Separation Following My Wife's Infidelity

[Scratchclaw2017]

Hi,
I'm new to all this and this is the first time i've ever posted anything on a forum so please bear with me. I very recently found out that my wife (i am a man) has been having an affair with another woman. I had my suspicions a while ago but she said nothing was happening so i believed her. Just a few weeks back i saw messages on her phone confirming that my greatest fears were in-fact true. I asked her about it and she confessed to being in an emotional and at times sexual relationship since just after Christmas. Hearing this has completely and utterly broken my heart. Cant stop crying all the time and have sunk to a real low to the point i've make enquiries to get some professional help and also i'm going to 'Andys Man Club' which is an in-person forum for men who need to talk but aren't comfortable doing so. Hopefully this will help. My wife and I have had some long chats about the situation since i found out and although it hurts like hell i am starting to understand things a bit better. Our marriage has been drifting for a couple of years with us being more like good friends than a couple so think a separation was inevitable at some point, its just this affair has brought it front and centre. We have now decided to separate but are taking it slowly as we have 3 young kids and want to pick the right time to tell them. We do get on very well and seem pretty aligned in that we still want to be part of each others lives, just not as husband and wife. My wife wants to (and is) continue her new relationship which i cant really do anything about and if it makes her happy then i've decided i'm going to try and come to terms with it all. Where i'm really struggling is that since this has happened, its really opened my eyes to the fact that not only do i still love my wife very very much, i'm also still very much in love with her. I am being crippled by feelings of jealousy whenever she goes out to see her new 'friend' and i guess i'm after some guidance and/or reassurance that things get easier as time goes by? Any suggestions for coping mechanisms etc would be very helpful. Thanks in advance.

Wow, she wants her cake and to eat it.

She can only have one or the other

Jesus, of course you're struggling. Your wife needs to give you some space so you can get your head together. Seeing her every day in the marital home is going to be doing a number on your emotions. One of you needs to move out.

Keep going to Andy's Man Club, see if you can talk to friends as well.
Get yourself into a position where you accept it is over and work to be good and fair parents for the children.
Time does heal and given six months, then a year, you will feel differently. The first few months will be very hard. Be grateful for your children and concentrate on them and your work.
Also try to find something for yourself, an activity you can do alone to give yourself some space and become an individual in your own right. Maybe there is a walking group and you can take weekend days separately with your children to start with, so you don't have to be together every Saturday and Sunday.
You will feel better eventually.

For coping mechanisms, do your work offer any counselling? A professional may be good for more in-depth feelings and processes for you to handle this.

I’m sorry to read this OP. It’s very laudable that you want to keep it amicable, and for you to be so gracious in your responses. But beware. “Taking things slowly” and “still being a part of each other’s lives” can just be another way of prolonging the pain you are in and not facing up to the hard reality of the situation.

The brutal fact is that although your wife may care about you, she is now focusing on her needs and her desire to be with someone else rather than with you. She hasn’t gone about this by sensitively talking through your issues together - she did it by going behind your back and leading to the inevitable outcome that you would have the awful shock of finding out.

It’s great that you are approaching this calmly, but you need to gather your strength and separate yourself from the situation rather than having your heart out through the mill as she continues this relationship while you try to be her friend. I wish you luck.

Just wanted to provide a different perspective as the wife is getting the heat. The OP has said they’ve had some deep discussions and that a split was inevitable at some point. As we’ve not been told exactly the nature of what came out in these discussions then let’s take him at his word. The wife isn’t wanting her cake and eating it. They have come to an arrangement, albeit a complicated one where kids are involved and the OP is still in love with her. But such an arrangement isn’t impossible.
When I split from my first husband, we remained in the same house for about 8 months until it was sold as neither of us could afford to buy out the other. We had no kids together so that wasn’t an issue. But our marriage had never been great, and got steadily worse. Basically he drank too much and despite always promising not to and saying he’d seek help he never did. Eventually that line in the sand was crossed and I said it was over. He kind of agreed. I moved into the spare room. We actually managed to share meals etc. though increasingly had separate lives. However the weird thing was he was the first to start seeing someone else. Just one night stands at first then other relationships. He would stay away overnight, that’s how I knew. However when I eventually did the same he could not handle it. He’d follow me around the house when I was getting ready to go out with his petted lip, even though he’d stayed out the night before. So it was ok for him but not ok for me.
Eventually the house was sold and on the last day he burst into tears as we hugged each other goodbye. I on the other hand couldn’t wait to be free. He moved into a flat just round the corner and almost immediately started dating the woman across the landing from him. They are still together as far as I know.

What I took from our relationship was that he was happy with the status quo but I was anything but. It seemed to be that he was wanting a life companion with all the benefits without putting too much effort in himself. If you truly do still love your wife and there is no hope of reconciliation then no wonder this is torture for you and I suggest that one of you needs to move out to enable you to move on.

You’re a better person than I would be accepting that the affair is continuing! You say you are in love with her but is that because she seems much more attractive now she is sleeping with somebody else? My advice is to move things along a bit regarding the separation. This situation is not good for your mental health

You need to remember that what ever arrangement you have now it is a transitional one to you both living separately, having separate lives and co-parenting. You need to focus on that an on keeping things moving forward to that end.

Sitting there feeling jealous while your wife floats around with her new relationship energy is not going to help you. You need to be seeing a lawyer and trying to get some professional counselling.

Just wanted to provide a different perspective as the wife is getting the heat.
As she should. It's her who had the affair, not OP.

The OP has said they’ve had some deep discussions and that a split was inevitable at some point.
Oh stop spin doctoring, They had these discussions AFTER OP discovered that she was having ab affair.

OP - well done on the Andys Man Cub thing. Also - it's ok to cry. Do as much of that as you can, when you have safe space to do so.
I recommend you avail yourself of the excellent Chump Lady, forget this "amicable" nonsense except in front of the kids, & start getting straetgic about YOUR life going forward. Browse the archives, marvel at the wit, snark & solid advice, & find your anger. Anger can be cathartic, & healing.
https://www.chumplady.com/

As PP mentioned upthread, you need her out of your living space. Practically & financially that might take time, but push on with resolution, because you cannot heal while she is still cohabiting with you & cheerfully nipping out to have her cake & eat it. Get a sharp lawyer, decide what childcaring responsibility you want, get an estimate of how the marital assets will be split & who gets what/is resident parent/if you will go 50/50 on residence. Then push for whatever needs to happen to achieve that, including house sale & each of you starting again in a smaller property.

I'm sorry this has happened to you.
Focus on making you & DC a tight, happy little unit. I don't mean start Disney Dadding, I mean ensure you have cosy evenings together, fun cooking family dinners, activities etc. The kids, & your wellbeing to continue supporting them, is what's important now. You are still a family - you & them. The sooner you can stop facilitating their mother's "amicable" cake-eating, the better you will start to feel.

At the moment she has the stable home life and the teenage, no responsibility relationship.

Read about the 180.

People rewrite history when having an affair, it goes with the territory and allows them to live with the cognitive dissonance an affair creates.

Affairs have a 3% chance of working, she is likely to then come crawling back. But her behaviour is killing your relationship dead. I’d stop being so nice. I don’t mean be nasty I just mean give her consequences. So you want to split, talk to me about how this is going to work? If she deflects back say ‘you’ve had far more time to plan, so what’s the plan?’.

Affairs are fantasy land - a cocktail of chemicals. I read once that an affair lives by burning up everything in your life, your marriage, relationships, self esteem, self worth, your financial security, previous dreams, retirement, then when you have given it all up, used it as fuel to prove the affair is what you need in life, you are wonderful or your marriage was awful or your affair partner is your true soulmate, the affair dies (it was never going to work) leaving you surrounded by ashes. The author wrote it far better by the way.

Sadly I have seen this, when people are left financially worse off, in a smaller leas stable home, with 50/50 shared care of the kids and then the new relationship fails too. They hobble on with the affair longer than they would as they cannot admit they destroyed several peoples lives for fuck all and the soulmate was nothing of the sort. Of course at this stage they all think they have the 3% affair that will be a success 😂.

Chrck out the surviving infidelity website and affair recovery. The former has advice for you even if you are separating. The latter will help you understand what has happened and why it’s not your fault.

I am sorry this has happened and I hope you get the best outcome.

Your wife is being very selfish by not giving you time to come to terms with this and continuing to see this woman.

You're right that you can't stop her unfortunately but the reason I mention it is just to say that dealing with her seeing someone else at the moment will be heightening your feelings of love/being IN love with her, you don't really have a chance to feel or know how you really feel, because it's so heightened by that and having to deal with feelings of jealousy etc. along with the normal feelings that accompany a break up so it's twice as difficult for you.

The feelings will pass and it WILL get better. I am very glad to hear you're enquiring about professional help, have you already started at Andys man club?
Do you have any close friends or family who you've talked to about this or who at least know you're struggling?

We have now decided to separate but are taking it slowly as we have 3 young kids and want to pick the right time to tell them. We do get on very well and seem pretty aligned in that we still want to be part of each others lives, just not as husband and wife

It might be better to do it sooner rather than later if you're struggling whenever she goes out to meet her girlfriend.

Also, often for ex couples who remain civil or become friends or even good friends they need time apart before they can come back together as friends.
There generally has to be a more real separation, time and space apart, probably some arguments and so on.....and then after that period a new friendship can form.

Do you train or exercise at all? Something like boxing might help you get some anger and stress out safely if you want it.
Half the men I know took up boxing or MMA after a break up 😅

Do you drink? If so I'd probably avoid it for now, it's likely to make you feel worse.

We have now decided to separate but are taking it slowly as we have 3 young kids and want to pick the right time to tell them. We do get on very well and seem pretty aligned in that we still want to be part of each others lives, just not as husband and wife

It might be better to do it sooner rather than later if you're struggling whenever she goes out to meet her girlfriend.

Exactly this.
There is no "right time" to tell the kids. This is bullshit, I suspect manufactured by your wife, so that she can continue to have all the comforts & security of the marital home & her DC about her (& built-in childcare when she is off with her lover!) while enjoying all the excitement of her affair.
It suits your wife to string this out to her own advantage.
She is also making you perform the Pick-Me Dance -
https://www.chumplady.com/2012/04/the-humiliating-dance-of-pick-me/

Stop accepting this narrative. Hire a lawyer. Advocate for your kids. Protect your half of the assets from any depredations. Take control, push a divorce through. You will feel much better for it. Limboland is no place to live.

I agree with PP - your wife is asking too much here. It’s great that you want to keep it amicable - that’s very much the best thing for your DCs and much healthier for you and her. Ultimately, it’s what will allow you to move on best also. But as a PP said, you need a period away from her to start to get over her.

But it’s asking too much for her to continue to live in the marital home while she conducts an affair right in front of you. It also prevents you beginning the emotional separation from her which is vital to your recovery. I suggest you have a further conversation to say that the current set-up is too painful for you, it’s breaking your heart and preventing you from starting to recover and you need to tell the children and start organising the separation, including her moving out. That’s what most people who are conducting an affair do. It’s actually the decent thing to do.

I agree with Dery. Say I don’t want us to break up, but I accept that is what you want. So on that basis we need to get on with it. Let’s tell the children we are no longer together. I will tell family that you have met a woman and want to be with her. We need to get the house up for sale and start divorce proceedings. Say you need to move on with your own life away from her. Create the new stability for your children. Ironically this is the way you are most likely to get her to change her mind. The sad part is after two or four years it may be you that wants to leave. You may realise she is not the one for you. Affairs are heartbreaking and so very selfish. At the moment you are traumatised and won’t be able to see the wood for the trees.

Pull the plug. Make her fantasy land real life. She can focus on figures and estate agents and children and family for a while.

Hi All,

Thanks for all the useful info and comments, i really appreciate it. After whats has been a little over a month of 'drifting' i decided earlier this week to tell my 'other half' that i want to start telling family and friends that we're separating and that she's been having an affair with another woman and wishes to pursue that relationship. Suggested we wait until the next school holidays to tell the kids so they can come to terms with it whilst we're all together as a family at home. From there i'll be looking for a place to rent for me as despite what a lot of people say about kicking her out, I do believe the kids are better off with her and in the 'family home' it is just that, the kids home. Think we're going to keep the house on together as an investment for us both until the kids are of an age that they move on (uni etc) and then we can sell it and benefit from the equity. When i told her this is what i wanted to do and i want to do it now (telling family and friends) i think it did come as a bit of a shock as guess its now become very real and she's now going to have to deal with the reality that she's had an affair and said affair is with another woman who a lot of people know in the local community. I'm not focussing on the fact she's turned gay as that is her choice and respect it to some degree but she is going to have to deal with the infidelity which may not be pleasant and is a consequence of her actions she wont want to have to face. Difficult times ahead but starting to feel some kind of closure, even though i do still love her very much which is a big hurdle i've got to overcome.

Just as a side note, if any men reading this have had similar issues and struggled with deep sadness and depression, please look into Andy's Man Club who have branches throughout the country. I've been a couple of times now and on my first visit, i spilled my guts about absolutely everything i've been going through to 10 guys i've never met in my life and it felt like a massive weight was lifted. Be brave and just go if you need to!

Thanks again everyone.

Wow so you’re ok with your wife moving her affair partner into your home and playing happy families. I don’t really see how this is easier for the kids or you especially as you confess to still having feelings for her.
Have you been to see your Doctor about depression and a Solicitor about your rights and custody yet?