Betrayed again

Me (40) and my wife (42) have been married for 12 years and together for 14.

dday1: Caught my wife on an emotional (physical too?) affair five years ago which lasted for months. She denied, blamed me, trickle truth, hysterical bonding. Decided to reconcile. We have not done work that was needed (counselling, sharing our feelings, working on restoring the trust, etc). I realize it now. We did very little and just continued living like nothing happened. Rug swept. Now I understand that there was no chance for reconciliation under those circumstances. No chance of healing the trauma for me. Her affair ended then as AP moved to another country.

Now: relationship deteriorated for five years. She became distant and not the person I loved and knew. Hugs, cuddles, watching series together, joking and such slowly diminished and now non existent. Same with sex. We haven't slept in close to a year. She developed substance use issues, might be because of her guilt/shame, I have no idea, she could never explain when I asked and doesn't like to talk about it so stopped asking after a while. Again rug swept. But that is another long and painful story for me. I went through nightmares with her several times.

Overall our communication is broken now, and has been for more than a year, we do not share our inner world, thoughts, what bothers us, plans, etc. We do not even have arguments anymore. I was walking on eggshells because of her substance use issues, I didn't want to trigger her to relapse.

As I told her I want to separate several months ago we're in this mode of roommates, we barely talk and only about mundane things and kid related issues. She is nice but very distant and closed.

Never once she raised a question of separation, of what she wants from this marriage, from me, how she feels etc.

dday2: there is this guy, that helped her when she struggled with substance abuse and I was not around for a while. I know about him for several months, but do not know when they met and when it started. It has just recently occurred to me that she is having another affair. She told me earlier he was just friend (she never had male friends, except for the AP five years ago when she also claimed he was a friend) She mentioned once that that guy has feelings for her but she is not interested in him. I did not react at the time.

I know for a fact they are communicating a lot, phone calls, texting every single day. This is ongoing. She is seeing him secretly. I can dig deeper and gather some intelligence to get more proofs but I'm thinking if it is even necessary after what she did five years ago. This is enough evidence of an affair for me. And definitely a sign she is not committed to M.

So now I'm thinking shall I ask her if she wants to try and fix things? She is unaware of the fact that I know and I don't want to confront her just yet and am thinking on how and when to better do it. For now I just want the answer to that simple question and then we can go from there. We can start talking. Otherwise I'll just continue with separation and divorce. I'm not going to live like that anymore. Enough is enough. I want my self respect and dignity back. I want peace.

Now that I've put that in writing and re read it looks quite bad. It is good to get that out though, I feel better and it gives me clarity. I have no one to discuss it, though I already reached out to a therapist whose specialty is infidelity.

Thanks for reading.

34 comments posted: Thursday, September 19th, 2024