Sorry, but I need to come gr8ful’s defense here because the advice that you got so offended and unsettled by is the advice that you really need to take to heart.
By the way your wife—and even you— talk about her job and her interesting male "clients," one who hadn’t read your whole story might think she works for a PR firm or a high-end real estate agency (not that it would make her on the on-the-job cheating any less unsavory, to be clear).
But no. She shaves her legs once a week and dolls herself up every morning to oversee drug testing for convicted felons… and you know she’s had an affair with at least one of them. At the very least she will be fired eventually; at the very worst she did something illegal.
Yet every time this is brought up, you stick your head in the sand.
And to make matters even much, much worse, she’s contemptuous of you and has disengaged from her children.
Your wife is not the person you married and vowed for better or for worse. She’s a ticking time bomb. You will regret the fact that you didn’t protect yourself or your kids from that bomb if it goes off.
Most if not every person on this site has tried to "nice their way" cheating spouse back. It never works. Sometimes, the worst that happens as a result is that they lose a few years or maybe even decades of their lives.
But sometimes they get STDs. Sometimes their spouses get pregnant or impregnate other people. Sometimes they have to pick up the pieces after their spouse loses a job or goes to jail.
Cheating rarely happens in a vacuum; it’s usually part of a larger pattern of selfish and reckless behavior. In your wife’s case in particular, it seems to be part of a dramatic shift in her values and priorities.
By conveying to your wife that you will be remain in the marriage as long as she wants it and will put in the effort for both of you, you are enabling her bad behavior and her destruction of the family. She has no incentive to change for as long as she feels she has nothing to lose.
And gr8ful was 100% correct that unremorseful cheaters perceive betrayed spouses’ who are desperate to save their marriage as weak… not because the BS is weak but because that’s the WS’s twisted interpretation of their BS’s willingness to forgive unconditionally.
If you haven’t seen a lawyer yet, do it, just to understand your options (and the ramifications of your wife’s affair with her "client"). And stop the marriage counseling, which is completely useless with a spouse who is still actively lying to you. Invest in a good IC instead.
[This message edited by BluerThanBlue at 12:18 PM, Friday, March 14th]
