I've been responding to some kind PMs (thank you to those who have sent these, they are appreciated) and whilst I was here couldn't allow this to continue without adding something:
Some of you for whatever reason (I don't get the agenda nor do I care but from the way some of you are like dogs with a bone there clearly is one!) have bent over backwards to make digs at me, goading me almost, implying I'm a bit thick, 'head in the sand', that I've been abused, my self esteem is poor, I'm having the wool pulled over my eyes, I fail to see him for what he is, I should treat her with sympathy. And so on.
It's ridiculous. You don't know me, yet some of you presume to, and yet most of your assumptions are way off the mark. For the record I'm no gullible hausfrau, I'm an independently wealthy, successful woman. I don't need a man in my life, nor have I ever. If we split up tomorrow financially I would be no worse off. So no need to worry I am trapped or scared to be alone :)
You may or may not - based on your own experiences - agree with my decision. The point of the thread was not asking you if you did, if you thought I was naive, or fooling myself, and to those who have answered the question I asked, or shared how they themselves faced a similar situation, and dealt with it, I am grateful.
To everyone else, I'm sure you'll continue in the same vein. Because there's nothing I could say that would make a difference barring that I had changed my mind and that we would not stay together. I'm not going to say that, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree :)
I'm more hurt by her ridiculous exaggerations, abusive comments and downright lies than by anything else - I don't consider she had any right to contact me and she should be grateful I didn't report her to the police for the messages she sent me. If she wanted me to know the truth, there were ways of doing this. But her agenda was very clearly to say anything at all, true or untrue, in order to split us up - in the hope that if I was finally out of the picture he might want a relationship with her, by default I suppose. Finding myself on the receiving end of someone who is prepared to say literally anything to destroy a relationship is an extraordinary experience. This wasn't just putting me in the picture. It was deliberately setting out to insult and abuse me. Almost everything she said is a product of her own fervent imagination, spite and nastiness rather than anything he told her or she thought she knew. And that isn't me deceiving myself either, I have enough information to know the difference between fantasy and reality. On that basis I really should just disregard her bullshit in the same way I would any random stranger who heckled and abused me in the street, and that is what I will be doing. The other aspects I will continue to work through with my counsellor.
We're not all homogeneous. People don't always do the right thing, mistakes are made. Lives can be long - personally I'm hoping for at least another 40 years, maybe longer if in good health. I won't be discarding many years of past happiness (and I am sure many future years to come) for a short term mistake. And fidelity is not an absolute, there are no guarantees; I am sure there are many people who don't think they would ever cheat, or that their spouse would, but given a specific set of circumstances you can't ever know for sure how you or they would react. Before this I would never have said he would never be unfaithful, I don't think anything is ever 100% but I would have said it was very unlikely. So I'll leave it there.