A marriage counselor charged with sexual assault is on trial in Texas accused of using her position of authority to have sex with a patient.

Sheila Loven counseled a couple in 2009 and allegedly used her counseling influence to encourage the wife to file for divorce, then had an affair with her husband.

Assistant District Attorneys Betty Arvin and Sean Colston are prosecuting the case.

The wife took the stand at the Tarrant County courthouse on Thursday and testified about her relationship with Loven, which she described as "visiting her best friend once a week to talk."

The wife said Loven spoke unfavorably about her husband for months and encouraged the two to divorce.

"It wasn't marriage counseling, it was divorce counseling," the wife said in court.

In Sept. 2009, after the wife filed for divorce, she met Loven at Flip's in Grapevine, Texas. Throughout lunch she disclosed to Loven suspicions she had about her husband seeing someone. She testified that after a possible girlfriend was mentioned, Loven admitted her involvement.

"It's me, it's me," the wife said Loven told her. "She had developed an interest in my husband and wanted to seek a relationship with him," she said in court.

The wife added that she was numb after the conversation with Loven and eventually got up and left the restaurant.

The Fort Worth Star Telegram reports that Loven and the husband had an affair for two months in 2009 before the couple reconciled after realizing that Loven had been deceiving them during their separate counseling sessions.

"I thought she was my friend, I thought she cared," the wife testified.

After the couple’s reconciliation, they started receiving sexually graphic, threatening and insulting text messages in Jan. 2010, allegedly from Loven.

The defense argued in court that the messages could not be authenticated. Judge Ruben Gonzalez over ruled the objections.

Prosecutor Betty Arvin quoted in court a text message to the husband that read: "When are you going to figure out that you are nothing without me? I made you a man."

A text sent to the wife read: "I want you to suffer."

The couple is now divorced.

Loven could face two to 20 years in prison if convicted. If convicted, as a first-time offender, she could get probation.

The trial is expected to resume on Thursday.

TORONTO -- Despite economic hardship, wars and natural disasters, the world is a happier place today than it was four years ago and Indonesians and Mexicans seem to be the most contented people on the planet, according to one survey.

Regionally, Latin America had the highest number of happy people, followed by North America, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East and Africa. Only 15 percent of Europeans said they were very happy.

More than three-quarters of people worldwide who were questioned in an international poll said they were happy with their lives and nearly a quarter described themselves as very happy.

"It is not just about the economy and their well-being. It is about a whole series of other factors that make them who they are today," John Wright, senior vice president of Ipsos Global, told msnbc.com on Friday. Ipsos Global has surveyed the happiness of people in 24 countries since 2007.

But Wright added that expectations of why people are happy should be carefully weighed.

"What we discovered is sometimes the greatest happiness is a relationship, a hot cooked meal and roof over our heads for shelter," he said.

Brazil and Turkey rounded out the top five happiest nations, while Hungary, South Korea, Russia, Spain and Italy had the fewest number of happy people.

Perhaps proving that money can't buy happiness, residents of some of the world biggest economic powers, including the United States, Canada and Britain, fell in the middle of the happiness scale, he said.

"There is a pattern that suggests that there are many other factors beyond the economy that make people happy, so it does provide one element but it is not the whole story," Wright said. "Relationships remain the No. 1 reason around the world where people say they have invested happiness and maybe in those cultures family has a much greater degree of impact."

On a more personal note, married couples tended to be happier than singles but men seemed to be as content as women, Wright said. Education and age also had an impact with more people under 35 saying they are very happy than 25-49 year olds. Higher education also equated with higher happiness.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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