The last time I posted on MN was in 2017 and I got a really bad reception so please be kind. I've been with my DW 17 years and married for 12 years and have 2 children. Our sex life was great for the first number of years but naturally reduced in frequency especially after marriage. Despite this I felt nothing was wrong as despite it becoming less frequent than I wanted the quality was always great - we always climaxed at the same time (i'd wait for her) and it was obviously very loving and authentic. By the time we had our first child nearly 9 years ago, intimacy had seriously reduced and my sexual advances were fairly consistently rejected. I assumed that despite loving each other wholeheartedly and still both being sexually attracted to each other - that DW simply had a much lower sex drive than me and wasn't at all interested in sex as much as I was. This continued until 2016 when I became more and more frustrated by not just the lack of sex but what I came to feel was a lack of general intimacy between us. I became despondent over time especially when mutual female friends would openly describe their very high sex drive. I felt like very sorry for myself because I still loved her so much but always had a very high sex drive which I assumed was simply incompatible with my DW.
At the end of 2016 I unexpectedly started a sudden infatuation with a beautiful woman who was 12 years younger than me and on our first meeting showed me affection and sexual interest. I immediately felt this sudden explosion of need and desire and realisation of what I'd been missing. We started a two week "affair" which consisted of a few kisses and chats but nothing physical and we both felt extremely anxious and uneasy about it and she ended it. I was heartbroken, not because of any love for her but for the rejection and feeling that I'd lost the one opportunity I'd found for meaningful intimacy. I felt trapped in my marriage to a woman and child I loved intensely but was unfulfilled and frustrated by sexually. I was totally lost and heartbroken and told my wife about it. We went to couples therapy for 3 months where the majority of the discussion seems to centre on DW perception that I didn't contribute equally to household work which turned her off sexually. DW said very little in those sessions. Our communication and appreciation for each other did improve and we resolved to continue our marriage. I subsequently went through what I've since been told was likely 3 years of depression. Our sex life and general intimacy didn't improve and I allowed myself to fixate on the woman that got away; paying for her to move to new zealand, finding her a job, paying her deposit and generally paying to make her dream of emigrating come true just to feel a small sense of validation and acceptance.
What I didn't know was that my wife had been reading my texts and emails for the last 9 months in the belief I was having an affair and never confronted me. Eventually I realised she knew and broke down and explained my heartache of unrequited infatuation. She forgave me instantly and I felt this overwhelming feeling of security and comfort that my DW was the perfect person for me because of the way she handled it. Still the intimacy didn't improve, we had sex less than once a month to the point i started googling definitions for sexless marriage and asking for advice on mumsnet (which was awful, I got crucified).
A few years later I discovered a bag full of dildos and sex toys, and her reaction was horror. I was personally relieved because I felt it meant she did have sexual needs and drive. A while later she called me anxiously to tell me a girlfriend of a man she'd been chatting to on twitter was convinced they were flirting inappropriately and that it was nothing but football banter. The gf called me and I straight out shut her down, absolutely certain that DW simply didn't have that desire or sexual need or drive and that even if she did she'd tell me. a month later I saw the mans name come up on DW phone and opened the chat to find several years thread of extremely graffic sexting. Dick pics and extremely explicit chat going back at least 2 years. I wanted to hold it in but was shocked and frozen and went white and confronted her about it. She claimed it was pure fantasy, like watching porn and was harmless. Again my main feeling was relief that I'd discovered a sexual drive that I could tap into. The one thing that stuck out from the texts was that she'd invited him to our flat for sex and he bottled it and didn't turn up. She claimed that was all heat of the moment fantasy and she would never have gone though with it. She could see how upset I was about the episode so only 2 weeks later I was devastated to find another thread of sexting on her phone with a person she'd previously slept with before our relationship. She was reliving the sordid nature of the sex etc and it totally devastated me. That was in 2020.
Over the following 3 years we started to discuss non monogamy and joined an ENM app. Our sex life immediately went through the roof. We went from having great sex once a month to having extremely gratifying much more adventurous sex about 3 times a day for 3 or 4 months. She was sexting guys on the app and making videos (solo and with me) but she showed it to me whenever I asked and I genuinely wasn't in any way upset or hurt by them because it wasn't in secret and was done in my full knowledge and approval. Suddenly all the activity stopped dead and I asked DW directly to promise me that she hadn't migrated to another channel or platform, I also asked her to tell me if she'd ever slept with anyone else since we began our relationship and she convincingly promise me she hadn't.
Our sex life remained much better for the last 2 years although it did reduce again in frequency but i felt we were much more in tune with each other. However there was this unresolved insecurity that I harboured. She had changed the password on her phone, so i was frequently checking her laptop for evidence. I found nothing and over time began to trust again.
Then suddenly 8 weeks ago when she'd gone away to see her friend abroad, I searched her laptop and discovered an enormous cache of saved texts, photos and videos starting all the way back in 2014 in her dropbox. She obviously exported her whatsapps and hidden them. They detailed in extreme explicit detail her physical infidelity with a man she met at a work xmas party in 2013, 2 years after our wedding, around the time we were trying to concieve our first child. They had sex 4 times, twice in our flat on our couch, and twice at his flat. the last time was 2 weeks after we learned of our pregnancy. It's clear from the texts that she wanted to continue the affair and he tended to go quiet and then come back. There were texts 2 weeks after she gave birth that suggested she wanted to see him but couldn't promise sex as she had endured a very tough childbirth and just wanted to kiss him. There is evidence of her booking a hotel for them 6 months after giving birth but he bottled it and it didn't happen. The texts with this man continued sporadically in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 (after the whole sexting was discovered). These sexts are clearly more about reminiscing about the affair for masturbation but they both state a desire to meet up again although it doesn't appear to have ever happened.
There are other chats with other men just after that physical affair fizzled out with a man she slept with an had anal sex and used all the sex toys I didn't know existed at that time in a hotel in 2015 (our child was 6 months old). There are other texts where it's clearly just fantasy and she's using it as an outlet for her secret sexual desires.
Obviously I totally blew up and we've been in trauma and trying to fix ourselves and our relationship since. Lots of therapy. lots of talking and walking and sex. she's completely come clean and takes full responsibility for her actions. She has been patient and resilient to my volatile behaviour since, and is genuinely trying to save our marriage. She recognises that she "compartmentalised" me for years as a DH and kept her sexual activity and urges secret and separate. She didn't feel it would impact on me because she loved me and thought so long as I didn't know it wouldn't affect us. She's now realised that by doing so she alienated me for years and denied me the intimacy I had been craving. She lied and gaslit me and betrayed me horribly.
I want so much to stay with her. I love her immensely. I want her, I'm deeply sexually attracted to her. We have a whole life together including 2 children and I want to get over it and enjoy what has since become a very intimate and loving new relationship. However I still have massive bouts of doubt and anxiety. The fact that she can't explain why this happened (she's going to therapy to try to understand herself better); mean that I find it impossible to move on and heal. I feel i don't know her, i don't know myself, i don't trust any of our memories for the last 9 years including the birth of our children. I'm immediately triggered by any mention of the year that either of our children were born.
Please advise.... How do I move on. Please be kind,