Another one bites the dust

***RE-UPLOADED THE ORIGINAL POST, BELOW***

Last update for a while: Thanks to all of you for your support. I can't even express how wonderful all of your advice and kind words have been. I'm having a hard time getting back to all of you as this has kind of blown up, so I'm just gonna have to stop for now. I'll post another thread with an update as needed. Take care

(Original story below the dotted line)

I met with my lawyer this morning and she was great. She gave me a lot of confidence that I felt was draining away from me throughout the week as I waited to confront. I also had a good friend that was my rock throughout the week, and I will never be able to thank him enough.

I ended up confronting my wife right after the meeting with the lawyer. I refused to give up any of my evidence. I just said "I know about the other guy, I need you to talk about it." I just kept repeating that line while she went through crocodile tears and confusion about what I was talking about. It was SO fucking hard not giving up any of that information. But I knew that I had all the power in that situation.

In the end she never confessed. I basically moved the conversation from there by saying "Well, it doesn't matter if you admit to what I already know or not, because the sexting that you did last year was enough to destroy any trust I had in you. And I can no longer live like this,." From there she just kind of shut down, and became pretty docile, and never brought back up this "outrageous thing I was falsely accusing her of".

We pretty quickly moved into business-like details about what to do in the short term. Her dad came over and picked her up and gave me a hug, and said "let us know if you need anything". I fucking teared up right at that moment...

I'm not letting my guard down yet, because anything can happen, but I think things may work out for the better for everyone involved.

I cannot thank everyone here on Reddit enough for your thoughts, jabs, pearls of wisdom, and funny comments. You all gave me some serious wake-up calls and support. I am forever in your debt.

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I'm sorry in advance for the length of this...

I (35m) think that my wife (33f) is cheating on me, and has been for many years. We've been together for 14 years, we've been married for almost 10 years, and we have a 5 year old daughter together.

Incident #1:

When my wife and I were in college (where we first started dating), we had an incident where she had some really sexually graphic texts from a guy we both knew from school. She even had classes with him. I confronted her about the texts. I definitely didn't handle it well, and basically accused her straight out of the gate as cheating on me without realizing there were some possible outs for her. One of those outs was that she claimed that they were just some pervy texts that she got from this guy out of the blue, and that if I had paid any attention when I was snooping through her phone, that she hadn't actually responded to them. At the time, I conceded that I may have overlooked that possibility, and I had overreacted. She apologized to me for not mentioning to me that some guy was hitting on her like that, and I apologized for overreacting and for snooping. We moved on from there.

Incident #2:

Fast forward to this last year. My daughter, wife, and I are at the gas station. I can tell my wife is kind of distant and detached from the interactions my daughter and I are having. I notice she's glued to her phone as well. The gas fill for our car is on the passenger side, and I have the rear passenger door open so I can tickle my daughter while I wait for the car to fill up. I'm really suspicious of what my wife is doing at this point, so I decide that I'm going to take a look over my wife's shoulder from the backseat at what it is she's so caught up in. Turns out she is actively/in-the-moment sexting some guy. Like, words/descriptions/acts that very much seem like they've been doing this a while (texting) and looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I'm fairly certain they had been fucking as well. Also, all the shit she was texting was super graphic shit, stuff that she NEVER used with me either in dirty talk or when we got intimate...and I know this next admission is pathetic and that it shouldn't matter more than anything else, but that fact that she wanted to share in these acts with this man instead of me really fucking hurt. Probably just my pride talking, but it is what it is...

So, fast forward 10 mins when we get home, and I have to suffer through smiling during dinner and the whole nighttime ritual of getting our daughter to bed so as not to cause a scene by blowing up at my wife for what I had seen her texting. Honestly, that was probably a blessing, because it allowed me to collect my thoughts before confronting her. I end up telling my wife what I saw at the gas station, and right off the bat she tries to play dumb, "What are you talking about?!" "Honey, you're making no sense." I told her to not play dumb with me, and I recited some of the texts that I could remember back to her to prove that I saw what I saw. She then goes on to admit that it was a mistake, but that it was 100% nothing physical, and that she was really sorry. She admitted that the guy was a work colleague.

We talked a lot that night about why she felt she needed to be doing that. A lot of it boiled down to her feeling depressed and lonely. We talked about strategies that we could invoke at home, things that we BOTH could change, to help mend the rift. I guess things felt kind of "OK" after that. But it felt like that damage to our trust was already done, and I don't think I've ever really recovered. Even that seemingly small moment of infidelity (assuming that was only texts) was just such a fucking hammer to my heart. Ever since that incident from last year, I've been waking up every day as a lesser version of my former self. My emotions and propensity to feel anything have been severely muted. Interacting with my daughter is about the only thing that gets me back close to a baseline of how I remember my former self...But beyond those precious moments, I'm just a walking, grayed out zombie that puts on a good face for pretty much everything for my day-to-day (going to work, interacting with my wife, etc).

Most recent incident #3:

Now fast forward to yesterday. My wife has been gone on a week long "work" trip to the East coast (we are West coast). I actually had zero suspicions or justifiable reasons to be worried for this trip, because things had been going pretty well between us, and she hadn't really given off any indicators of suspicious behavior. But, my first clue was that when she arrived at her destination, she "couldn't get the WiFi working for FaceTime". And.......this stayed true for the entirety of her trip....First of all, FaceTime works on cellular data just fine (which we have a ridiculous amount of). I explained that to her, without much of a response. Second, I know that if I were gone for a week from MY family, it would be my biggest fucking priority to get FaceTime up and running so that I could see my family's faces every time I called to visit (which would be every single night...which brings me to the next point). She called us in the evening to say goodnight maybe two times out of the seven days that she was gone. Based on previous trips she's had, this was REALLY strange. Normally she is like clockwork touching in with us to share her day and to hear from us about our day (AND, again, always on FaceTime). I asked her about that, and she claimed that she was just too tired in the evenings to get back to us. Also, in the past, if she was away me/home, she would always text me goodnight and that she loved me, even if we had previously chatted moments earlier on FaceTime or via phone call. For this recent trip, she never texted me once.

So, when she got back, my radar was on high alert. Now, I don't feel good about this next part, but when she went to sleep that night, I checked her travel bag to see if my suspicions were correct. Sure enough, to my surprise, she keeps this little red book as a diary in her work bag. I open it up, and there is a date marked 2/9/15. Turns out she'd started writing a poem on that day about our daughter, who had just been born the previous fall. Okay, "That's really sweet!" I say to myself, and I start to feel bad about my snooping...Flip to the next page, and there's a new entry. There's no date, but it's written sequentially right after the aforementioned poem so I know that I describe here was an entry that came after our daughter being born. This non-dated entry starts off with her describing how much she longs for this specific person (doesn't give his name). She goes on to talk about how she can't stop thinking about him. Every man she sees reminds her of him. She talks about how she never really intended for things to go very far, but "that one night that started in the bar, and ended up going upstairs" just felt too right to not be something meaningful. She goes on to say that she doesn't feel bad about making that decision in regard to how it impacts her "other life". She describes how she thinks maybe her "other life" was the mistake. This goes on for pages. That entry ends with her making peace with herself that he moved on from her, and it was time for her to forget about him. I am assuming that her "other life" our daughter and me.

There was only one more entry after that previous one. I took pictures of it and have typed it out here in it's entirety: "I'm laughing to myself because I haven't opened this book in over two years and here I am sitting in his bed. In his room at his home. Still feeling angst over so many of the same things. I'll go home after having a week with him and I'll be asking the same questions. Is he ever going to call again after? Was it so stupid to go on this trip? So funny how I thought we'd never speak again and look where I am. We worked together, we talked almost every day, and he was there for me as a friend. Now here I am. And back with questions. Why were we so hot and cold those first couple of days and then just tapered off? Maybe he's doing that moral compass wrestling and after I leave we'll never speak again. This trip was probably a bad idea. But we had a lot of fun. And he did say he'd been looking forward to it. He missed me, he wanted this, I know that. I wish he would just tell me he wants me, just me, and always me. It's like we dance around things because he still wants us to have this thing happening despite the rest of my life and I just don't want to talk about that, to the point that I'm lying, and I hate lying to him. But meanwhile, every tender moment I have with him is so precious I can't believe it. I couldn't imagine we'd actually be snuggling on the couch and there we were."

I have't slept since reading that last full entry. I haven't confronted her yet, either. It's been almost 48 hours now without sleep, and I'm just an emotional wreck. I just don't know how to handle this situation. I guess I've gotten so good at wearing this zombie mask ever since incident #2 happened, that I've been able to limp through the last couple of days, but it's getting really really hard to be around her...

I hopped online and read some guides on how to deal with infidelity, and most of the guides mentioned therapy. So I'm going to look into that tomorrow.

Just filing for divorce isn't so simple. My wife has a serious seizure disorder that is uncontrolled. She can't tell when they're happening, so that puts herself and possibly others (small kids especially...our daughter to be exact) in danger. I mention this as it pertains to custody. Imagine she's making dinner for her and my daughter one evening, and she has a seizure near the stove top, and the house catches on fire? Well, the only adult in the house is lying on the floor unconscious. Or what if my daughter has a medical emergency, but then my wife has a seizure due to the stress of the situation? These are very real possibilities, and ones that I fear could happen if she got custody in any way. Some of those examples aren't too far off from other real life incidents we've had over the years due to her seizure disorder. She obviously can't drive. Would this factor into a custody dispute? I mean, our daughter is starting kindergarten in a month, how could my wife transport her?

I don't know what I'm looking for with this whole rambling post...maybe just assurance that her gas-lighting isn't working? That what I've described isn't the workings of an overly paranoid mind? I feel like one minute I'm ready to file for divorce, and then the next I want to try to salvage things for the sake of our daughter, and just to avoid the awful mess that will be made of all three of our lives if we end up separating....

Here's some other logistical details that seem important for anyone who's managed to read this far:

- We own a house together (have a mortgage).

- I make about (deleted) per year. She makes around (deleted) per year.

- We have significant investments that we have joint control over that were given to us by her Dad. They total somewhere in the range of (deleted) in stocks and bonds.

- I'm on wonderful terms with her parents and her family in general. I've always been that son-in-law that was there for everyone to lend help no matter how small or large.

- All of her immediate family is right here where we live.

- I have zero family support from my side where we live. My nearest FRIEND is 1-1/2 hours away...

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Thanks for any help in advance.

Edit/update: I left work today in order to start lining things up. I have a lawyer lined up for this Friday, that’s the earliest I could find in my area. It’s just a consultation, so I’m not sure what to expect from that one meeting alone?

Thanks everyone for all of your pearls and especially your daggers. I definitely needed some other perspectives. I know it seems unbelievable that I could go this long, but I’ve been seriously gas lit for years now...just conditioned to it. It’s also a character flaw of mine to want to see the best in people...

I’m just so fucking scared of the unexpected...god dammit. I just hope she admits to it.

Is there any way she can twist this around on me? Like invasion of privacy? We are WA state, so I can’t record me confronting her without her consent...