Need help navigating this

Its a long story but I will try to summarize. Married for 21 years at the time of DDay.

-No kids, we tried

-Both mid 40's

-Not sure how relevant this is but she is the first and only woman I ever dated, kissed, had sex with.

-Wife didn't work most of marriage, problems started when she started working. I think she resented me asking her to get a job.

-First job I found out she was texting a customer, a lot. I didn't find a smoking gun as far as a affair but was a emotional affair at the least.

-Later on she got a new job, I ended up catching her in a emotional and physical affair. According to her sex was a onetime thing. She did this while I was out of town several days visiting a sick relative. I don't really believe at this point as far as the depth of the affair.

-Once I found out things blew up of course and she threatened to move in with her sister. I told her that was a good idea so she moved out the next day. We have been separated 3 years at this point.

-During the separation we still were in a relationship, it was very clear that we were still married and trying to figure out how to move forward.

-Over the 3 years I haven't once even had a conversation with another woman I wasn't related to or was work related. Haven't dated or tried to date etc.

-We tried marriage counseling at first and she completely derailed it, was a complete waste of money at $150 an hour for a top notch marriage counselor.

-During the separation within about the first year we talked about her moving back in several times and each time she derailed it over some small thing such as me saying she would need to work at least part time to help cover counseling and pay back some of the costs this ordeal has incurred.

-Over the 3 year period things seemed to be going better, she got counseling for herself, although it is all focused on her personally and not much to do with reconciling our marriage.

-She has been coming to stay at our house for a few days every few weeks and we meet for dinner, kind of like casually dating. We were planning a big trip at the end of this year.

-She agreed to turn on phone tracking for both of us and seemed like she was being transparent about things, letting me know she was going to visit a friend for dinner etc.

-No intimacy or sex since separation. IMO she should be the one to show some interest sexually after what happened, I may be wrong but it seems to me that she should be the one to reignite the flame at the beginning at least. I have done nothing indicating I don't want intimacy with her.

This has been the most excruciating and painful 3 years of my life, it broke me in ways I don't think will ever recover from and will haunt me the rest of my life. I went through a phase of about a year where every time I drove my car I noticed areas like trees, cement walls etc. and thought to myself I could just drive into it and it would look like accident and be less painful for my family to deal with, I never attempted or planned suicide but the thoughts where there regularly for a while, no more for over a year.

In the past 6 months or so, I finally started to get back to my old self and things were getting back on track. I have kept my job and life floating but haven't progressed much educationally and skill wise in the past three years. Picked up a mild drinking habit.

I can't go through this again. If I get divorced, I can't see ever getting married again, I might be able to get in a committed relationship though but I am so sensitive now about things like opposite sex friends it will probably ruin future relationships.

So this brings me to yesterday. Out of the blue I asked her if I could see her phone and I could see her immediately get nervous I never tried to force it or take her phone away or anything like that, I said it was her choice. She started quickly scrolling through her texts so I moved to where I could see her phone screen to make sure she didn't try to delete something. She finally pointed out a specific text and very hesitantly let me read it.

It was with a co-worker at her current job, a guy 15 years younger than her. It was flirty and not in tune with our past conversations of expectations of work relationships, but nothing obvious that something was going on. They were talking about things like shows to watch, work things, she started working from home a year ago and he mentioned that he really misses seeing her in the office, later he mentioned that they need to go out to lunch (sounded like it had been talked about before). A odd thing is there were no more texts after about 1.5 months ago, my first thoughts were...

-She deleted recent texts before I asked to look at the phone.

-She started using a different app to text that I did not get to check.

-Over the last year she goes into the office one day a week for a few hours to do paperwork that can't be done remotely so I thought maybe she was meeting this person then, no proof.

I tried looking at other apps, she was watching me the entire time, and she kept taking her phone back and didn't want to let me look.

She was visiting for a few days and I had to leave, she kept texting me that I kicked her out and forced her to move out, this is not true and attempting to rewrite history, I think she has mid to high BPD.

How in the world should I take this, things seemed like we were on track for her moving back in and getting back to a normal marriage but from 3 years ago these are all glaring red flags that are very similar to how the first dday unfolded. I noticed I have a weird issue with specificity with this stuff related to relationships. Originally I couldn't fully believe she cheated until she actually said it even though I had collected glaring evidence.

I really don't think I'm co-dependent, if anything pushing her to have responsibilities and take care of herself is when things started going down hill. But I struggle with the idea of ending it and her moving on with someone else.

How would you interpret this? Am I overreacting? I have that sinking gut feeling like I did 3 years ago, maybe just CPTSD. My first thought was its time to pull the plug and get divorced because she may have cheated again or is the start of a emotional affair. It's too late now to ask to see her phone again as she can just delete anything she wanted. It's so easy to hide things with tech today.

If this is a new issue I am really having a hard time grasping how she could lead me on and also be too friendly (at the least) with another guy.

Sorry, I meant for this to be a short post, its a lot to compact into a short statement. Thanks anyone who takes the time to read it.

14 comments posted: Thursday, June 13th, 2024