Hi, married for 30odd years. found out last year husband cheated for the last 5 with a colleague. how did I find out? he left out of the blue for 10 days. i left for work, and when I came back, he was gone. ten days of hell. then he agreed to come back. then 5 days later his 'mistress' (uglier, older, fatter and much stupider than me, but good bra size and jolly good company allegedly) showed up in our house unannounced and uninvited to tell me (sledgehammer event) he was supposed to have been moving in with her two weeks ago and chickened out. she called him all names under the sun in front of the shocked me. turns out they had been seeing each other for a few years and when i was away for work and seeing family she used to come to our house and he slept with her in our marital bed. and during lockdown. and when our kids were away. and when i was ill in hospital. we have grown up children. this hit one of them hard. the other is coping better. we argued for a month. he said he loved me and did not want to see her. then i found it the relationship continued for another 7 months (she pursued him until he agreed to start again) while he was swearing blind he did not want to have anything to do with her. at the start of the extra 7 months she arranged for him to see a divorce lawyer. he did. but undertook no further steps. he then broke it off again with her after those 7 months. we now live together and work from home, we live in the middle of nowhere. i don't know what to do. he says he loves me. he says he had made a big mistake. (when i say he slept with her= he had an op 10 years ago which made him impotent, so fumble with each other at best). also, it turned out her husband left her just before she invited my husband to 'sleep' with her on a business trip all those years ago. when her divorce finally came through she bombarded my H with rental listings until he left us (temporarily). when he did not move in with her, she pursued him until he agreed to see her again. when he finally broke off the second time she spent 6 months sending me messages about their escapades and him messages demanding damages. seemed like stalking.
we are both well educated although after having two children it was inevitable that his career flourished while mine floundered. there is a huge discrepancy in our earning potential. i take pride in how well he has done for himself (steered by my advice at the beginning) but feel cheated out of a chance to make an equally better life for myself. my family supported us financially in the beginning and paid for the children's private education, uni fees etc.
i don't know where to go from here. i see that she perceived him as a meal ticket. he lied and and lied and lied. i am in my early 50s and this all seems like a huge betrayal. educated and well read enough to draw enough lessons from social sciences, philosophy, art, literature. but when it's someone you lived with all your adult life - what do you do?