Looking for thoughts

Quick background. D-day was June 15, 2023 so still fairly fresh. My WW (46F) had an affair from Sept 2016 through Feb 2018. Her heart was always with her AP even though he would take breaks during the affair. We're working on reconciliation, because we have 3 kids (15, 9 and 6) and our relationship has always been good, sometimes better than other times, but even during the affair, she played the (mostly) happy wife well. She hid the affair until I discovered it.

She's shown remorse and have worked very diligently since discovery. She's doing everything she can to save our marriage....now.
She even showed guilt before discovery but it didn't make sense...she's hard on herself normally and she'd routinely knock herself as a wife and say things like I'm a better husband to her than she is a wife to me....I'd reassure her and be like "WTF" but move on.

I want to reconcile if I can, but there are things that she did during her affair that I can't see myself forgiving her for.

So the first thing that might pop up is the age of our youngest. Yes, my wife got pregnant during her affair and yes a paternity test was done and, thankfully, she's mine. But there's pieces here we'll get to.

So the things I'm struggling with...
1. Her AP has HSV2 and said so before they got physical and my WW went forward and even wanted and had unprotected sex with him....AFTER she was pregnant. She's been tested since and is negative, but it's the action that gets me. If he had other STI's what would've happened or worse, what if she contracted it and gave it to our daughter. I know I shouldn't live in the what if's but still
2. I was in the hospital with a major case of rhabdomyolysis (life threatening possibility) for four days and she didn't visit me much and then five days after I got out of the hospital, she brought her AP into our house and had unprotected sex in our bed. She's looked deep in herself through EMDR therapy and there was no malice...but this one is REALLY hard
3. She knew what she was doing. She even made multiple comments in her journals about how she knew this was going to destroy me, and even a comment about how I'm the only one who makes her birthday special (as she's complaining about her AP)
4. She and her AP are both married with families. She befriended her AP's wife and then blended our families, we spent holidays with them, time with them etc. Her AP even insulted our oldest a couple times which I almost lost it over but my WW talked me down. It was really twisted to involve the families and befriend the AP's wife (albeit it was a genuine friendship) to make the affair easier to have.
5. She used buying a birthday and christmas present for me as an alibi for her to go out with her AP to hide having a sexual tryst from his wife. Also, discovery was the Thursday before father's day....so, from my WW, I've lost all holidays.

I want to get past these, truly, but I can't seem to. I am no closer to forgiving her than the day I discovered.

Please give me any advise or comments....good or bad.

Thanks
A hurt husband.

76 comments posted: Monday, September 25th, 2023

Just found out wife's old affair

Forgive my long diatribe. I've tried to provide the details that are relevant (within reason).

I (51M) and wife (46F) have had a decent marriage. We've had ups and downs, but mostly ups. Our sex life over the last few years has been affected. I don't perform as well as I used to due to a few medical issues I'm working on and she just shut down for the most part over the last few years....and yes it started about the same time period as her affair. I'm really struggling because I want to reconcile. We have 3 amazing kids, 15, 9 and 5 who I think would be dramatically affected by a divorce. We had a great life. We were each other's best friend etc. The only weakness in our relationship over the last few years has been our sex life. I was married and divorced before with 2 kids and saw how it affected them, so I'm overly sensitive about the issue I think.

To put a quick timeline together....Affair end of 2016-most of 2017 (call it a year). More emotional than physical, but there was physical. I had my first health scare in Feb 2017 and ended up finding out I have a defective heart valve and it will need to be replaced at some point. I was at a low because I was facing my mortality and she wasn't there for me (she saw it as I gave up and I explained, that's when she should've been there for me but she wasn't). Our sex life started struggling during her affair (for obvious reasons) and it never returned. In Jan 2020 I had my heart valve replaced and since that point, my body hasn't responded as well (but it's not dead if you get my drift, think of it as needed to prime the engine and work the choke before you can start the engine). Additionally, I'm an emotionally driven sexual person, so if my wife and I are on good standings intimately, I'll perform much better, if we're struggling, I won't...and our intimate aspect of our relationship (because of BOTH of us...I contributed by sitting quietly and letting the issue fester) has suffered.

My plan is to not jump to any decisions, go to couples and single counseling and see where I end up.

My wife, to her credit, hasn't played the typical cheater's handbook game. There's been no gaslighting, she's been honest in her answers to her questions, and has taken responsibility for her actions.

My biggest difficulty moving forward is that I don't know if I can forgive her. This isn't just about her affair. It's looking at the holes and weaknesses in how she treated me, before, during and even since her affair....and how it compares to how she treated her affair partner.

I put a large portion of my "love equation" in loyalty. My wife tends to be selfish, abrupt in how she speaks at times (it's a personality thing, not an ill-intent thing), etc. etc., in other words there are parts of who she is and how she treated me that I wouldn't normally accept from other people, but because I always saw her as loyal....I could forgive those other parts (this isn't an issue of being a doormat either, I'd set her straight if she went too far and she'd apologize etc.). Finding out she cheated though has created a paradigm shift if how I'm seeing our relationship and I don't know if I can forgive her and find my love for her again.

I realize I'm sitting here 28 hours since light was shined on the affair. I'm trying to take the mentality that, if we work together, we can come out of this with the family and friendship we had and hopefully fix our intimacy and passion. But I can't see how I can forgive her and let go of the years of poor treatment. I have an INCREDIBLE amount of resentment right now.

Anyone else feel these things and have ways to deal with it.

113 comments posted: Friday, June 30th, 2023