other for about 20 minutes.  I'll will never know what they talked about, but she claims they were a lot less than the IM's since it was easier to do the fantasy thing over IM.  Also one last point, they had pet names for each other.

Can some body please tell me what this was?   Is it as bad as I am really thinking?  She knew it wasn't right but said she couldn't stop.  She know she should have stoped it way back.

I'll admit I am verbably beating her up over this.  I have said some things since the discovery that is making things worse.  Was it really as bad as I think it was?