So, I’m currently trying to reconcile with my ex-wife after a 3-1/2 year affair was disclosed to me in May of ‘25 in which she said she was in love with him, lead to divorce. Her AP was 18 years younger than her and only a year older than my oldest daughter, my daughter and he went to the same high school. She was 41 when it began and he was 23.
It started from the dreaded Snapchat! She has a history of being unfaithful or inappropriate in our relationship, she first cheated on me after only 9 months of dating. The first marriage affair was in ‘08 when she was 26 and he was 19 at a place they worked together. I had to beg her to stay with me for our kids sake then. Things got better for about 12 years until 2020 when Covid hit. She couldn’t go to work and our youngest, special needs child wasn’t sleeping well at night, so she began to play Fortnite online to pass the time. She befriended a 19 year old while gaming l, she was 28 at the time and I knew about it and thought nothing of it. I was unaware that they had been snap chatting and texting for months and when I found out, I thought that was the final straw, she claimed it was purely innocent and she only thought of him a her buddy. I contacted an attorney and threatened a divorce. I was tired of her behaviors.
We worked through all of that but the resentment and anger grew in me, I became very distant and often cold toward her. There was major friction between us. In ‘22, I later found out that she had started snap chatting and even sexting at least a few different young men, one of which became her AP.
The night she disclosed to me, she said it was because she couldn’t handle the consuming guilt anymore, so she told me everything. I left my home that night. We tried to talk through it and immediately began therapy but she became increasingly more distant, cold, and quite frankly just an asshole to me, like I had betrayed her. About a month after D day, she said she wanted divorce because I was being too pushy and wanted everything fixed too quickly, she would never file though. After 2 months of begging her to at least acknowledge she wanted the marriage to work (which she never did say the words), I filed for divorce in July of ‘25. She said she was okay with it and she needed to work on herself.
In October of ‘25 she began to see her AP again for about 5 more months. We had been split for about 5 months already when they reunited. I found out / days after Christmas and confronted her about it . It really angered me because she had promised our daughters that it was over. She said to me that day that she really loved him and needed to see where it could go. They didn’t last too terribly long after I confronted her, I had already been moving on with my life, still missing her though. Our divorce finalized in June of this last year and we began to start talking reconciliation in July. We’ve been working on it since.
I’m having such a hard time really accepting and letting go of what she was so willing to do, and for so long. Of course it kills me to think about the sex, but the emotions cut even deeper. Knowing that my wife of so long, the only person I had ever been with, actually fell in love with someone else. She now says she sees it all clearly and for what it actually was. Not real love at all, but more of an addiction.
How does one really ever get to the point of acceptance to be able to build a new future with a spouse??
