What I will not do is to notify the AP’s spouse because I do not want her to feel the pain I’ve been going through ( both the AP and his wife are now in their 70’s ).
It’s almost gospel here on SI that the morally right thing to do in virtually every circumstance is to inform the AP’s spouse (the OBW). To your point (“I do not want her to feel the pain…”), you would not be causing the pain. That would be caused by the acts of her husband. The theory is that every married person deserves to have agency over his/her own choices and decisions concerning his/her marriage, made in light of truth. You’d be giving her agency. I acknowledge that age is a consideration. It is possible that, in their 70’s, she may never know and could die contented. However, there are many vectors by which this information could reach her. Since the AP was a high level politician, it’s likely that there are people who already know (indeed it’s quite possible that he was a serial philanderer, as so many high level politicians are). It is possible she already knows, and what she knows differs from what your WW is telling you. There have been countless threads here where a newly minted BH found the OBW to be a valuable ally in finding the truth. The worst case scenario would be that she would find out after his death. Finding out about cheating after the death of the cheater is a special Hell.
Put the shoe on the other foot. If the OBW found out now, and you didn’t know, wouldn’t you want her to tell you?
By the way, writing the AP may have been cathartic for you, but it's ineffectual. The AP decided to have sex with your wife behind your back, repeatedly for years. Do you think he actually gives a single shit about what you think? The wisdom here is that reaching out to the AP after an A has ended is a waste of time that can produce no good outcome.
My hope and my wife’s hope is that we can successfully work toward R. What I know with all certainty is that I can’t spend years on this emotional roller coaster, so I’m hopeful IC can give me hope, any hope, that I’ll get to a place where ‘it’ isn’t in my face every moment of every day. I know it’s going to require a depth of work and, yes, honesty.
R is a lifelong process. It takes years of hard work by both partners just to achieve some level of emotional stasis. This place has a vast reservoir of crowd-sourced information about infidelity, almost all from the perspective of betrayed spouses. Based on this collective wisdom, no matter what, you will in fact be on some form of this emotional roller coaster for years. Additionally, based on this wisdom, the roller coaster will endure longer if you try R than if you D. R is an iron man endurance event, and there is no guarantee it will work even with the best of efforts by both spouses.
I would remind you of one truth. I have never, not once, read a thread by a BH who divorced his WW and later regretted it. I have read dozens of threads by BH's who gave their WW an opportunity for R and, years later, were still writhing in pain and self-doubt, wondering if it was all worth it.
To that end, I'd remind you that white knuckling it and remaining married (a choice some BH's make) is NOT the same as R. If you remain married (either by rug sweeping, white knuckling it, or otherwise), The A and the AP are permanent third parties to the marriage.
One of the basic necessities about R is an eager desire and willingness by your WW to talk to you about the A -- about the dirty details ("Yes, I sucked his cock in our bedroom while looking at our wedding photo on the night stand") and the emotional truths ("Yes, I loved him and yes we laughed in pillow talk as I said disparaging things about you to him") -- in frank, brutal, graphic detail, over and over, while she looks in your eyes and sees the trauma and pain. Is your WW ready to commit to the marriage under this paradigm? Is she a marathon runner? Does she have that sort of grit and toughness?
Her resort to pity parties as a stall tactic when the A comes up does not augur well for her ability to carry the weight she must carry for R. As other have said, she didn't let self-pity stop her from sneaking around for sex with another man for 5 years, nor did it stop her from lying to you about it for all of those years after the A ended.
I would remind you of another SI truism. Well, two, actually. (1) You (the BH) can't control the outcome, you can only control you, and (2) You can't nice her back. These two truisms form the root of most of the beginner errors newly minted BH's often make (including me, after my Dday, which was long before I knew there was anything like this place -- I was a blubbering, simpering, begging, pathetic mess, and in the end my Ex dumped me for the other man -- in hindsight, it was by far the best outcome for me). You've only posted twice, but as you'll see from some of the comments below (this is edited), already people are sniffing out that you are possibly trying to manipulate the outcome (stay married, at all costs) by nicing her back (taking it easy on her when she throws her pity parties). I would remind you that she is a professional liar. She has spent years lying to you and deceiving you. Her instinct to read your weaknesses and insecurities, to manipulate your desire to flee the truth, these are well honed and razor sharp. Lying is her normal. As to you, living with your unconfirmed suspicions for years, accepting her lies, your "fight or flight" response has been well trained toward flight, a classic behavioral modification that will ensure years of emotional misery for you if you don't change it now. In other words, early indications suggest you aren't moving toward R. Instead, you're moving toward some admixture of rug-sweeping and white knuckling it.
it crushes her to think of the affair and the hurt it has caused
She's just now thinking of that? She has invested considerable effort and imagination to lie to you, for years. She didn't do that by coincidence. She did it because she knew she was "that woman". She has always known. The facts don't suggest it bothers her to be reminded of this. What bothers her is that you now see her for what she really is: "that woman."
Among other things, you will eventually reach a place often called “The Plane of Lethal Flatness”, after your current roller coaster has diminished, where you realize that you will look at your face every morning in the mirror and at some point it will occur to you that you are married to a woman who cheated on you for years and then continued to lie to you for more years. Though it’s important to not make rash decisions, it’s also wise to be mindful you don’t get mired in “analysis paralysis” and piss away 4 or 5 years you could be spending finding your joy as a single man.
[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 8:05 AM, April 20th (Tuesday)]
