We've separated and she won't try again.

[anonqioy]

As you can guess i'm male, i've looked for a good advice site for men but they don't seem to exist, so i'm trying here, please be gentle.
we've been together 19 years and been married for 16, we have everything 2 wonderful children (13 & 14), lovely house, nice cars, money (enough to live a comfortable life).
On Saturday we decided to have some time apart, we've had a rough few years, for 2 years my wife completely shut me out, nothing, but i put up with it because i loved her so much. Then it happened i had an affair, i never went looking for it, it just happened.
I left my wife in January because i couldn't carry on, but she wouldn't let go and pleaded with me to come back so 2 weeks later i returned as i realised what i was letting go, unfortunatly a week later she slept with a friend and i found this out on friday in an email in her phone and it detailed what they'd done how she felt about him and me.
I want her back so much, she swears the affair is over but her tank is empty and doesn't want to try again.
We have everything all i want is one last try but she won't stop looking back (at what we've both done), if she could just look forward to how we could be we'd have a wonderful life together. we've both done wrong but we are so good together.
I'd just like some advice, please be gentle, i'm at my whits end.

There's a lack of detail and the timeline is a little confusing. Are you saying that you had an affair two years ago and you've recently discovered your wife has been unfaithful ?

What exactly do you mean by your wife shut you out , do you mean emotionally , sexually ? Who was your affair with , how long did it last for , and how did your wife find out ? Something must have happened for your wife to shut you out.

Sorry but unless she wants to exit this marriage then you can't stop her. The key to the whole problem seems to be the two years when she 'shut down'. Solve that and you have your answer to what went wrong.

I do have an aunt and uncle who did come back from something similar or this but it was painful and took a lot of couples counselling and a long time.

Minion

springydaffs - generally where I've seen a woman on here saying she had an affair she gets an equally cool response. I think affair + material over emotional compounded that.

There was nothing like "one of the best things in our marriage was how much we laugh together" or "I genuinely feel content and complete in her company" or anything like that. Even the children were included under the list of possessions

"to this day she still swears she doesn't know why she reacted like this."

Both you and your wife seem very uncertain, or at least vague, about the motivation behind your own actions. Your affair "just happened"; she gave you the cold shoulder and doesn't know why? I would guess that if you were a bit more honest with yourselves and one another, then some explanations might turn up after all... I really doubt that your marriage is going anywhere, but maybe for the sake of your next relationship I'd suggest a bit of counselling. Might as well get something out of the whole sorry business.

Did you enter the affair because you were feeling unloved and sorry for yourself, and jumped at the chance to be with someone who offered uncomplicated admiration, for example?

Might your wife have been fed up with being a SAHM and felt you weren't pulling your weight at home, or were spending too long at work and with mates? (Obviously just a guess, as you have given us no clues at all, but this is something you hear pretty often so might be the case here too.)

You say you were trying to make things better for those two years, but if you didn't even work out what was wrong, clearly you couldn't effectively make anything better.

My husband also reckons now that he'd been trying to work on our marriage before he had his affair, as it was full of holes. But he didn't say anything to me at the time about the problems he suddenly started mentioning after his affair became obious. As far as I knew, the only problem with our marriage was that he valued his job far more than his family, leaving him little time or energy for us. I made this clear, so if he had wanted to work on our marriage really, that's where he could have started. But that aspect just got worse and worse. I have no idea in what ways he thought he was working on our marriage; I certainly never noticed anything. To be honest I think that is just one of the many ways he's rewriting history. Maybe some of this sounds familiar? If you gave us some more clues we might be able to offer constructive advice.