I never imagined I’d be in this situation.
I need to put everything into words. I need advice from people who have been through this because right now, I feel lost.
I'm from Chile, so my native language is Spanish, I tried to check for grammar errors, hope that you can understand what I wrote.
Background
My wife (WW, 42F) and I (BS, 35M) have been together for 13 years, married for 9. We have two children, 8yo and a baby of almost 2yo.
A few years ago, on 2022, we moved to a new city 1.5 hours away from our former city, mostly trying to improve our quality of life.
It was a big adjustment— buying a house, remodelling, new routines, a new community, fewer close friends nearby, and at the sixth month there we were expecting a new baby!(the one that now is almost 2yo)
I was working from home most days, but 1 or 2 days a week I went to the office located in our previous city, mostly by bus or train. My wife has been staying at home since our first son was born.
During that time, thanks to the school teachers, we discovered that our first son was in the autistic spectrum. So that explained lots of his meltdowns and difficulties. It was a shock for us to get the diagnosis, but we started helping him with all the therapies that the neurologist recommended. Raising a kid with that condition add a lot of stress.
We were tired from all the daily life, parenting, therapies and everything. I was stressed from the financial side of things. I wasn't perfoming at my best at work. I was too unfocused and distracted. I tried not to speak much about my issues at home because I didn't want to add stress to my pregnant wife. But in retrospective, all my suppressed stress converted me in a more distant and irritable person. And my family suffered that.
We tried to build a social life, it took like a year, but slowly we started to knew other parents from our son's school, from the gym and some people from the neighborhood.
On April 2023, our second son was born. So we started with the cycle of poor sleep, waking up at nights, changing diapers, the typical baby stuff. It added an overall sense of happiness and tiredness at the same time in our lives.
After a year, around March 2024, when our baby stopped breastfeeding it was easier to find a sitter and have some date nights. We also made some efforts to visit our old city friends one night a month, usually we stayed overnight at friends’ places and travel back early in the morning to continue our daily life. Sometimes, we’d go together; other times, we’d take turns seeing friends while the other stayed at home with the kids.
My wife also started therapy last year, on July ’24. I assumed it was about stress from parenting, house work, and adjusting to our new life. I noticed the months after she started therapy an improvement in her ways of communication, being more affectionate with me and she seemed more motivated with her daily life.
I thought we were living a normal life given all our circumstances.
Until I read her therapy journal.
D-Day 1 (October’24)
One evening, while helping our son with his homework, I saw that my wife had left her therapy journal on the dinner table before going to a swimming class. I don’t know why I opened it. Maybe just curiosity about what she was writing about me. But what I read changed everything.
There were lots and lots of pages where she wrote about wanting to call him, wanting to meet again, remembering their night together. She described feeling guilty about that night but also enjoying it. That she is happy with me but is having sexual thoughts about him. That she is nostalgic of those times. That it felt unfinished but stopping talking was the best for all. In one of those pages she wroted the name of the AP, it was an old friend with benefits that she had like 15 years ago, before I even met her. A dude that now is in his late 40s. From what I knew, the dude had continue with his life, was married, had kids, then divorced and went to live to a farther city. I knew all this because my wife told me, every now and then, they spoke sporadically or she knew things from other friends in common. I never suspected much from all those interactions.
I couldn't read all the journal, it had too many pages, and my wife was almost arriving home and I also had to take care of the baby and some kid stuff. I took photos of some of those pages. I wanted to throw up from the shock.
I tried to stay calm and confronted her after the kids were asleep.
She told me that he contacted her to congratulate her for the new baby, nothing unusual. But after a few months, he wrote her again to catch up and slowly started talking almost everyday. She told me that in one of those interactions he made a comment about how beatiful she looked on her profile picture. She told me that she felt ugly and fat after the baby, and that comment made her feel special, that their conversations gave her a sense of validation that she hadn’t felt in a long time, and she was craving more of those kind messages. Told me that they started to remember those years when they were younger, remembering when they met, that he regretted his decisions.
That lead to more intimate conversations about more personal stuff, they started to remember those nights 15 years ago when they were together, and eventually sexting was a thing between them.
She told me that after months in that dynamic, he started to write her less and less. She started to demand more attention, but eventually he ghosted her on June’24.
She felt empty and didn't understand why. She deleted his contact and erased the conversation. But was still needing his messages.
She started therapy on July’24 trying to understand what's was happening with her. They started to work on her issues, and after months she understood why she engaged in that behavior with jim. The therapist since the beginning recommend telling me the truth but she was too afraid to tell me.
She denied any physical affair, only admitted to sexting. That contradicted her journal, at least from what I read. She told me those words in journal were fantasies, an idealization of him, memories from 15 years ago, but nothing real. She told me that he lived three hours away, so it was never a real possibility.
She also blamed me, saying I had been too absent since she was pregnant, too focused on my own things, always on my phone and putting low effort in the house chores. That I was too angry and was imposible to talk to me about our issues. That she felt unnoticed and she thought that I didn't loved her anymore, and in contrast, he had this messages that made her feel like she was desirable again.
If she had felt good with me, this wouldn't had happened.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We talked for hours. I was heartbroken. I couldn't sleep and didn't know how I will carry with my daily obligations after this.
The next day, she destroyed the journal. She told me she was ashamed of what she had written and didn't want to see that journal anymore.
For two months I tried to believe her, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking about what I read. Didn't believe that nothing physical happened. I started looking everywhere for any sign but she destroyed the journal, deleted messages. I couldn't find any backup on her phone or in the cloud.
In November, I started therapy. I’ve been going ever since. She also continues with her therapy.
My therapist helped me counter the blame and guilt, making it clear that the affair was her choice, not my responsibility. I also learned to communicate my emotions better and recognize my own patterns.
The only thing that truly helped me escape my thoughts was the gym. I never stopped going—it was the one hour of my day where I felt some mental peace.
Those months were strange times. For her, the affair ended like four months ago, she already had processed and understood a lot of her why's. But she was hiding a big pile of crap inside her that would make impossible to have any deeper and honest conversation.
I couldn't understand how she was able to live acting like everything was normal all this time, a year and a half of our life was a lie to me. She told me that she felt really bad, but didn't want to hurt me with the truth and preferred to keep it to herself.
For me everything was recent. I constantly tried to talk about the affair, she listened and answered all my questions.
We had lots of intimate conversations, we had great sex and I felt some kind of rebonding. Our day to day life seemed like normal. But those good feelings only lasted for a few days or hours and the intrusive thoughts appeared again and dominated my mind almost all the time.
D-Day 2 (December’24)
I become a really obsesive person and full of intrusive thoughts.
I checked her phone at any time she left her unattended trying to find any proof. Searched on every drawer or box in hope to find her journal. But nothing was there to find. I couldn't concentrate with my work and I was really absent at home.
One day at work, on December'24, I started to obsessively check all my WhatsApp messages with my wife, revisiting all our interactions from the period of her affair, I was looking for any little evidence or signal.
That’s when I noticed something unusual.
On May 31. The night she was having a girls’ night at her best friend’s apartment. She wrote me that she was taking the bus, told me she arrived and didn't write me any more until the next morning when she was coming back home. On other previous nights that she traveled alone to visit her friends, she was constantly writing me to know about the baby or sending me pictures with her friends, or just telling me anything. This time she barely wrote a word. I also remembered that when she arrived home that morning, she didn't tell me much about that night. On other occasions, she always liked to share gossip about her friends and share anything just to talk about something, but this time she told almost nothing. I assumed it was because she stayed late and was too tired to talk.
I had something.
That night at home, after the kids were asleep and when she was in the bathroom, I looked the messages with her best friend. Luckyly those weren't deleted.
My wife told her best friend that same May 31 at 5pm that she wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be able to travel that night.
But she didn't stayed home that night.
She had been liyng all this months since I confronted her. She saw me suffering almost everyday and she prefered to lie. Not only to me, she also lied to her best friend.
I confronted her again. This time, she admitted she traveled to see him. She went to his apartment and stayed the night there. But she swore nothing happened.
I started to cry. Since I read her journal I didn't cried once. This time I cried more that any other time in my life. I was in pain. I remember sobbing while telling my wife, "How bad I was to you to deserve this kind of suffering?".
Obviously I didn't believe her. She explained that she couldn’t go through with it. That when she saw him in person, it felt different. That he wasn’t as confident as he behaved in their chats. She said guilt stopped her. She told me that they just talked about their life events. About his divorce, about her current life situation with me, that she didn't understand why she was there having everything at home with me. That she didn't iniate anything sexual. That her mental fantasy of him didn't matched with him in person. Eventually it was late and both slept in his bed. But she repeated and repeated that nothing happened. It was so absurd.
I again asked about her journal. She kept swearing that nothing happened, that she had just written fantasies and memories from decades ago, but nothing physical happened that night.
I was destroyed. Barely sleep and eat those days. She tried to console me. But everything was so incongruent.
I asked her to write me a detailed timeline of the affair. After a few days she did, but it was completely unbelievable.
Two adults, alone in an apartment after months of sexting, drinking alcohol, with a full night for themselves and they just talked?
She daid that didn’t wanted to tell me because I would never believe her that she traveled there and nothing happened.
Over the next three months, I became more resentful.
My wife was acting like she had already told me everything. I felt like she wanted to move on, to live life like normal. She didn't saw me suffering or maybe prefered to avoid see me, really don't know.
And the strange thing is that lots of days felt like normal. Talking about home improvement, going to the park with the kids, birthdays, vacations, watching a movie, buying groceries, inviting friends at home, listening to music in the car, buying concert tickets, date nights, lots of affection, romantic words, passionate sex. The present wife was the woman that I always loved.
But I was full of doubts and she avoided to talk with me about any deeper topic because everything converged in the affair.
Every time I asked for clarifications, she didn't change anything from her story. She insisted that nothing happened.
It was becoming a waste of time trying to talk with her. It was obvious that she was avoiding any talk because sustaining a lie all this time must be a really difficult task.
I didn't want to leave her. I was telling to myself, what could she confess me that would make me leave her. In my head I created all kind of mental movies, the worst imaginable sexual scenarios. But it wasn't the sexual act that would make me leave her. It was that she was lying and keeping secrets. That was hurting me. It felt like she was keeping a secret only between her and the affair partner. She didn't trust in me. And I didn't trust in her. How sustainable is a relationship without trust?
I was mentally drained.
It wasn't fair for my kids to have a father so demotivated and mentally absent. Some evenings I took my kids for a walk tonthe park, they were playing and telling me some funny stuff, but I was barely paying attention. That was the moment when the idea of ending the marriage was a real possibility in my mind for the first time. I prefered to see my kids less but being sane than staying and being a lost soul.
In February I started reading this forum. I read lots of stories like mine—where the WS swore it was just emotional, only to later admit the truth. I also noticed that I was being too passive and I have made lots of mistakes.
That’s when I decided to cange my approach.
D-Day 3 (March’25)
In my country, we don’t have polygraphs services. But considered some strategies that some users recommended.
I decided to bluff about her phone.
That night I told her I was excited because I discovered a way to recover her iPhone messages with an special forensic software that I found (she is not too tech savvy, unfortunately is impossible to recover anything without a cloud backup). I told her I would be able to recover all the deleted messages and compare them against her version of the story. Like if you insist that nothing happened, then there's nothing no be afraid and all would be happy after the confirmation, right?
She didn't wanted to do it. Told me I was being ridiculous and obsessed. That she had a right to privacy. That I must stop.
I told her that her reaction was telling me all that I needed to hear. Told her I was tired of not trusting her.
I gave her two options:
1. Tell me the truth right now.
2. Give me the phone. But if I found even one lie, our marriage was over.
If she denied to give me the pone I told her our marriage was also over.
She hesitated for a few minutes. I could see she was struggling inside. Her breathing accelerated.
Then she finally broke down.
She admitted they had sex that night.
I felt conflicted. I felt relieved because I wasn't crazy during all this months, I could trust my intuition. On the other side, I confirmed that my wife had sex with other man, what a prize to win!
I demanded an explanation of how the things were.
She told me that they were in his apartment talking on the couch and eventually they started kissing, they had sex in his bedroom, it was a long session because he was unable to finish.
Eventually they stopped, talked a little bit more and they fell sleep. The next morning the alarm wake her and went to the bus station to come back home.
The most boring sex night in the world.
It was late, and I decided to sleep.
My brain was already adapted to detect any bullshit, so the next day I told her that I don't believe her story and that I'll call the AP to contrast her version, so better be telling the full truth without minimizing or this marriage will end.
I demanded her to tell me the full affair. So she told me this:
She repeated the same beginning… his messages after our baby was born.
She became dependant of his attention. She had mental fantasies when she was young, without so many obligations. An alternate reality were he chosed her instead of other woman.
After many months of messages with him, she noticed that she was losing his attention. His messages were lower in frequency and he showed less interest during the day, for some weeks they barely speak.
When he was distant, she used sexting as a tool to attract him back, and it worked. So they were in this loop attention, inattention, sexting. She told me that she enjoyed those sexting sessions, but there were times that she wasn't in the mood but knew that was necessary to attract him back and get his attention.
But sexting was also losing the effects over time. So when she was barely getting messages from him and noticed that he was really distant, she started to plan to meet with him. Our baby stopped breastfeeding and she gained a little bit of freedom, it was a real possibility.
She just needed to find the opportunity. And that girl's night was the perfect excuse to go there without much suspicion. So she lied to me and took the bus at 6pm to his city. He picked her up at 9pm at the station. They bought some pizzas and alcohol, and went to his apartment.
After catching up about life for a long while, mostly talking about his marriage problems that ended in his divorce, my wife talked about our relationship issues, about being parents, about the life of common friends and other stuff, some hours have passed.
She felt that he was attracted to her, and she liked feeling that.
When she arrived there, she saw an older and nervous man, different than his expectation from all the sexting an fantasies, but after a few hours, they were a little bit drunk and he was more in confidence.
In a moment, while listening to music, they were near in the couch, they kept staring each other and started kissing on the couch in passionate way. They undressed there before moving to the bedroom.
They had sex. She ask me if I needed the explicit details, I told her that it wasn't necessary. She told me that it felt strange to feel another body different than mine. That she remembered that moment like a dream, or like fragments of a movie. Told me that was standard sex, nothing out of the basics, but it felt longer because he wasn't able to cum. She didn't was measuring time but estimates 40min -1hr. So, after a long while they stopped it mostly because of tiredness and being unable to mantain an erection that long.
They stayed in bed talking for a while about previous sexual experencies with other partners and that kind of stories. Later, they went half dressed to the living room for another drink, they continue talking for a while and eventually he tried to inotiate sex again, but she rejected him. Told him not now. So, they continue talking for a while, and again she rejected his initiation. She told me that she liked to feel his desire and reject him, like a game. He tried to initiate sex a third time, but this time she allowed it. Started kissing again and having sex on the couch before returning to the bedroom.
She didn't recall the exact duration, but told me that he couldn’t finish again, so it was also a long session. She told me she enjoyed both, mostly because she liked to be desired more than the sexual act per se. It was late and she was physically tired. They decided to stop it and both fell asleep in his bed.
About his performance issues. In her journal she wrote a random passage about that night, that I captured on a picture, something like "he had problems to finish what he started but that is not my fault." Stills sounds unbelievable to me, but reading about performance issues is not totally impossible. Really don't know if I must press more about that point, the most truth that I could get is, "yes, he came" and that changes almost nothing to me.
The next morning, the alarm wake her up early at 7am, she must be at the bus station before 9am.
She told me it felt weird to woke up next to another man.
She took a shower, dressed and make coffee for both while he was taking a shower. They talked about the night. She told him that it would be difficult to repeat this kind of encounters, he agreed. She told me that she wished after her words that he pushed more for a next encounter, but he didn't said any of that.
She asked him about why he didn't climax, because she was feeling insecure about herself. He told her is not first time that happened to him, but that he still enjoyed it.
Some more random talk and he took her to the bus station.
She wrote me that she was coming back and how was everything at home. I told her that everything was fine and send her a selfie with the kids eating breakfast. She told me that that photo of the three of us being happy make her feel guilty.
I received her, asked her some questions about her friends, she gave vague responses and acted like nothing special happened. And went to sleep a little bit.
A few days later, she was feeling the need again of receveing messages and validation, and wasn't receiving it. She felt that after having real sex the sexting wouldn't be enough and also she didn't want to do it.
He only responded briefly if she initiated the conversation, but it wasn't a fluid chat, and they didn't have to much to talk because in person they talked a lot of things. She noticed he wasn’t as engaged as before, and it started bothering her.
She missed his attention and didn't know how to get it.
She sent him a message asking, "I need to know what this is all about—where is this going?" He didn’t answer. She was left on read.
For days, she felt confused and rejected. She told me she deleted his number and messages after that, but she was still emotionally stuck on him.
That’s when she started therapy on July’24. To figure out why she felt so bad.
She had lots of sessions to process everything. The therapist told her she had deep issues with rejection and had been seeking validation. She had felt special because of his attention, and when he stopped, she felt lost and needed to take the attention back. She had anxios attachment behaviors that were going tonwork on.
The therapist told her since the beginning that the guilt was holding her back and that she needed to tell me the truth, no matter my reaction. It was going to be liberating for her.
But she didn’t wanted to do it. She made some excuses like that she was afraid of my reaction or that she didn't want me suffer
She have been carrying that nostalgic feeling since June, when the communication stopped. The journal was a tool to help her process all his thoughts and helped the therapist to catch the deeper issues behind her behavior and beliefs.
I don't know if I haven't read her journal on October how much time she would have been able to live with her secret.
Also I feel conflicted because is undeniable that after I discovered the affair we started to improve on lots of weak points in our marriage. Don't know how to feel about that. Like trying to get something good from something awful.
She told me that she finally feels free. That she was afraid of every interaction with me because I was looking for any discrepancy in her words and that was taking a toll on her.
She says she regrets everything and is willing to do whatever it takes to fix this. She thinks of those times and feels gut pain, she doesn't understand how was she able to do all this.
She tells me she loves me and never wanted to leave me. But this guy entered like a virus in his mind and she wasn't able to stop it.
I don’t know how to feel right now.
I feel like I'm still processing all this. I dont feel angry, or sad or anything. Just in disbelief of all this mess. A lot of disappointment. Like detached from my feelings.
I think that I finally got a version of the truth that is mostly complete, or at least believable.
Now she can leave her phone unnatended near me and don't feel the urges to access it like I felt just some weeks ago.
For those who have been through this:
How do you live your day to day life after discovering?
How did you decide whether to stay or leave?
Does the "full truth" ever actually feel complete, or will I always doubt?
How do I stop replaying the details in my head?
Just needed to order my head. Sorry for my long post.
Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.
