I (36 m) have been with my wife (35f) for 17 years. We have 3 children together. I was always of the mindset that I wanted monogamy in life, one woman to come home to and that id be with for the long haul. I had women try to talk to me over the years but I never pursued it because I was completely content in my marriage, my wife was my dream girl and i never wanted to hurt her. Over the years there was 2 occasions where I discovered she was being unfaithful in our marriage. One was an off and on again affair that lasted a few years with her married coworker & the other was a fling with an ex she'd dated in high school when she went to visit her family states away.
I'm sure there will be people who say I am stupid which looking back I can't even deny myself but, after a period of seperation with both situations I decided to forgive my wife as I never wanted to raise my children in a broken home like I had been and i really felt like we could make it through it. We were young whenever the situation with her coworker happened so I chalked it up to being young and making dumb choices without thinking.
For a while things were seemingly okay, I never fully trusted her but I tried my best to push back my doubts because I knew if I decided to forgive her then I had to do my best to move past it and have a clean slate. It's been 4 years since the 2nd time she'd been unfaithful & I felt like I made the right decision by letting her have that chance to show she still wanted to be in our marriage. She was a different person for years and we were happy and even had various things set in motion for the future of our family. However, 2 months ago my reality was once again shattered by yet another incident which in my mind was by far worse than the others.
I ended up receiving a message from one of my best friends wives. This friend knew my wife a little, he'd met her in passing but it wasn't like we all hung out together or anything like that for me to even worry about them. We worked together so there was some times my wife would bring him up multiple times while we were talking about work, she would bring me coffee to work and also one for him. I noticed when she did she'd dress in more revealing clothing than she usually wore but i never commented on it. She even convinced me that we should buy him a joint birthday present & take him out for drinks on his birthday. Just little things like that which were obviously weird but like I said I didn't think I had anything to worry about with either of them. To my knowledge he had a good marriage with his wife, he never spoke badly about it so i didnt think hed have any interest either. Not to mention we we'd actually been friends for a very long time and i trusted him. I'd make comments in a joking way to my wife about how she took too much of an interest in him and she laughed it off saying she just wanted to have another couple to be friends with.(she never actually tried to plan anything as far as to hang out with him and his wife as a couple) I agreed they would be good to be friends with so again I never thought too much into the overly friendliness of my wife with him. Turns out I was way wrong not to because I was met with multiple screenshots implying they were engaged in a full out affair. I wanted to get my proof situated before I ended up confronting my wife because I didn't want her to have the opportunity to manipulate the situation or try to lie her way out of it. So I started to go through call logs, credit statements etc. Because I didn't know how far this actually went past the social media screenshots I saw.
When the truth came out, neither of them tried to lie to me about it. I found out they were sneaking off to hotels when she was supposed to be doing doubles at work and he was supposed to be off with family. And that my friend would leave work to go see her at her job basically every day for a month & she'd meet up with him on his lunch breaks. They were even planning a weekend at a hotel for the next weekend before the truth came out. I obviously cut ties with my friend and honestly I have no idea what to do about my situation with my wife. Their affair ended and my wife apologized profusely saying she just got carried away. She said that she'd felt lacking in our marriage with both of us dedicating so much time to work/other things and that my friend was there and a "nice guy", she said she let herself envy the way he treated his wife and wished she could've had that with me but was afraid to tell me i wasnt doing enough in our marriage. So in her words, she made a mistake and that she didn't know how to end it once it started.
For now we are living in the same house because realistically neither of us have the means to leave right now as her family doesn't live here plus the costs of renting and houses here are absurd and on top of that we still have our children in our house who are all still in school. She is basically trying to do anything to keep me around including telling me I can see women casually outside of our marriage as long as i come home to her she would never hold it against me as cheating. I told her that's not much of a marriage & it's certainly not anything I ever set out to have but she is hellbent on keeping our family together by any means. She's even brought up how we shouldn't let our kids live in a broken home because of our marital issues.
I guess my wife is under the impression that nothing could make me want out of this marriage and that by offering things like that she thinks will fix our marriage. I guess in a way that is my fault for letting so much slide in the past. I do love her in some ways but at this point I think the love is more just from the fact we have kids together & that I've been with her for nearly 2 decades rather than feelings of being in love. My self confidence is low and my wife is out of my league but still i dont think that's enough of a reason to stay. She claims she loves me and doesn't want to loose all we've built and are building toward but to me I just can't see how that can be true when she was so okay with running around with one of my only friends. I can't trust her, to me her word is meaningless, I forgive her then how long until she goes and does it again? I do think people can make mistakes & be forgiven because people are flawed, but this isn't just one slip up. And truth be told my faith in her is so low I don't even know if there's been more instances on top of the ones I actually know about. My mental state is essentially a puddle of mud right now.
I'm sure there's probably someone reading this calling me a dumbass and I can't even argue that but yeah basically my life is a shit show and I don't know how to proceed
edit; I'm not staying with my wife i should have clarified that better. Me saying I don't know how to proceed is more talking about how to go about handling this with my children, I've never dealt with anything legal so the stress of having to meet with lawyers and also not knowing how to go about our living situation. I have enough proof that my wife couldn't flip the switch and take everything from me but as a guy that's always something you have to worry about. Thankyou for your words, and some of you saying I'm a dumbass- trust me I know, can't change that now unfortunately. Just have to keep moving forward.
