I hid my thoughts and feelings for a long time, tried to ignore and pretend them away. I still acted in a very loving way to my SO for the most part. But they manifested in other ways and increased my levels of stress and anxiety in general.
I actually just had to be honest with him about everything. As it turns out, he had many negative emotions as well, and he was hiding them. He felt like he didn't belong and wasn't contributing, that he had lost some aspect of his masculinity. These issues may not be present in your marriage because you have more traditional gender roles and there are no subconscious aversions after decades of being socialized to view the man as the provider. For us, it was a huge paradigm shift and we didn't realize it would have such a huge impact. He became very passive and withdrawn from our 'team,' and I started to lose some respect for him as an equal.
We had to take a couple days apart to process our thoughts and feelings. I found some great journaling exercises and shared those with him. They can be found here: http://www.achangeinthinking.com/homework.html Some of the questions you ask yourself or your partner are...unpleasant. You may hurt each others' feelings. White lies are insidious because they give one partner a false sense of security and relieve the other partner of some responsibility. Same thing for lying by omission. Don't you think your wife has the right to know about your feelings and thoughts? Are you afraid of the consequences? I was very afraid and very ashamed. I didn't want to hurt him, and I didn't want him to leave me. I didn't want to admit that I so enjoyed the outside attention and that I was actually considering some of these people might be superior to him when I knew nothing about them.
I can't say we worked through the issues, past-tense; we are still working on them. We realized we need to change our perceptions for our new roles, appreciate what each one of us brings to the table, date and sexualize each other more, and on my part, view the outside attention for what it is: just people enjoying the way I look or the money I make without any concern for what makes me a special person. I am so very special to my SO, and I was special 10 lbs and $40K ago when I was just a grad student.
Eventually, the thoughts and emotions will fester and become destructive. The only difference is where you'll aim them when things finally come to a head.