A mutual friend of ours was in the process of leaving his spouse
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He and my wife started hanging out on the weekends together and I started to get concerned after she came home from he bar he works at 3am.. Told her I didnt like it and she told me that he was just one of our good friends..
I don't want to beat you when you're down, but now you know why this forum isn't a fan of this sort of behavior. No good comes of it. Bars are for single people to hit on each other. Spouses should make it a rule to only go to bars with each other.
The beginning of Oct she called me while I was driving home from an out of town job (First one I've had in years) and told me over the phone that she wanted to leave me. I was in total shock and raced home to talk to her. I offered to go to counseling with her, but the only two reasons she gave me was that I wasnt there for her emotionally, and she doesn't love me the way I need to be loved..
Notice she never mentioned this before. Many people think the unhappiness starts BEFORE the affair and is the CAUSE of the affair; but actually, what happened was, she clicked with him, and in order to justify massively betraying you, she had to start lying to herself. One sort of lie is "rewriting" marital history--how she never really loved you and you were never good to her etc etc. This is just a mental construct to permit her to violate her marriage vows.
She told me there has been 2 other guys (One I kinda knew about - didnt think they were sleeping together) over the past 1 1/2 years.
So on top of everything else, she's a serial cheater.
So here is what happened: for whatever reason (boredom, stress, anxiety, depression) she started to escape her reality by hanging out with men who found her attractive. She got a big kick out of that--it was lots of fun. These men would compliment her endlessly, validate whatever she'd say. This sort of thing is very addictive. Soon, it became a pattern in her life, something she couldn't live without. She was essentially "dating" men even though she was married to you.
"Dating" while you're married (having serial affairs) is generally known as "cake-eating" you provided the security of marriage, these guys supplied the fun.
What apparently happened with the latest man is that her allegiance switched--she must have found someone willing to play "daddy" to the kids as well. So her dating circuit complete, she was now finally ready, after you confronted her, to exit the marriage. (And BTW--who knows how long she would have gone on this way if you had not confronted her. Cake-eating is the ultimate goal of most affairs.)
They have already rented a house, and thinks shes going to take the kids there.. I havn't even filed yet because I cant bring myself to do it.
Listen to me carefully. Go to dadsdivorce.com. Meet with a lawyer if you haven't already. By leaving the house this way, and presumably leaving the children, she can be found to have abandoned the marriage. This can affect the divorce settlement, who gets the house, and how custody of the kids is divided.
The other thing you need is a temporary custody order with a morality clause if you can get it. You need to do what you can legally to prevent her from bringing the kids around the OM. I don't want to alarm you, but stepfathers are statistically the source of a huge amount of abuse of children. I say that knowing many awesome stepfathers who'd take a bullet for their stepkids. Being a stepparent is an incredibly thankless job in many ways. But statistics for stepfather abuse of minors to whom they are not biologically related are appalling. You cannot control what she chooses to do, but you can put in place what little legal protection you can get.
I feel like i'm not ready to give up, I see her almost every day because of the kids, and the past two weeks has been amazing hanging out with her.
Unfortunately at this stage, there is not a lot you can do to wake her up.
Does her family, and your family, and the OM's family, and your mutual close friends, know the truth? Edited to say, posted before I saw what you just said.
