I’m so sorry you’re here, NotBroken. This type of long-term affair (LTA) is damaging in its own special way because of all of the relationship and family milestones that are affected by it, among other things. The fact that he slept with her while you were pregnant, for example, means that he put your and your baby’s health at risk of STDs.
Said that I am not happy with his honest answers so he doesn't know what else to say (I keep asking why, how could you do this, how was I so stupid) and his answers are basically that he never intended to hurt me, that he didn't even realize the levels of hurt I'd experience from this, that he didn't go seeking to f--k his life up, it was just a happenstance meeting that felt innocent and snowballed, that he feels immense relief he was caught.
All of this, as others have pointed out is such typical cheater excuses that we’ve all heard.
First, he has spent so much time lying to initiate, cover, and now rationalize his affair that he likely has no connection to truth right now. He is scrambling and he has had to lie to himself, her, and you so much that it will take time for him to be able to connect with actual truth—and then, only through a lot of hard, painful work.
Second, saying that he "never intended to hurt you," is irrelevant and also not true. He has hidden this from you for two-plus years. If it wasn’t harmful information, why hide it? He slept with her while you were pregnant. What fantasy land would he have to be in not to understand the real risk of exposure and danger to you and your child of doing this? So if he didn’t "intend" to hurt you while taking very, very harmful and potentially dangerous action to harm you, your children, and your family, that doesn’t say anything about his intentions. It just says a lot about his selfishness and ability to lie to himself in order to do whatever he wanted.
Third, this wasn’t just happenstance. The meeting maybe was, but the rest took a lot of planning, pursuit, lying—SO much lying, hiding, internal rationalizing/justifying, and downright selfishness. This went on for more than 2 YEARS. That isn’t just things getting away from him. He had multiple opportunities EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. For more than 2 years to make one good, caring decision and say this has to stop. He didn’t do that until he was caught. He was lying in bed next to you in the house with his children texting her.. He shut down any thought about stopping or caring about you and your family or whether or not his actions were okay on a daily basis to do all of that for so long.
Finally, he may actually think he’s relieved at this point. He may even say that you’ve saved him. Mine did. It floored me that after all he’d done (mine had been involved with his AP for almost seven years) tome, our kids, our family, that he would think that it was still my job to save him in ANY situation. I think some waywards may also recognize in their spouses that impulse and play to it.
I’m sure that mine did. He was used to manipulating me to get what he needed and wanted. He knew that I was a fixer who took responsibility for helping everyone. To see me sitting there devastated by the knowledge that our life, relationship and family as I knew them had been over for years and hear him say that I’d saved him by catching him was like a slap in the face. Nope, not my job. Never really was, but I’d certainly taken it on for long enough. Dday ended me taking responsibility, supporting him, or listening to his whiny, victim speeches about how he had been sucked in and needed me to rescue him from his own worst impulses.
You’re not close to knowing everything or getting at the truth yet. He is stonewalling while "doing all the right things." Again, I’ll just say that I too was sucked in by that. My WH immediately stopped communicating with his AP in any way and started doing more around the house/with the kids. If you read around, you’ll see that many waywards do this. So be aware that this is the easiest and most evasive thing that they can do, while trying to look like they are doing the "right" things.
Helping around the house, taking up slack with the kids, and NOT CARRYING ON A LONG-TERM AFFAIR WITH ANOTHER PERSON are like bare minimum human being things that are expected as part of any marriage. What they are NOT is any kind of remorse or amends or work to address the devastation that they’ve wrought by having an LTA while you were carrying and raising their kids, being faithful and loyal to them, and holding up your side of the marriage that you were denied the truth of.
The normal "rules" of discussion don’t really apply in the middle of this extreme trauma, so I’m not going to give you advise about how you could have handled his unacceptable anger better. He CHOSE this situation, so it really is up to him to figure his shit out really quickly. What I will say is that he isn’t wrong that he has no tools to do this right now. If he had any useful tools to handle his own issues (anger, frustration, fear, need for external validation, loneliness, doubt, and a million other adult concerns that require healthy coping mechanisms and boundaries), he wouldn’t have made the horrific choices that he has made for himself, his wife, his children, and everyone else. But he absolutely should be transparent every step of the way with what he remembers, discovers, learns, and works through in therapy, so that you can see if he’s becoming someone that you can feel safe with in the future or not. And he absolutely has to get a handle on his anger, his need to lie and hide information, and his desire to keep you away from the truth of what has happened. That is not protective of you, but of himself.
Most on this board will say that MC is not a good idea until you’ve both had your own counseling for awhile. Your marriage didn’t have an affair, he did. He needs to do a lot of work before he can really participate in marriage counseling. It can be very damaging to the BS to do counseling so early, especially if the counselor is not well-versed in dealing with the fallout from infidelity. Please be mindful of whether or not you are being asked to take partial responsibility or are being asked to commit to fixing the marriage before he’s fixed himself.
This is the worst. It’s so painful, shattering and disorienting for such a long time ahead. Please take care of yourself. Don’t beat yourself up if you resolve something one day and change your mind the next. I have never had an experience that caused more harm than my WH’s infidelity and, especially, my WH’s lies and continued self-focus after discovery. For many of us, it’s their lies and behavior after they’ve been discovered that destroys the relationship completely.
Hang in there. Take care of yourself and let him see if he can step up long term to take care of all the things you usually take care of. Watch his actions not his words. If he really wants to save the marriage, he’ll do whatever it takes. He won’t lose patience, feel that he’s done enough, feel like you should be over it in a few months, feel like he’s paid his price and should be all good at some point. Drink water, eat, exercise if you can, get away from him for some part of every day and give yourself as much peace and quiet as you can.
Keep posting. YOu’ll get a lot of great support here, whatever you decide to do going forward.