The children found out about the A on the same Dday (about a month ago), she told them after I caught them in an empty parking (not doing anything explicit but "talking" and likely cuddling in the back seat of our family car); the AP ran away in his car -- I turned around and left, destroyed. She confessed several minutes later when she got home, about the long affair (strong EA + PA). I had some suspicions all along, but I/we were dismissing them jokingly.. she called me paranoid and we laughed: "That can't be true, right?". He is a respectable, successful guy years a very good reputation. He was always very nice and generous with our family.. And he was the one helping me get a job many years ago (where my wife was already working together).
I'm sorry this is going to be a long story as the situation is really messed up and I strongly believe she is NOT a bad person overall, professionally she is brilliant (despite the AP propping her career) and, more importantly, I take the blame for the beginning of their affair (I was a terrible, selfish husband many years ago, details below). All this time she has also been a great mother to our kids, kept our household together so well despite being a very busy working woman, etc. I do admire her in so many ways, including professionally. I actually fell in love with her again, anew -- yes, paradoxically, just when her affair started (according to her version of the timeline at least).
These days, besides the emotional devastation, the betrayal, the length of the affair/double life she had -- she has no remorse, she says she cannot just stop the affair, she's considering separation (not divorce, I'll get. Even in the first few days after Dday she was telling me how much HE means to her, how she cannot leave without him, and she was scolding me for showing my "depression" about the situation, while praising him, how much she likes about him that he is such an optimist, such a positive figure in her life, while I was "always a depressed man" (I wasn't) look, like I am now (!!). On top of all that cruelty, I feel trapped as I cannot even give them a proper reality check (stuck at step 4 from the "Tactical Primer" on this forum) for reasons I will explain below.
Their very tight professional relationship started many years ago.
Relevant personal note, and the reason I am so eager to forgive her now: my pain has a lot of guilt/regret mixed in it, because I failed her horribly 20 years ago, as a husband and a friend. That's why I take some responsibility for the beginning of their affair, because 20 years ago, for about 8 years or more I was a terrible husband, I did not want kids and I kept blaming her for wanting them, both times she got pregnant (even though we were taking precautions). I clearly fell out of love with her around the time she got pregnant with my oldest child, I guess I felt that having kids would "tie" me down and take my freedom away somehow (some stupid male fantasy of that sort) -- it seemed like I had a very bad, early MLC perhaps, in my mid 30s? There is really no excuse for it, I was clearly going through a "terrible, selfish male" phase back then, as we were relocating to the U.S. and she got pregnant with our first child. The worst part was that I was verbally/emotionally abusive with her all that time, even as she was pregnant with our children! She suffered so much at that time, especially because I think she still loved me (we were high school sweethearts, really loved with each other in our 20s when we got married) During that dark time I was like the typical cruel WS, almost ready to leave her, did not quite have an affair but I became infatuated with a co-worker who luckily rejected my advances (wise woman). My wife noticed how strong my interest became towards OW and she suffered even more because of that -- and my verbal/emotional abuse to her only became more intense at that time because of that.
So as my wife was suffering because of me being such a jerk back then, she often came to work crying. She was also very vulnerable emotionally at that time, and he was so caring etc. So no wonder she fell in love with him. She now says he only reciprocated a couple of years later after that. I still think this was quite irresponsible for a advisor/supervisor to do that because if their relationship had gotten exposed they could have both been ruined professionally.
I began to wake up and realize what a terrible husband I was and how much I hurt her.. it was a gradual process though, it took me a while to actually apologize to her and admit what a terrible person I was (I don't even remember when that happened exactly). I seem to recall that she never really said that she forgave me but she suggested that I could work on it. And she even suggested paths to recovery (for me) in her eyes. But I guess I was too slow at following those. Too little too late. Then I recall how years ago, on her birthday, I was looking at one of her very recent photos and I had this epiphany, that she is so beautiful, that I was so lucky to marry her, that she is indeed the woman I want to grow old with.. I felt I fell back in love with her then -- a more mature, dependable love compared to what we had in our twenties. Of course since then I haven't been the perfect husband, but my mindset was finally in the right place (or so I felt), The children say they do not remember anything from my dark bad-husband years (they were too young to remember her mom suffering so much because of me), they only know me how I was in the past years, as a good dad and even a good husband (from what they could know about that anyway).
During these last years she has given me some (mixed) signals that she might be able to forgive me and accept/understand my newfound love for her and maybe even return it, eventually. Little did I know that I was too late, that she started her affair which became so important to her. At the beginning of her affair I seem to recall she was sometimes overly "generous" (or so I felt) in allowing me access to her intimacy (I was of course asking for it very often since I was just re-discovering my love for her etc.). In retrospect, that was a very confusing time for me, as that gave me a lot of hope and a lot of passion for her entire being -- even though overall, she did seem a bit more distant and less affectionate and even emotionally discordant at times. Of course I assumed that was because of how much I hurt her years before. When I felt that she would not return my affection or she did not really seem to care about my feelings for her then, she would reassure me that's just how she is now, that her love is more mature, that she can no longer be that romantic with me after what we've been through etc. I thought that was fair (felt guilty), but could not stop being sad about it sometimes. I had no idea that she already replaced me, in her affection, with the AP.
[This is getting long, I'm going to try make it a 2-parter]
[This message edited by lbh50 at 5:16 PM, May 9th (Saturday)]