Apologies, this is so chaotic I don't know that I'm starting at the right place but I have to begin somewhere. My wife is having an online relationship with someone and it looks like it's going to go further when this C-19 shutdown lifts. I'm distraught beyond measure and my head is 24/7 on where I am and where this may go while I'm trying to home-work and interact with my wife.
She either doesn't know how much I know or is supremely callous, and I don't think she's the latter at all. I think she's of the belief she's kept it from me. The thing is she's careless about what she does online away from her phone. I've found stuff online that - despite me trying to find another way of reading it - can't be read as anything other than planning to meet up.
OK, here goes. I've found a booking for a Travelodge paid from her PayPal so it won't show up on our bank/credit card statements, but in her name, our address, and with a modification charge to enable a date change; the booking was on an unclosed window on her iPad. The booking was for Thursday/Friday of half-term in May (she's a teacher so other times could obviously not be worked out). We should be going away for a couple of night this week with a hotel voucher gift from our kids, and the minute that was discussed she pushed me to ensure I booked the time off work, so if this was a plan for us two she'd have made it a point to get me book the time off even if she was going to surprise me with a night away. It's not for me. It even for a town she's repeatedly told me she dislikes enormously, so why she chose there I can't guess, other than to meet this guy who is actually from the other side of the country who could quite feasibly be there on a work-basis.
A few weeks before that she was actually unwell and during that time this guy was actually up this way, staying with his cousin who’s married to a very old friend of hers. That’s where the connection comes in, though whether there was anything back in her younger days before me I don’t know. Anyway, he was staying up this way and she’d said she couldn’t meet up with him before saying she was trying to get away on the Tuesday after work. She was too unwell at that time and he had returned home by the time she was well again. As much as I was grateful that she didn’t see him, it was only goof fortune on my part that they didn’t and he was disappointed but looked forward to try and rearrange to meet up.
I know this because her iPad picks up the photos from her phone and he screenshots their WhatsApp messages and, presumably, sends them back to her. He’s listed in her contacts on that iPad by phone number only, the only single case of a number stored without a name attached out of the hundred or so saved. In recent days they’ve talked of meeting up in his town after C-19 when she might have a Residential, though that was quite jokey, but the comments in that alluded to other sexting, even if there wasn’t any on that particular screenshot. On top of that she’s added his number in NOTES with an OFSTED title to it to disguise it, but as the number is not so far from her own one it leaped off the page at me when I saw it. On top of that, today I’ve found another NOTE on that iPad with an address in his hometown. Zoopla shows the address as sold in 2009 which, I recall from his cousin, was when he had a significant change in his life, which would have meant a move then would be predictable. (He’s been the subject of chatter with us and his cousin and partner because of depression and related issues, in case you wondered how I recall this.)
So what the hell can I do? If I challenge my wife, especially at this time, I could destroy everything. My future includes her in everything I’ve ever thought, hoped, planned. I don’t want to face a future without her as part of it. But I can’t have such a future with her associated with someone else. If this is all online titillation caused by boredom, then I can probably see a way through it. But if there is anything more than that, and if they get together, I’d be a broken man. And I can’t find anyone I know that I can talk to about it. I’m not a hermit or a loner, and I’m actually quite a social person at work, where I’m in a team of around twenty, and involved with many other teams of similar numbers that I meet with day in day out and enjoy banter and friendship with most of them. I don’t have many that I’d share more intimate matters with, and the one guy I thought I could speak to about stuff like this is actually apologetic about not being able to deal with it himself at the moment for his own unrelated issues (health essentially, for him and for family). Cue vacancy for a good mate, eh? That’s my fault, I’ve chosen to rely on my wife as my principal adviser/confidante and 2 other guys who are fairly estranged from me now after moving away for work. The other person I would have spoken with actually broke a trust a couple of years ago and I wouldn’t know how to approach the matter with him, even if I was comfortable enough to broach the matter with him.
This is actually just a summary in some respects. I’m not exactly free from criticism in this, though I’ve not ‘strayed’ in any way since we married 30 years ago. I know I can seem a sulky moody so-and-so, but I’m also not without my good points. I’ve been the best dad/step-dad I could be, and I’m not being arrogant blowing my own trumpet in saying that this would be the comment of pretty much everyone who knows of us. But this is taking over everything in my world right now. How can I address it?