Long story short: married 14 years, two kids, one teen one younger, caught wife engaged in emotional affair with a neighbour about 1.5 years ago. Confronted, told all the usual things, I admitted things hadn’t been great with us for a while and promised to work on myself (and I did, I never stopped).

AP doesn’t know I know, our kids are good friends and silly me isn’t vindictive enough to blow his family up, his kid is a sweetheart.

Trust but verify, right? Well it’s still going on. To the point of full blown sexting, never been physical, yet. (can tell by the messages), but they’re in daily contact in secret, outside of the ‘normal’ relationship they portray over WhatsApp which is perfectly neighbourly and would pass any litmus test if anyone were to read their conversations. But I know where they ‘really’ talk, the hidden, frequently deleted chats they have, and have screenshotted enough to draw my line in the sand.

I don’t see a way out that isn’t the D button, trust will never come back, and by showing my hand I know she’ll go nuclear on the snooping, but IDGAF, if an arsonist tries to set fire to your house do you ignore the next time you smell smoke?

Now, I’m weighing the options, would you quietly file (uk, file online for a no fault) and wait for the letter to land and blindside her. Or would you say you’re filing and use the opportunity to say ‘I want x, y, z and in return we can have a nice friendly no fault, limit the damage to your reputation (honestly don’t care, but it’s a valuable carrot) otherwise you try fuck with me and I’ve got enough to prove my case, but the kids will suffer the most and I don’t want that’

Shits getting real, thankful for this sub for the collective experience.