Cheater wife

[Jack1964]

My wife of 30 yrs has been cheating on me for the last 4 months.
I have all the evidence from descriptive xrated texts to naked photos sent to each other, I even know where and when they met at his house.
Anyway lots of private information about myself and family were shared with him.
My wife has been a very loyal dependable mother and wife is in great shape and is usually of high moral standards.
Interestingly enough , I find it a a task to get my wife interested in sex due to her Menopause and lack of libido, yet she is more than willing to meet her partner 1-2 times a week for sex and she even told him she would contemplate divorcing me if all worked out with them.
I confronted her and she reluctantly confessed after being shown the evidence.
She blames it on having a boring life and working so hard and just wanted to do something exciting for herself.
We have 2 grown children and are very well off so no pressure on finances etc.
Anyway I cannot get this deceit and lack of morality out of my head, I’m going to see a counselor along with my wife but I don’t think this will help erase the thoughts and images I have of them both.
Interestingly enough it was the other man who ended this relationship whilst my wife practically begged for him to continue.
Wife says she doesn’t want to get divorced and feels cheated that 1 little mistake is going to ruin a 30 year marriage.
I would love to erase the last 4 months but I am finding it impossible to do so.

Is there any hope ?

Even if you ‘recover’ from this (whatever that means), you should not expect your wife’s view of you to suddenly change to mirror that of her AP. The knowledge that she sees you as lesser - in any shape or form - will eat away at you like a cancer.

If she was so determined to make your marriage work, tell her to transfer all your joint assets into your name and all your joint debts into hers. That way you will have some small guarantee that she will have some sort of motivation to do the hard mileage she has laid out for you both. If she refuses to do that, she has no motivation to make the changes required or fears it is unlikely to succeed. Either way she is refusing to take the same sized risk that she is asking you to take by staying with her and burning up more years of your life fighting through the misery she has created.

It always strikes me as the most hilarious hypocrisy when cheaters ask for fairness or any kind of measured, proportionate response to their extreme betrayal.

I do apologise. For some reason the page 2 messages didn’t load before I posted my comment. I see you have resolved to part company. I think this is wise.
As someone who has been cheated on, I know all to well the sense of emotional disregulation and helplessness you are feeling and I can tell you that the best cure for that is taking charge of the situation. Be resolute. Be decisive. Be unmoved by any pleas of reconciliation. Be single minded in drawing a final line under this ASAP and moving on. This will lead to a sense of empowerment. There will be low points. There will be doubt and there will be tears. But feeling helpless and at the mercy of the goodwill of another, will cripple you for a long time to come.

Oh and counselling: my experience is that in such situations as yours, couples counselling is pointless. The counsellor takes a non-judgemental approach and will try to blame you for 50% of the problem. This will cause you untold harm. 1-to-1 counselling could help you understand your wife’s failings as a person and help you be more reconciled to life after her by not idealising her - something we are prone to do at such times.

Definitely not one little mistake! Lying, cheating and betraying your trust and marriage. If it was me or reversed, I'd say end the marriage. I couldn't live with someone who did that to me.

An awful lot of us have been through what you are going through Jack. The old saying, 'When you are going through hell, keep going' is my favourite. It's a process and you have to go through each bit. Get a solicitor, get the ball rolling and don't engage with her more than you have to. Let the solicitor do their thing. That is what you pay them for. By the time it's all done you do feel ....not better but in a more manageable frame of mind. It is hell though. There's no denying it.

Only you know if you can get past the betrayal or not. Some can, some can't. I would go to counselling on your own to process it rather than with your wife. Especially if she is calling it "one little mistake". There is also the betrayal of discussing your private life with this other man aswell. some things are just unforgivable. If she was unhappy, she could have discussed this with you gone to counselling. its a bit late suggesting it now.

Contrary to what everyone else says, I'd stay with her. Four months is nothing in the grander scheme of things. Take iit is a good chance to review your relationaship, they all have up and downs. You know she had an affair, that is enough, stop torturing yourself with the details, getting her to write a letter to explain will make it worse. She probably regrets it. Do you foresee her as the person you want to grow old with or not? Give it a year and it will all be forgotten, it's so bourgeois to worry about sexual infidelity.

TheWashingMachine says when they are waiting their turn at the clap clinic.

I didn’t get to see therapist today as she had a crisis to deal with, alas I won’t get to see her until Fri.
Had a flaming row with wife last night and I brought up all the deceit and affair again and told her she is damn lucky that I’m still around.
She wanted to know if I am going to Divorce her because it surely looks that way.
She then turns it around on me and told me we haven’t been happy for the last 8 years or so and she was contemplating divorce then.
Well to be honest I was a little shocked that she seems to think divorce is probably for the best.
WTF is going on?

Your relationship is in crisis. This will be a rough time. That's tough to think that you are holding the power and then discover that she may not want to stay either. But at least you are now being honest. That could be a positive.

Are you doing any therapy together?

And I'm kinda with @TheWashingMachine, as I have seen many marriages ride out affairs.

Oh OP, I am so sorry and you are worth so much more.

She is telling you that she emotionally left your marriage 8 years ago effectively. She said she didn't want sex with you due to xyz, but she is happy to have cheap sex with some bit of fluff. You deserve someone who wants to be with you, not who feels burdened with you. How dare she, she has some front.

One minute she is saying you would cheat her out of the marriage for one mistake, the next she is saying she hasn't been happy for 8 years???

She will back peddle and manipulate, she wont want your boys to know how disgustingly she treated their dad. Once she knows you wont tell them, she will stab you in the heart.

The truth is that people who do something unthinkable like this (4months) will try to push blame on to the victim of their disloyalty in order to justify their behaviour.

You are too good for her, she is behaving like a skunk.

Skank

Mumsnet - why is this thread, involving a betrayed Male, so much more pro reconciliation than a female being betrayed. If OP was a female, her OH would have been annihilated by now and OP told exactly what she was. OP, may be worth taking a look at some female threads on the same matter for some unbiased advice

Cheaters normally blame their infidelity on their partners, it's par for the course. It means she's still not accepting responsibility for her actions and wants to make it all your fault.

She had ample opportunity to ask for a divorce if she was so unhappy, and only considered moving on from your marriage if she was certain she had another male waiting in the pipeline. She's lying and deflecting and making a lot of angry noise. Shut it all out and take care of yourself.

If she feels bored in her life (and marriage) and says that's why she did it she's quite likely to do it again if the opportunity arose unless something changes so she doesn't feel so bored.

I'm not blaming you for a boring relationship, she has responsibility on that front as well. But I think you both need to look at the relationship and think can you (do you want to) rekindle the excitement? Make time for each other, go out and do stuff together, etc. It's easy to stop doing that after 30 years.

If you can't or don't want to then it's probably best to call it a day.

From your latest response, I'd say there's no hope for your marriage. You won't be able to forgive and forget because she's not actually sorry. I agree with the PP who said that the responses on this thread have been more pro reconciliation than threads where the cheating spouse is a man. And I've never seen anyone suggest that a woman should hide their husband's infidelity from adult children either.

Just seen your last message about her not been happy for 8 years.

That's pretty bad that she didn't have the decency to tell you and either finish things or try and sort it out. She was happy to let you carry on in the relationship, no doubt enjoying the benefits of marriage until someone else came along.

My mum did that to my dad and in the end my dad said enough was enough and left. Mum was upset because it meant the nice house had to be sold, the comfortable lifestyle wasn't quite as comfortable. But she used him to maintain that lifestyle as she wasn't prepared to end it.

This is pretty standard cheaters 101 handbook. Attack is the best form of defence in lots of ways. I think they have to justify what they've done to themselves so obviously you're to blame. I found there was a lot of rewriting history in my case. It's bloody hard to take when you are already in emotional turmoil.
It's also a way of taking away your control of the situation. It's clearly shocked you and perhaps made you question yourself. Now it might not feel like your decision to stay or divorce.
There may be some truth in what she's saying (to her anyway) but surely having a conversation about it or trying to change and improve the relationship would have been the way forward rather than having an affair !! I know others don't agree but to me there is no valid excuse for cheating.
Maybe try and stay focused on your feelings here. Because at the moment that's what matters.

People say things in the heat of the moment when they are at crisis point. Once things are a bit calmer maybe you can map out future plans, just don't be rash and say things you will regret. Your pride is wounded, she is feeling incredibly guilty, everyone has their defences up. Time and not brooding are great healers.

OP, you should just disregard everything TheWashingMachine has posted.

Mumsnet moral standards are so impossibly high.

OP - if (and it is a sizeable if) this is the only time your W has been unfaithful then please do spend some time in discussion with her about what drove her to take this step. Divorce is not the only option, but it will take commitment from both of you to get past this.

^I am going to ask her to write me a letter explaining everything she has done and why she thinks she did this.
I also need her to guarantee going forward this will never happen again if I give her another chance.^

Its good you didn't go through with this, because this sounds a bit overbearing and controlling, and wouldn't work. If she's fallen out of love with you, demanding she writes an apology to you and gives some sort of unenforceable guarantee is not going to do any good. Going by your posts, she doesn't respect or love you any more. Let her go.

@TheWashingMachine
Actually thought talked some sense.
LTB is not always the answer.
(Unless there is violence then it's always the answer. )

I'm not against reconciliation at all and I've even seen instances where the couple (weirdly) seem to have grown closer afterwards. It wouldn't be for me but I realise that it can and does sometimes work out.

The reason why I wouldn't recommend it in this particular instance is because the wife does not seem remorseful. Nothing the OP has written suggests that she would be willing to own her failures or help the OP process and deal with the anger, hurt, insecurity and grief that he'll be feeling as a result of her actions. He's just discovered the affair and this is a period where she should be grovelling. Instead, she's turned it around on him, is suddenly telling him that she's been unhappy for 8 years and hinting that she'd welcome a divorce. She also feels like she's entitled to his forgiveness because they've been married for 30 years, even though she likely would have left the marriage if the other man hadn't dumped her.

Like a PP said, it doesn't sound like she loves or respects him at all. They'll both need to work hard to recover from this and it's unlikely from her behaviour so far that she'll put the work in.

I also still think that if this was a woman whose husband had had an affair and continued to treat them poorly, no one would be suggesting that she needs to think of ideas on how to bring the spark back to their relationship or telling them that being hurt by infidelity is 'so bourgeois'.

Her head I still up in the affair clouds; some people call it ‘The Fog’. Just like an addict of some kind they construct all kinds of narratives to justify their behaviours and just like an addict they need to hit rock bottom to start seeing the World and their actions straight. Alcoholics need to lose everything before they stand up I. A circle and say “I’m an alcoholic and I’ve destroyed myself and those around me”. If you want her to understand the hurt, the seriousness and the consequences of her actions then you need to make sure she hits that rock bottom and soon. Do not enable her by listening to her bullish!t justifications. See a lawyer, disconnect, shut her out. Anything else is masochism. When she realises that life is going to be much less fun for her in the future, her tune will change dramatically. It’s up to you how you proceed from there but you will be in a greater position of strength than if you don’t pull the emotional rug from under her now.

I can't say because I have never been in this position but if I was (and I know it's easier said than done for me to say this having not been in your shoes) I would walk away. I think it says a lot that he ended it and not her. Will you be forever wondering 'what if he didn't end it? Would she be with him now and not me?' I know that's what I would be thinking. I think it's good you are going for counselling. Good luck to you, I really hope you find the answers you're looking for.

@Banangana

I agree with the PP who said that the responses on this thread have been more pro reconciliation than threads where the cheating spouse is a man

I agree too.

A few pp making excuses for her too.. thats never the case when a man cheats. Nobody says he must have been bored.

I believe in gender equality...that extends to not applying double standards, as is often the case in MN.

OP.... Google the infidelity 180 and implement it.

As you have grown up children, it's so much easier.