All good points. Thanks for the advice. This situation is a bit more complex than my synopsis. I will be more specific now.
During our marriage, she has had a few times to question her trust in me. I am not perfect, but have never cheated in any way. For a short time I was too into internet porn. I think she may think that I have actually cheated. No 100%. In the past I have hidden financial set-backs from her, but it was only because I didn't want her to worry & I knew eventually we would bounce back. I am a good person and a good dad, but I have not been overly involved in my kids school, events & sports. My oldest child has chronic health issues that require an extra degree of attention. My wife has almost handled this exclusively- in my defense, she was a stay at home mom the first 6 years. I work extremely hard and my job is extremely stressful, but I make more than 10 times her income now that she has been back in the work force. Conversely, I tend to be very lazy at home, which unfortunately leaves a lot of the house care to her. You women know this can be overwhelming. All her life everyone who knows her says she is incredibly unselfish, and always has put others first. Obviously this kind of person can easily find themselves completely spent. About six months ago she started to slip into a hormone influenced depressive state of sadness. She was super mom/employee/friend during the day, but often spent time crying at night. She is on Bio-Identicals and has taken Zoloft for periods of time.
During this time we started to talk about her condition and our relationship. There was a lot of "its about me, not you", but confusingly also came with a lot of listing all my faults, shortcomings, issues and other things about me that she didn't know if she could get over (90% of them more than 5 years old). She said we need to have a 6 month trial separation. This never happened, but I did sleep in our living room.
She met the other man thru her job. He was a client at her accounting business. This next part is a guess- he opened up about his divorce 6 years ago (he is single now), she confided in him that was on her mind and things progressed from there. Like any horny guy, he heaped the attention on her. I don't believe there is anyone else that knows about them. There actual encounters were not many, but I caught wind after reading very sordid and descriptive texts back and forth between them.
The reason I didn't immediately confront her was because of the tenuous position we were in. Just when I was about to bring it up, she just happen to have a conversation with a very good and wise friend of hers that may have led to an epiphany. This friend helped her to see the ultimate impact on the people around her and this along with a couple close calls and the difficulty of keeping her secret led her to start to focus more back on us. By the time I was ready to confront her, it was over.
I gave her the opportunity to rid herself of the guilt without telling her I knew, but she declined. I know she realizes that confessing a previous affair usually only unburdens that confessor, while making it more difficult on the spouse. If I did lay it out for her, she would probably say she didn't say anything because, a) we were "apart" and, b) she didn't want to hurt me. In all 18 years, she has never been deceitful like this even once. I feel like the amount of time that has passed since I saw the proof makes it increasingly difficult to say anything without appearing almost as deceitful as she has been. Currently, things are not normal, but they seem to be heading in that direction.
Thoughts now?
