Goes without saying - but this is my first post here. I wish I wasn't posting here at all (as do we all, I'm guessing), but I could use some advice, or at least a friendly word or two.
I am 35 years old, married to my wife for 12 years, known her for 16. We have 2 girls together, ages 10 and 7.
DDay for me was about 4 years ago (I think). It's kind of a blur and I don't even remember exactly when I found out. Only that it was summer time, and it was about 4 years ago. I'm still dealing with the fallout of it all, and trying to come to grips with the fact that it has been a long time, and I still can't seem to get over it. But let me back up a little and talk about my marriage prior to the A and to DDay.
I was happily married (or so I thought) for many years. I would say that the first 5 of those years were full of happiness, but my wife and I started to drift apart shortly after my oldest was born, and that drifting only got worse when my second was born. She suffers from depression and very low self-esteem, and she has issues in her past regarding her childhood and some issue with her parents. She didn't want our kids to suffer the same problems, the same lack of attention and care, and so she basically threw everything she had into them, and I ended up being almost ignored. She was not getting enough sleep, not eating well or exercising. She'd put on a bunch of weight and was very self-conscious, didn't want to go out in public, didn't like to be seen. She became withdrawn. We didn't talk. Well... I talked. I tried to. I tried to help her out of her 'funk', tried to encourage her, to make her feel loved. I cared. But she was a shell of the woman I had loved before. She didn't love herself, and it is hard to love someone who doesn't love herself.
I will admit, at some point I started to give up a bit. I had put so much into trying to help her, to make her happy. I was getting nothing in return. I tried to get her to try counseling, but she didn't want to go.
Fast forward to 2009. She changes jobs. She is a bit happier. She loses weight, now that she doesn't have a sedentary job anymore. But suddenly she becomes more distant. She starts locking her phone. She changes her facebook password. She stops talking. I keep asking what's wrong, but I get nothing. And then she starts going out "with the girls". She leaves and doesn't come home until after midnight. But I trust her. I actually thought it might be good for her to go out with friends. Only she wasn't. She was going out to meet him.
And I only found out because she accidentally left herself logged into facebook one day when she left to take the girls to dance class. I snooped, and I found. And it almost broke me.
I was afraid on that day. My world just got rocked. My life changed. I was scared she was leaving, that it was all over. My first actions after I found out were borne out of fear. I "forgave" her on the night I found out. Told her that we could work it out. That I understood. She said she was sorry. I said I was sorry. I didn't get angry. I didn't yell. I didn't even cry. I just did everything I could to keep things going and didn't deal with any of the feelings or the betrayal or the loss of trust. We didn't even talk about the A, or the OM.
Fast forward another year and a half. I'm miserable. Stress at home. Stress at work. I'm burning out, mentally, emotionally. I start having panic attacks, anxiety. I spend days feeling like my head is spinning. I end up home for three months, working still, from home, forcing myself to the computer between anxiety attacks. My wife is still distant. She doesn't show much concern. I'm fighting to keep my sanity (or so it seems), but she hardly even asks how I'm doing. We fight. I'm on edge all the time. Doctors visits. I've always been a strong person - the anxiety (didn't know it was that at the time) is new to me and I don't know how to deal with it.
I finally end up seeing a counselor. And about the same time, after all of the panic attacks and the other symptoms of a person overwhelmed, I start to realize, deep down, that I'm empty. That I don't love my wife anymore. I can't even stand to be around her sometimes. I don't like to be around her. We don't talk. We don't connect. We don't do anything.
Counseling goes well, but takes time. It wasn't until a year and a half into counseling that I really start to understand how I'm feeling. The repressed anger. The resentment. The sadness.
How could she do that. After all I gave her. She had my heart, and she stomped on it.
Like I said - I'm empty, inside. I'm married, but I feel so alone most of the time.
And then... to complicate matters, I meet a woman at work. She is funny, intelligent. We talk. We laugh. And she makes me feel a little less empty.
For a short time, I think I may have overstepped the bounds of friendship with this woman and started an EA. But we both talk, and we respect each other to much to let it turn into anything else. We set boundaries. We bring our friendship out into the open. No secrets. But then I learn that she has feelings for me - feelings that go beyond platonic friendship. We've never crossed a physical barrier, and we hardly speak anymore. I may have dipped a toe across the EA line, but I didn't ever want to do to my wife what she did to me. I recognized what was happening and pulled back.
But... and I hate to admit this, for a time, I felt alive again. I felt happy. The emptiness went away. And I realized for the first time how dark my world had become. My friend was a light in that darkness, if only for a short while. And she made me realize how much I was missing, how good it felt to connect with someone again.
My wife and I have talked extensively in the past few months. She now knows how I feel, and has for some time. I don't love her. Even before I found out about the A, I didn't love her. Our connection is gone. She is trying so hard now - she goes to therapy, she's on medication to help with her own depression. And she's trying to show me how much she loves me.
But...I still can't bring myself to love her. There wasn't much love there before the A, and then after it, when DDay happened, whatever was left just disappeared. She is, and always will be, the woman....no....the WIFE who cheated on me. I don't love her, and yet for the sake of the kids, and the sake of not being totally alone, I stay, and I try.
But I have seen the light in the darkness. I hold no hopes that my friend and I had anything other than a mild infatuation with each other. I have no fantasies of leaving my wife and finding love with my friend. She was simply the one that showed me how much I was missing. How good it felt to connect with someone again.
How can I go through life without ever feeling that. I try, every day, to be the best husband and father I can be. But I'm suffering, and I'm alone. How the hell are you supposed to force yourself to fall back in love with someone who you fell out of love with, and who betrayed you and ripped your heart out. I'm not even all that attracted to my wife anymore. At least not emotionally. She is physically attractive, and we can still have sex. Sex may be the only place where there is any connection left at all, but it is empty. I feel guilty after we're done. I'm not the type to use someone, or to take advantage of them. My wife says that if sex is the only way that she can feel affection from me, then she'll take it, but that is a sad state of affairs indeed, and I can't go on like that.
We try. We spend time together. We talk. But there is just no spark there. She is not one to open up, to really share of herself. But I crave that connection.
And so I'm trapped. I have 2 women who have feelings for me. One of whom I don't have feelings for, and the other I'm forbidden from having feelings for. It's hell on earth. I just want to feel something again, for someone. And have them feel it back for me. I think.... no.... I know, that I could be happier with someone else. But how do you take that step. How do you tell your wife of 12 years that it is over, that you want out? How do you tell the kids? It's like being in a plane at 10,000 feet and standing in the doorway looking down.
"Hey, captain? Shouldn't I have a parachute?"
"No sir. No parachutes in real life, buddy. Just jump. But watch out for that landing. It's a doozie!"
I've been writing a lot lately. Journaling. Stream of consciousness stuff. It was a suggestion of the counselor. And I've realized through that writing how much the A bothered me. How I glossed over the details and pushed all of the specifics out of my mind. It was just the other day, 4 years after I found out, that I asked my wife if they (her and the OM) used protection. And it made me sick to my stomach. I may have found out 4 years ago, but I never really dealt with it. I'm just now coming to grips with everything. And it makes me angry and sick and disgusted all at the same time.
And so... there's my story. I hope I got all of the abbreviations right. It helped a little to write it all down. Maybe someone has some advice for me. I'm really at my wits end. I'm staring right down the barrel of the 'stay or go' decision, but I can't pull the trigger. I just can't bare the thought of leaving, but I can't bare the thought of staying either.
How did it come to this........