Merry Christmas to me indeed

I didn't even know this place existed. Honestly, I wish I never needed to find this corner of the internet, but here we are... I'm a 43M and have been married to a 46F for 6 years, together for 14 years. She had 3 daughters from previous marriages, now ages 27, 22, and 18, the oldest of which I adopted as an adult. The adoption was more of a ceremonial thing than for legal purposes. I truely love them all, and love that I am officially the oldest's dad now. My wife and I had a son with an egg donor and surrogate (my first biological child) that was born 9 weeks early in December 2020. He just turned 3 and is the absolute highlight of my life. But why am I HERE? I don't even know where to start so here goes...

My mom asked me for pictures of the kids for something for Christmas. I kinda forgot until Christmas day. Got my wife's old phone, hooked it to my computer, searched for jpeg files, and it was all normal mom stuff until I got to the bottom and saw the Whatsapp images folder. Apparently my wife had been sending lots of nudes to someone (some of the less spicy ones she had sent to me too), who in return had been sending her selfies, pics of his tattoos, and a whole lotta dick pics. It took me all of 5 minutes to figure out who the guy was. It's a guy she dated before me. He's the mayor of a tiny town in my state about 3 hours west of where we live.

In the Whatsapp folder there was a picture she had also sent to me of the turned down bed beside her when she was staying at a hotel for a funeral in his town in November of 2020 that she captioned "wish you were here." That was the oh shit, this is real moment. This was literally minutes before my family went to my parents house to celebrate Christmas. Holding it together at my parents house was the most difficult thing I had ever done emotionally. I hadn't even had a chance to talk to my wife about the pictures. My brother asked me if I was okay because he could see my pulse in the vein on my neck. The whole evening is a blur. I can't tell you what we had for dinner, what I or the kids got from my parents for Christmas, or how long we were even there, but it seemed like an eternity.

I thought I did a good job of faking it all night but after we went to bed my wife asked me what was wrong. That's when I started to cry... The conversation went something like this:

Me: There is a very difficult conversation we need to have, and I don't know how to start, but you're not going to like it.

Her: Oh god... (fearfully) Just dive right into it I guess.

Me: do you know what Whatsapp is?

Her: yes

Me: do you have it on your phone?

Her: no

Me: Have you ever had it on your phone?

Her: yes

Me: Mom asked me for pics of the kids so I got on your old phone, and I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that, but apparently Whatsapp makes a file folder that saves all the pictures that have been sent and received on the phone. Do you have any idea what I might have seen?

Her: oh god... I have some idea, yes.

Me: Would you care to explain?

Her: well, what exactly did you see?

I got my laptop and showed her. She was visibly distraught.

Her: and all you could see were these pictures, not the conversations?

Me: yes

Her: baby, I'm so sorry. We got to exchanging flirty messages and it got way out of hand.

Me: is it over?

Her: well, there isn't really anything to be "over" since nothing really ever happened. But I realized we went to far so I put the brakes on the sexual stuff.

I wanted to believe her so bad, but I didn't.

It took me a few days to decide how to proceed. She left on New Years Eve to take one of our kids to a friend's house for the night and I had about an hour to investigate on her computer.

That's when it got bad. Really really bad. I found a secret email account that she had been using to communicate with this guy the whole time we've been together. She had done a good job of deleting his messages from her inbox, but never thought to clean out the sent messages. The whole damn time... 14 years.

It was all harmless chit chat until April of 2020. That's when the messages took a very sexual turn. Without getting too graphic (not sure what's allowed here) my wife said to him "I want you to c** in my mouth before you f*** me."

And that's the exact moment my entire world cracked in half. There were a lot of similar emails from April 2020 to March 2021 when my wife suggested switching to Whatsapp and Instagram. So all the pictures I saw were just from 1 month (she got a new phone first week of April 2021).

Confronted my wife about the emails. She said baby, I told you it's over. We were just reminiscing about old times. We had a very intense relationship before I ever met you. I know we went too far, but it's over. I'm so sorry blah blah blah...

I wanted to believe her so bad, but I didn't.

I re-read everything the next day to be sure it wasn't just reminiscing. It wasn't. Too much "that was hot, we should do that again next time" to believe there were just talking about old times. I forwarded the emails to me realizing I might need to protect myself. Talked to my wife again. She was near tears, and asked if we could wait until our MC appointment on January 10 (yes, we had already agreed to MC before I found out about the affair. I had a big problem with one of my wife's new friends she cheats on and makes fun of her husband and rubs her new boyfriend in his face. It's disgusting. I told my wife I didn't want to see that woman anymore and would appreciate it if she was out of our life completely. Then the first time my wife and I get to go out together in 4 months, we end up at a bar after dinner and she texts her friend to come with her new boyfriend. I get very angry, she escalates, I Uber home, her friend gets there and my wife drives home 3 hours later so drunk she ends up asleep naked on the bathroom floor. She's not much of a drinker, but has gotten beyond drunk all 3 times she has been out with this friend. That and a few other things that seem insignificant now were the reason we were going to start MC).

Anyway, I was very clear with my wife that if the other man were to contact her, she needed to show me immediately and reply telling him to stop all further contact. Guess what? Same day he reaches out to her and casually says Happy New Year, how have you been? Apparently when I was forwarding emails to myself, I was also forwarding them to the AP. I realized that too late... My wife sent him a long message saying for the good of both marriages they needed to end all further contact and sent me a screenshot of the conversation 8 hours later. I can't shake the feeling that it was staged for my benefit.

But ya, sure it can wait until MC. After everything I had seen I had to do some deep digging on her old phone.

To her best friend on March 3, 2021, my wife said "My heart hurts. He is the man I should have married. I will never love anyone as much as I love him." I cried a lot. Ugly cried. So bad I threw up a few times. My wife tried to comfort me but I was inconsolable. The 10 days waiting for MC were the worst days of my life.

At our first MC my wife starts to come clean. She admitted it was both an emotional and physical affair from March 2020 to April 2021. Said they only got together in person twice. I asked about another opportunity they had, she said oh, I guess it was 3 times.... I've pinned down at least 5 times they were together for sure in a hotel, but have stopped pursuing it because the number of times doesn't really matter anymore.

My wife says it was all a mistake. She never really loved him. She got caught up in a fantasy. I'm the love of her life. She wants to make it up to me. I have nothing left to hide. Here are all my passwords. I want to be completely transparent... Just like everything else, she says exactly all the BS a spouse would want to hear. Last week while she was asleep I got a hold of her new phone and started digging. Didn't find evidence of anything, but with everything having gone to Instagram, there would be no evidence, and when she woke up and I was looking through her phone she got very angry.

This blizzard cancelled our MC appointment this week. I'm reading a book our therapist recommended. My wife got a book that the therapist recommended that was delivered to the Amazon drop box on Monday but we've been unable to leave the house.

There are some other things that make it so much worse that I don't feel like talking about right now, and a bunch of relevant info I didn't get to. I have no one other than my wife to talk to.

I just feel so worthless. Like my whole reality is a lie. I'll be back later but typing this has been mentally exhausting. I just needed to get it out.

40 comments posted: Monday, January 22nd, 2024