I've lurked on this forum for months but never got round to posting. I've read hundreds of stories from others and taken solace that I'm not alone in this, read the healing library etc. I've held off posting but think it'd be cathartic to share. Sorry about the length.
My story:
I've been married to my wife for 22 years and have 3 kids, 2 are at uni. We're both in our late 40s.
In our marriage I was the higher libido partner and our sex life was always an issue later on. I never felt my wife was fully engaged when we had sex, bar isolated occasions. She would rarely initiate. I ended up resigned to having sex a lot less often than I would ideally want just to keep the peace. This made me withdraw a lot into my own world. I've always been outgoing, confident and an alpha type personality, regardless of the situation. I'm extremely empathetic on the one hand but can also be quite cold and withdrawn.
We had a rocky few years from 2021-2023 with our mail order t shirt business going almost bankrupt when she decided she no longer wanted to work on it due to being burned out. She received an ADHD and RSD diagnosis during this time too which made things worse. This caused huge stress and financial problems and hit our relationship hard causing me to feel depressed, anxious and lost. We argued a lot and I was horrible to her for causing these problems which i put my hands up to.
In the end we both took jobs at new manufacturing workplace in 2023 just to make ends meet while the business remained on life support. We borrowed a lot of money to avoid going bankrupt. She started the job a few months before me, then I joined later. I had a funny feeling something was wrong from the moment I started which i put down to new job nerves.. Over the next few months our marriage deteriorated. She stopped having sex with me, would sleep on the couch, stopped hugging me, stopped messaging me saying she loved me. She started saying how I dont like her, don't find her funny, that she isn't happy and doesn't know what she wants. We started talking about divorce. I made her leave the house for a week and stay with her brother during a very low period. She came back saying she wanted to make things work but things didn't improve. She was glowing during this period and I was looking unwell.
This was a very dark time for me, I knew something was wrong but couldn't put my finger on it. I talked to friends and even said I think she might be having an affair, but i never investigated properly, I don't know why 😔. I eventually asked her "are you having an affair" and she denied it point blank. There was a younger guy at work she talked to incessantly on break and joked around with. She's chatty so I didn't think much of it, but my subconscious was in overdrive. I started being a bit unpleasant to this guy at lunch where we'd been semi friendly before. I think i made him feel uncomfortable intentionally.
At this stage I was now sleeping in another room and we'd not had sex in 2 months, which for me is forever as I've got a super high sex drive. Come December my wife decides she wants to try and fix things. We attempt to have sex which was weird and awkward. My body was screaming at me "danger danger". She seemed cold and silent. I asked her wtf is going on, she says "I have nothing to tell you". I walked out.
At this stage I then ask her about this other guy and what's the deal with him and receive the old classic "we're just friends..."
My radar is going crazy now. Things improve a little but i know something is wrong. A week later we go out to show and later to a bar, and he's there w his wife. Everyone is drunk. My wife goes and talks to him alone for a minute in a weird way when the opportunity arises. I'm thinking what the hell? The next day something inside me snaps. She leaves her phone charging for 10 minutes while she showers. I've seen her enter her apple password over her shoulder recently which she doesn't realise. I log in and find the messages between them going back months and quickly forward them to myself.
I discover she's been having a sexual affair with this guy since August. The emotional side probably started earlier. The affair ended in October when he ended it. At this point I'm on the verge of a breakdown, I pretend everything is ok then drive shakily to a friends house where I have the breakdown. I find the guys wife via a 3rd party friend and give her the awful news and we agree to do a simultaneous confrontation to stop them warning each other. That happens that evening. My wife denies it till I explain I've got the 20,000 messages they sent each other. She acts very strangely like she's an alien, I tell her to pack her bags and leave, she goes to her brothers house. I blow the affair up to our entire family and my friends, some people are supportive, others judgemental and think I should have kept it private (fuck them). The kids overheard me confronting her so find out on dday. They're so upset.
I read all the messages and digest what's happened. Despite the horror of what's happened, my empathetic side can see from the messages that this guy is a textbook narcissist who just bread crumbed her to get what he wanted. I feel very sorry for my wife. I discover from people at work and outside work who are mutual acquaintances that there's strong suspicions that he's done this with others. In the coming weeks other affairs he's had come out. I get the gory details of the sexual side of the affair from the messages and by questioning my wife. They had unprotected sex twice at the start of the affair (she had sex with me after this 🤮) and fooled around a few times with a bit of oral sex later. They kissed on a few other occasions and met up just to talk in public a few times. They sexted each other incessantly and he encouraged my wife to send pictures. He played a cat and mouse game with her in the later stages saying it was wrong one minute then encouraging it the next. Although they'd both tried ending it earlier, I think he ended it for real after I started being notably unpleasant to him as he was worried I'd kill him if it was discovered. In the later messages my wife tried to get him to continue with the affair, eulogising how the sex was the best she'd had in a very long time and how great their connection was. She was totally hooked.
She chased him for sex relentlessly throughout but he'd turn her down with various excuses like having to walk his dog (!?) and say they need to just be friends, almost ending it, then he'd restart it with sexting. This set off her RSD and kept her coming back which she even admitted to him. She kept chasing him right up to dday but had realised she'd been used.
The sexual details are extremely confusing, the guy is an almost premature ejaculator with a small dick (confirmed by pictures he sent) and was very nervous, conversely I'm very well endowed and know what I'm doing sexually and am generous in bed. Even given his shortcomings he almost made my wife cum both times they had PIV sex even though it only lasted a minute or 2. All this has really, really messed with my head. The guy isn't as good looking as me, isn't as intelligent, has a worse physique. Its baffling. My wife says he couldn't give me any tips. I guess he was just there and said the right words 😔
I've tried for years to spice up our sex life but any attempts at sexting on my part were shot down cold. Any attempts to get my wife to send me a sexy selfie were refused. I've tried to get my wife to talk about our sex life and how we can improve things and what she'd like. But she was not interested and says she doesn't like analysing it and that its a turn off. But with this guy it was all guns blazing, sexting, fantasising, talking about making each other cum, how nothing was off limits, praising his anatomy (like wtf!?).
As to how it started, he basically love bombed her for months, helped her loads, gave her little gifts, and told her how great she was and how unhappy he was with his wife and eventually it crossed a line after they exchanged numbers. My wife was also very unhappy in our marriage after the stress of the last few years and had just stopped taking her adhd medication (due to dangerous side effects) so her dopamine levels were all screwed up at the time it started, plus she's in peri menopause. He could probably sense a lot of this like a shark smelling blood in the water. That's not excusing her behaviour though. She said she did something stupid and impulsive as she was so unhappy then found it impossible to jump back and got wrapped up in an affair which she knew would never be anything but made her temporarily happy. I feel she was monkey branching and this was maybe an exit affair given she tried to continue it. She says they were magnetically drawn to each other and it was weird and unexplained, which drives me insane as it just seems like limerance to me from her side and calculated predatory behaviour from his. She said they were really similar and were both thrill seekers but she should never have done it and never will again, she said she's been badly burned by the experience. She answers every question I ask, even the most awkward ones. I wish I'd not asked some of them now as the details have undoubtedly traumatised me.
We both continue working during this time but avoid each other at work. He stays off work for a month worried I'll murder him but eventually comes crawling back. His wife stays with him. I believe he blames my wife for the affair. My family are too far away to support me and aren't that supportive anyway. Me and the kids form a little bubble to try and carry on.
My wife says she is so sorry and wants to try and repair our marriage and begs to be allowed to come home and that she's made a terrible mistake which she will never ever do again. She says she loves me and can only put it down to a mental period after stopping the medication and being so depressed that she was receptive to the attention. I still love her so reluctantly agree after a month of separation. I ask if she'd quit her job to save our marriage, she said she would if there was no other option but doesn't see how we can both get new jobs that easily in this climate and we desperately need the money. She's right unfortunately. I don't want to leave the job and leave them together alone, which seems insane given everything.
At this point we've talked over the affair extensively. She's still in the fog / limerance to a point in my view and is still wondering about the "meaning" of the affair. I say isn't it obvious, he just used you and you used him back. She is looking up twin flames nonsense on the internet during this period. We have an open phone policy now. I say you need to stop looking at that rubbish or it'll harm reconciliation, she reluctantly agrees but occasionally continues till I give her an ultimatum.
I say you must never contact him again in any way. A week later after more details of another of his affairs comes out she impulsively confronts him in person angrily as during their affair he told her he'd "never had an affair before", she tells him he's a piece of shit and berates him and says if she knew he was sleeping around with others she'd never have entertained it (ironic!). He refuses to talk to her. I'm furious but also secretly pleased as this has surely killed it dead. My wife is terrible with boundaries due to her adhd, she justifies it by saying she had to close it off with him. I'm very uneasy about this but its happened now and has at least closed it off or so I believe. His wife confronts my wife a few days after outside our house and tells her to stay away from him. I feel sorry for his wife as she's much older and less attractive than my wife so she must be going through hell, especially with the other women involved.
From then till now we've been in a sort of pseudo "reconciliation".
We had a very short period (post sti tests) of hysterical bonding, or just more frequent sex but that died off.
What's happened has emasculated me in an awful way. I know the affair is about her not me but the nature of the intimate betrayal has wounded me so deeply. Seeing my own wife so turned on by this guy and chasing after him in a way she never would and never has with me has crushed me. I have never had a very close relationship with my parents so having my primary attachment bond destroyed like this has been devastating. I feel completely alone. Knowing she would have willingly carried the affair on had he been willing and knowing she would have had sex with him far more if he had agreed is awful. She admits she didn't think I'd ever find out which seems insane.
I've explained this to her hundreds of times, we've talked the affair through in and out to the point there's nothing to discover or say anymore. I've told her for this to work she needs to try somehow to make it up to me, show me some of the same attention and desire... She says me being so traumatised makes it impossible for her. She says me going over things makes it impossible for her with her adhd and resets things back. I think this is just bullshit and excuses. She takes responsibility for the affair then in the next breath says how horrible I was to her before it happened and how unhappy she was which makes me wonder if she's excusing it.
In the interim months I tried sexting her a few times but she just didn't engage 😔 that was pretty heartbreaking. She says that stuff reminds her of the affair so she doesn't want to do it and its stupid. I tell her part of the issue is she's always been sexually closed to me, seeing her actually be sexually verbal with someone made me realise she does have it in her and actually gave me hope we could improve that side of things. I'm realising that its not working out that way though.
As the months go by we've been on a rollercoaster, at intervals I say we should get divorced hoping it'll motivate her to make an effort. She insists we can fix it but then falls asleep on the couch every night. Sex is few and far between and the day after I feel more depressed as a result. We barely do anything together. I've read every book there is on infidelity but she only managed "how to help your spouse heal" and "surviving infidelity" and I'm not sure she took them in.
My sex drive now is almost completely gone. I'm probably clinically depressed but I'm not taking anti depressants after seeing what they've done to various friends and how long it took them to recover. I just stagger on. My friend who is also a therapist said I'm doing a brilliant Jesus impression tolerating this situation, giving it time to work out and being super empathetic but even Jesus would tell me this isn't right and there is going to be a huge cost to me carrying this weight on my back. I've now got PTSD from what happened, the discovery, some of the sexual details and places which I've tried to get under control through various methods including EMDR.
We all still work in the same place. Almost everyone there knows what happened, people have said how unbelievably strong I am for coming in to work with my head held high and trying to make it work. I've only taken one day off during this entire time. I find it awful and humiliating that people know but tune that out. I feel like an idiot tbh. The chump with the attractive wife who fucked this philanderer and was easily seduced by him. My wife ignores him and he ignores her, though they work near each other in the same department still. This triggers me but my wife says he means nothing to her now so I don't need to worry. Apparently i look very unhappy at work which is no surprise. My wife often comes and checks on me but it makes me uncomfortable given everything.
People are rooting for us to make it work and feel sorry for my wife and think she was just another of his victims. I'm not so sure about that. Over time the affair has faded into the background at work and isn't mentioned bar a few people who support me and check I'm ok.
I have to see the guy every day which makes my blood boil. We avoid each other as much as practicable. I know people would say he didn't make any vows to me and my wife betrayed me, he didn't. Thats true but he'd already met me before the physical side of the affair started so I wasn't just an abstract concept to him. The fact the affair happened right under my nose and they clearly got off on the sneaking around side of it just adds further insult. I've got a background in strength sports and martial arts with a bit of real street fighting thrown in, so I could kill him in 10 seconds if I finally cracked. The desire to do that has slowly faded as I've become numb, then grieved and accepted what's happened. From what I can gather his life isn't going so well so I take some solace in that, but also feel he's got away with it to some degree. Knowing I could easily destroy him but am unable to without going to jail for a very long time is frustrating to say the least.
Moving to the present its nearing a year since dday. I've been as emotionally vulnerable as its possible to be with my wife telling her how I feel in order to try and make progress but it seems to just scare her and she says I'm like a parrot repeating the same stuff and that she knows all this. I've been in IC talking to a psychotherapist for 5 months which has helped somewhat and has helped me discover things about myself. I've tried to forgive her given the circumstances with her being at a very low point, stopping her medication, being preyed upon but its so difficult given how much its traumatised me. She says she loves me and we can make it work but nothing really changes. She tries to be moderately physically affectionate with me and a bit more caring but it feels too late. There's been another breach of trust after a rumoured affair with another colleague came out, both him and this other woman started harassing my wife and she argued with them and outed their "relationship". Ive become inured to that circus a little but the last breach of trust has kind of killed reconciliation for me: She secretly emailed him apologising for having a go at him and the other women the most recent time, and said it doesn't mean anything to her now so she shouldn't have done that and made it public and she doesn't want to be a hypocrite given she was in the wrong in their affair too. I caught the email as I'm very tech savvy. I confronted her 2 weeks later after she never admitted it and asked if there was anything to tell me, she denied it for 12 minutes and only confessed under extreme duress. She said she wanted to close it down for her and move on for her own sake to allow us to work on reconciling but the breach of trust and 12 mins of bare faced lying killed something inside me.
I've slowly come out of the trauma onto what I think might be the very start of the plain of lethal flatness. I fantasise about quitting my job, loading the car and driving 1000 miles, but i have nowhere to go. I've lost 10kg since Dday which is mainly lean mass (78kg>68kg) due to stress, depression etc. I'm a shell of a man. I'm now reclusive and sleep to escape reality. When I'm alone I grieve. I work as many hours as possible to get money.
I think maybe I should pay for the divorce and get it rolling to save us both from this unhappy situation (paperwork has been filled in since January) but we can't buy the other out re: our house and the property market here is awful ATM so selling is out for the near future. I'd need to start a whole new and better paying career before I can consider doing that or moving outto somewhere else. So I feel trapped and don't know what to do. I said I'd give it a year to try and make things work and that's fast approaching. I never wanted any of this. I don't think I can stay feeling this unhappy much longer.
[This message restored by Webmaster at 8:34 AM, Friday, December 6th]
[This message edited by Alec at 12:04 AM, Friday, December 6th]
