I’m so sorry that you are here, N.A., but you are very fortunate to have caught it so quickly. And yes, this was definitely an emotional affair and could easily have become a physical one. But emotional affairs are no less devastating to your sense of trust, your sense of the reality of your relationship and history together, your ability to fully give yourself, and a thousand other things.
Your WH seems repentant, and I too had the need to break everything down in time and know what was happening between us while things were happening between them. I even went through my extensive photo library and looked at dates on photos to piece together the new and sadly amended memories of our life together.
But gently, HE is the one who should be examining all of this and creating the timeline and taking a very hard look at each individual decision and action that he made along the way. Yes, you should get IC to support you, but HE really needs IC to look at how he let this happen and the steps on the road where he should have had hard boundaries that would stop him.
As others have said, it is not up to you to police and control him and other women who may behave inappropriately. It is up to him to understand that this is all HIS responsibility—both to recognize the flattering attention for what it is: destructive to his integrity and to you and your marriage. He should not enjoy such attention. That requires him to do his work in understanding himself and the true nature of what he has been doing. Most definitely the only result of you shooing away the other woman was her feeling like his mean mom caught him and now, he can’t do what he really wants. He has to deliver the message that her attentions are inappropriate and repugnant. The message can’t be: my mom says we can’t hang out anymore. Is he a people pleaser or conflict avoidant? He should not have any qualms about telling her to get lost and why now that he has been confronted with the devastation and destruction he has caused you. Did he do that?
You are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and most of what you are doing is HIS critical work to do to become a safe and reliable partner who would never allow this to happen regardless of what you know and can find out. Again, gently, you have a lot of work (as we all do/did) to recover personally from this and learn how to form a new relationship with him and others that is your own strong self, regardless of what he does, and doesn’t allow disrespectful treatment of any kind from him (dishonesty, sneakiness, hiding information, making bad decisions without your knowledge and input).
But If he is to remain your spouse, he HAS to do the work on himself, not just avoid other women and be protected from their attentions. All of the A was his bad decisions, messed up thinking, and horrible coping skills. You can’t impose or fix or give him what he needs to get—only he can. And that is a lot of very hard work ahead of him with an IC. Without that work, he will only apologize and hope to move forward on promises, but again, gently, didn’t he already make clear promises to you when you got married?
So how on earth do you expect him to understand how to recommit to those promises when he had no tools to stick to them the first time? Like my WH and many others, when they were in a tough spot, the only thing they were thinking of was feeling good through external validation and attention. Did your marriage vows include an exception for if he’s feeling bad or having a mid-life crisis or in a tough moment or feeling neglected by you or just attracted to another woman?
He really has to explore all of this and learn what it really means to keep promises and be committed to the welfare of his spouse and his marriage and his family as much as to himself and his immediate feelings and emotions. He needs to get started on this ASAP. . .and you need to give his responsibilities back to him and focus on yourself and what you need (both from yourself and him) to heal from his devastating actions.
Yes, you can recover and yes, you can rebuild your marriage, BUT you really can’t do this without him committing to some really difficult and unflattering hard review of himself and the likely MANY patterns, thoughts and behaviors that allowed him to do this. That is the work that many WH are not willing to do, and it will take time for you to really know if he is up to it. For many WH, leaving the illicit relationship is the easy part and even white-knuckling not repeated the specific behaviors, but without a fundamental change in thinking and some new coping skills and self-knowledge, sooner or later, he’s going to end up in a challenging moment again.
Wishing your strength and peace as you move forward through such a devastating and difficult experience.