Hello WOLITD. It sounds like, ironically, the confrontation and subsequent discussion may have catalyzed a certain intimacy and openness that was lacking in your marriage for a time. Perhaps you are a good candidate for R.
If R is a possibility, it's quite likely you will have a chronic, persistent sense of wanting to read the texts and such. It's quite normal.
If you look in The Healing Library, you'll find a document called "Joseph's Letter". It discusses this very concept. Also, the very good book "How to Help Your Spouse Heal from Your Affair" by Linda MacDonald.
As others have noted, this nagging curiosity is why divorce is the default option after a WWs physical infidelity. I've never read a thread by a betrayed husband who divorced his unfaithful wife and later regretted it. I've read many thread by betrayed husbands who stayed with the wife and were plagued by this for decades. The affair is a permanent plus one in your marriage if you remain married, a plus one your WW secretly invited into the marriage without your consent. For you to be comfortable with this interloper, you will want to know the metes and bounds of it.
As to the dirty details, among other things, an affair punches a hole in the continuum of the intimacy fabric of the marriage. If you used traditional wedding vows, she looked you in the eye, before your family and God, and promised to share this only with you. Now she has woven a cocoon of intimacy with another man. It is something stolen from the marriage. It is natural you want to see inside of it.
This is why the process of a detailed written timeline is so widely recommended. Super-detailed, right down to the dirtiest little detail. And then she sits across from you and reads it aloud as she looks in your eyes and witnesses the pain. There are a few salutary benefits from this. First, without knowing the details, the mind of a betrayed tends to imagine and invent them. We call them mind movies.
Second, one almost universal facet of infidelity is secrecy and lying. Reading these details to a betrayed husband is an act of radical honesty. Reconciliation rarely works, but if it is going to work, the one thing it needs is radical, fearless honesty. The timeline is often the first truly honest act a WW takes.
Finally, as painful as it is to hear the details, this is an excruciatingly intimate process. The salutary benefit of the restored intimacy generally outweighs the pain. By the way, its very common for a cheating wife to inject more sexual brio into affair sex than marriage sex. This is part of the trauma and emasculation most betrayed husbands experience.
There are technology consultants who can recover deleted texts and FB messenger threads.
