But, she did lie to me and deceive me about the existence of the relationship at the beginning; she has said that she will not give me access to her phone; she has refused to stop seeing Bozo, even if that is a deal breaker for the marriage.
Is there anyone out there who has experience with living with a Bozo of your own interfering in your marital happiness?
Com1c,
I am sorry that your wife has chosen to do this to you. Have you stopped to consider if you would pursue a relationship with a female 'friend' to the point of telling your wife that you would continue it regardless of whether it destroyed a forty year marriage?
You are the subject of cruel and totally unreasonable behavior, but the key point is that you do not have to live with a parasitic bozo spoiling your marital happiness; your wife can end the pain immediately by ending a lesser relationship that she is fully aware is causing you pain. Or, if she feels that relationship is more important to her than a forty year marriage, you can end the pain by removing yourself from a hurtful dynamic that your wife has created. She cannot keep you trapped in a situation in which she maintains twin relationships; only you can do that.
It is up to you to decide whether or not her behavior is acceptable to you. Unless you signed up to an open marriage, and you are pursuing relationships with females other than your wife, an 'exclusive' marriage cannot survive or support a passenger. With apologies for being brutally frank, if your wife thinks her relationship with bozo is worth more than the marriage to you, you need to consider what marriage to her is worth to you. Nobody wants to break up a marriage or relationship that has lasted four decades, but your wife is expecting you to tolerate her attachment to another man indefinitely, which is not what you signed up for when you married her.
Would you break up a forty year marriage for a 'friendship'? How many people would?
Life does not acknowledge the concept of fairness. Bad things happen to good people. It is not right, but is reality. If your wife is determined to make another man a passenger in your marriage, independent of your feelings, then you also need to start thinking independently, about what is best for you. As unpalatable as this may be, it would be worth you talking to an attorney to get a picture of what divorce would look like, so you know what an alternative to being in a three-person marriage would like. It is a horrible thing to have to do, but you did not create this situation; you had it forced upon you.
As things stand, your wife is being what is called a cake-eater; having her cake and eating it too by having two men in her life. If you take independent action, based upon your refusal to live that way, you put the proverbial ball in your wife's court, and make her choose. If she chooses you, and rejects bozo, so be it. But if she chooses bozo, she reveals an essential truth about herself that speaks volumes about her commitment to the marriage. A painful truth, but a truth that exposes whether or not you can contribute more years of your life to her with an expectation of her reciprocating your level of commitment.
There comes a point where you have to start looking after yourself, regardless of how unfair or undeserved that is. If you are likely to struggle to live in a three-person marriage, you can either 'break' yourself, ignore your pain, and live day to day in a compromised relationship, or withdraw from the dynamic that has been thrust upon you, and let your wife know that it is no longer acceptable to you. If she wants to maintain a 'coffee' relationship that is worth more to her than the marriage, that is her choice, and you are punching out after forty years of faithful service. Or, if the marriage is more important to her, she proves it by severing ties with bozo, because you did not sign up to an open marriage.
A very important element to accept and own in infidelity, as in the rest of life, is that while we cannot control the actions of others, we can control our own. So if life hands us lemons, we can choose to make lemonade, or we can say, "Screw this, I'm getting a burger and a Pepsi". We do not always have to accept what we are handed; there are more options that that.