Am i looking at this wrong?

Its been 6 months since I found out my wife had a secret online relationship. On many days I question if this even qualifies as infidelity, and wonder if I am just over reacting. I tried online therapy for a couple weeks but found it too generic and otherwise I have only spoke with my wife about it. So I guess i am looking for feedback, and hopefully something more thoughtful than Reddit.

My Story: We are high school sweethearts, married at 20, 3 kids and together now for 24 years. Neither of us have ever really had any issues like this in the past, especially nothing we would keep from each other. We had some job changes, and my wife had decided to take some time off before going to back to work again. She had been in to hiking but really dove in and was out 3 days a week, joined some groups and was active in some online communities. Things felt off, and as things seemed to be deteriorating eventually I started getting suspicious, by some chance I noticed her location at an odd spot not far from our home. Moral of the story I caught her on the phone, and confronted her that night and she said she had been talking with someone.

This person was a couple states away, but very into hiking, it was through this connection they started talking but never met in person. I had questioned her about this person a few months before this but was told it was just about their shared hiking interest. It had progressed to chatting every day towards the end, a lot of compliments, flirting and eventually a phone call which happened to be the first when I found out.

Her initial reaction to being confronted was that she was questioning if she would be happier with someone else. This was devastating, I knew we had been disconnected but the realization that she had been lying to me was a lot to take in. We have had our ups and downs but up to that moment I would have characterized us as still being very much in love. By the next morning she had seemingly snapped out of it, blocked this person and told him not to contact her again. The next 3-4 weeks she showered me with attention, shut down her social media, and I leaned into to it, I had been craving her attention. We talked and she said it had really only crossed lines in the past few weeks. I never asked to see their conversations and they were deleted before I even thought of it.

Over the next couple months we talked, she answered my questions, there were a few instances that were not so great. Some frustration on her part in thinking that we should just be moving on. It did feel like after about a month she wanted to get back to how her daily life had been, back on social media, back into the community she had found. About three months from confronting her, we were out together and she received a message through another social media platform from this person, saying he missed their conversations, and being hurt by being blocked. This threw me for a loop and made me question some things, we had another talk and a new story came out. It had been 5-6 months they had been talking, and quickly was something that had to be hidden.

It was at this point that I really felt like she had betrayed me. The secret and the lies had been months not weeks, and was obviously more serious than she had originally described it. If I had not caught her where would it have gone?, all the what ifs that can plague your mind. This felt like I was starting over, processing it. I don't think she really understood that. She didn't feel like she had lied when she downplayed it the first time. I asked for more details, and it felt like pulling teeth, but I heard enough, to I think, get a realistic view of what it was.

Which leads me to now. She has done many things great, I asked for her phone to be more available if I feel like I need to check it which she has done, I do believe shes cut this person off, and we've both been making more of an effort to spend time together. Coming back from this has had its difficulties though, having conversations about it quickly became exhausting for her. Sometimes it was no issue, but other times it was a lot of "you need to just move past this". Most of the why question feels like it has been put onto me, not showing her enough attention, and it was the validation she was looking for. I do feel like she has taken the mentality that I just won't do that again, and so we just move forward and try to forget about it.

Like most people, I turned to the internet for all my answers.... Where I feel stuck, is the recovery from this has felt rough, I feel like I've been carrying the burden. I would love to hear from her about how shes been thinking about it, trying to figure out things. I've heard the term "putting in the work", and while I don't know exactly what's meant by this, I don't think she has. I haven't gone a day without thinking about it, some days worse than others, reading, watching videos. Trying to find a way to get over it and move forward in a positive way. But then again maybe I'm over reacting to all of it, and I shouldn't even be on this website. It wasn't a physical affair, they never met, so maybe I shouldn't expect a recovery that would be laid out for a more painful situation.

Am I crazy? No ones perfect, and I wouldn't expect her to navigate this process perfectly. But both what happened and what has happened since has not left me feeling like I am getting honesty. Maybe I have the truth about what happened before, but I feel like its unrealistic to think she snapped out of it and hasn't had to work through any of her own stuff. When I've asked she just says everything's good, that she's ok.

Thoughts?

7 comments posted: Tuesday, January 14th, 2025