Unsure and constantly confused

I found out in early October that my wife had an affair, it was an online relationship that she was in for a little over a month. They talked throughout the day and played video games at night, while I was asleep in the bedroom. She'd stay up until 3-4AM talking and playing him. A lot of the time it ended with them having virtual sex in our bed, sometimes while I was laying next to her. Some photos were exchanged, but she swears that was it. The relationship ended sometime in late August (started in July).

Shortly after that, she had virtual sex with another guy on her discord server. This one is seriously irritating me because the guy was really young, half her age (Still legal!).

And while all of that was happening, she started an emotional connection/affair with a third guy. He was her confidant, they'd talk all the time about his and her problems (Me being one of them?). Eventually they both (on separate occasions) tried to have virtual sex, but they each shot the other one down.

So, that's the gist of the affairs...

Now, in early September I realized something was seriously wrong in our relationship (I had a hunch from early August), but it got worse as time went on. So I confronted her about it. She said that she was just worried about money, that she was happy, and we were fine. I had no evidence one way or the other so I had to believe her. The next day, we got into a small fight over some of the things she was doing (things that had changed in the last month and a half). She finally broke down and told me she wasn't happy and she was seriously considering a divorce and she needed time to think.

So, I gave her space. We had to share the same house, but we'd swap who slept on the bed or the couch. And we have 2 teenagers, so we needed to be amicable. Which wasn't hard, seeing as for the last 5 or 6 years we've been more roommates then a married couple. While we can both agree on that, it does not excuse her having the affairs.

Anyways, she tells me she's thinking of divorce and then things just hit the fan. She was constantly doing stuff I asked her not to do (nothing outside of a normal relationship), telling all of her online friends my personal secrets and whatnot. She's basically become an unstoppable monster. She lived for her friend group, marriage be damned.

Eventually I somewhat made my peace with the fact that we were going to be getting divorced, but she'd still be in my life. One afternoon in early October we're sitting down talking and I say, you know what, since we're getting divorced, let's tell our truths (meaning confess to stuff we did in the marriage). So we were going back and forth with that for a bit, nothing too extreme or anything horrible. But it was eye opening a bit for both of us, not at all in a bad way just more of a shock. Anywho, this is when she dropped the affair bomb on me. Then she trickle truthed me for a while until most of it was out there. I'm still unsure if I have everything, but I guess I have to accept that?

The other thing is, I told her I wanted full access to her Discord account. I needed help figuring out the timeline for everything and there were answers on there. Not going into all the details here, but the account got deleted before I thought it was going to be, and she knew that. She knew it was going to be deleted before she gave me access. So, this set me all the way back to DDay. Any trust starting to get regained went right out the window. And here I am, a couple weeks later, still trying to process what the hell has happened in my life the past 4 months.

No, I do not want a divorce. I'm not willing to throw away 17 years of marriage over a three month period of her doing this stuff. We both want to work on the Marriage and we're both in IC. We'll start MC in January, after we've been with our own therapists for a couple months.

And I think that's about it... I'm sure I ranted a lot in there, but just had to get this all off my chest. And even then, I'm sure I'm missing some stuff. I just hate all of this. All of it.

19 comments posted: Tuesday, November 12th, 2024