Wife caught sexting and having an EA

I am currently about 36hrs post DDay and my mind is still a mess. I am working on finding a therapist ASAP and meanwhile can't make up my mind on whether this relationship is salvageable or if I should cut my losses and get out.

To preface:

Over the course of the last year/year and a half my wife and I began on a path of intimacy decline. We have been together 5 years, and married for 4, and everything was great for a long time. Once I became seriously invested in my career and our finances recently, I began to experience a lot of discontentment in my day-to-day life. I haved always worked on myself physically with skin care, working out, and small things for self-improvement, however, despite my physical upkeep I had been grappling with a steep mental decline into apathy and depression. My wife had addressed this multiple times and even suggested/begged that I/we seek counseling due to this as well as what had essentially become a dead bedroom. It even got to the point where she had threatened to leave due to my unwillingness to improve. At the time I had also been struggling with resentment and doubt regarding our relationship as well and was unsure if I even wanted to take the steps to improve. Admittedly, it had been like pulling teeth to get me out of bed or to stop playing video games until 3am so that we could do things together, and the few times recently that we have gone and done things together, I'm reminded and briefly brought back to all of the wonderful times, the intimacy, the vacations, and wonderful moments from the earlier days of our relationship. This preface is not to add any sort of admonishment or justification to WS or to even place any type of fault on myself, but rather to offer an honest and objective evaluation of the state of our M pre-DDay. I want to make it clear that I understand it is not my fault and this was an intentional decision made by WS, not by me, but am remaining as fully honest as possible to paint a realistic picture of what it had become.

I came home from work earlier this week and after seeing an flirtatious message appear on her screen from someone on a messaging app, I ended up going through her computer later that evening while she was asleep. I found all the DMs she had been sending to the guy including discussions referring to (but not explicitly containing) nudes being exchanged and a potential upcoming trip to visit him in person a few states away. I did not scroll through the conversation thread in its entirety but saw and got screenshots of plenty/the jist of it. There were many allusions to photos being saved to each others camera rolls and messages of them falling asleep to each others' texts, often because my wife had been sleeping on the couch a lot recently.

I waited until yesterday to confront her while I was at work and from what I could tell she seemed to be pretty transparent about it when questioned. She explained that she had been talking to him about how she felt and the decline of our relationship dynamic and that it started out as playful banter/flirting that got out of hand. She broke down and insisted that she had no actual intentions of meeting up with him nor did she have any feelings towards him but liked the attention she got. She also said that the nudes she had been sending to him weren't hers (something that I was aware she had done in the past in an unrelated situation so I admit could be possible but that I don't necessarily believe) She admitted that this crossed the boundaries of our relationship and expressed a level of remorse or guilt (I feel as if I'm not in a good headspace to be able to tell which). She claimed it had only been going on for less than a month (She met him in January and said this didn't start until the beginning of March) and offered to show me that there are no intimate photos of him saved on her phone as well as show that she had not sent any nudes to him. I told her that I don't really believe her anymore since photos and messages can be deleted and that it ends or I'm 100% gone without exception and she once again insisted that she had no desire to be with him.

Per my request, she came clean to the AP and admitted that she had been leading him on and blocked him on everything. He in turn blocked her and in a fit of rage, drove across state lines overnight to show up at our place after I had left. The police were called by her friends who were staying there with her and she said she is likely going to file a restraining order. I told her I am not sure how to proceed at this point and I am not in a good place to determine if R or D is the way to proceed at the moment. I also told her that no matter what road we take, we both need to seek IT/IC as our next step. She agreed obviously, and claimed she wanted to take steps to repair it and does not want our relationship to end (Undoubtedly wants her cake and eat it too).

At the moment I am staying with my parents until I can sort some stuff out and my mind is still racing. I have been reaching out to various facilities and am trying to see a therapist ASAP to help get some of my mind back together. I advised that she do the same which she has agreed to and is in the process of doing. Almost hourly I change my mind on the R vs. D road and whether this is even salvagable at this point. The few close family and friends I've spoken with have expressed that they don't think choosing either option would be the right or wrong answer in this case.

The biggest thing eating at me is knowing that it likely would have escalated if I had not caught her and not being able to differientiate between remorse and guilt to know if she truly recognizes the hurt she put me through. I want to be more angry than I am but all I feel is sad and numb. I wish this never happened and I don't know where to go next.

Concerning the doubts I was having prior to DDay, I now suddenly feel that my doubts were unfounded and that I did not in fact want to my relationship to end, and especially not like this, but that realization has now come a day late and a dollar short. In a way, that part is what feels most like poetic irony in the whole situation.

20 comments posted: Saturday, March 29th, 2025