OP, I am not that much younger than you and have been married for a near similar number of years, and my heart is breaking from your post. You’re living with someone who has only created a part-time family with you and this is such a bleak thing. Family only gets more important as you get older. What if your husband predeceases you? Will your “family” on your husband’s side just cut you off from everything? What will you have for yourself, while he’s spending all that inevitable grandpa and father-in-law time with his newly married and parenting kids? You will be more and more sidelined and alone if you don’t do something.
First of all, get yourself to counseling so that you can get your self-esteem back to the level where you can demand reasonable things from the timid, selfish avoider you are married to. If this man has let his daughters continue to think something negative about you that’s not true (such as an affair), it’s an incredible betrayal. I’d think he’d want to correct that misconception even if just for his own image (affairs don’t reflect well on either party, do they?). If he’s unwilling to clear this up, I don’t think he’s a keeper. (And if you leave him, a letter to the daughters clearing things up from you may be something to consider). He’s used you as a human shield, which is not loving but exploitative.
Big life events are good excuses (not that you need one) to make new demands and rewire patterns. You’ve been shut out of so much already, please DO NOT let yourself get shut out of what’s to come. You’re his wife of 25 years, not a girlfriend. Either your’e a permanent part the family of you aren’t. Don’t let a pattern get started. You say he’s “excited” about the weddings and potential grandkids. But you won’t get to share that excitement with him, will you? The time to demand that things change is right now, before the next set of patterns gets established.
Yes, you need to put him on the spot. Because I don’t see things getting better for you unless you do, and you deserve much more. Please have a think about what you want your retirement years to look like. Sitting home alone while your husband goes to visit the grandkids? Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters, birthdays, whatever. Do you want to be left out? Where will you go, who will you celebrate with, take pictures with, eat with?
He should have addressed this years ago with his daughters. He has a chance now to change things and make a fresh start, with the weddings. But if he is not willing to…you need to choose between two futures, one in which you are tied to a person who provides limited things and leaves you alone and unsupported while he Bea he’s lovingly to people who hurt you…and another, where you have freedom to make new emotional connections.
I wish you the best. Please, please, get a therapist ASAP. It takes time to rewire things and change other people (if they can be changed…they need to go through denial, and anger, and all that sort of stuff before they accept the situation has really changed). Get started now - get yourself someone who cares about YOU and how you are treated, and can help you sort this out.