Hi This0is0Fine,
I am sorry that you had cause to go looking for this forum, but I am glad that you found it.
Sadly, I think there is much more to this than your wife has told you. The fact that she confessed to physical contact without prompting shows that something happened that made her feel guilty, and yet she then contacted him over a thousand times.
Can you see how this is spiraling out of control, and why it is imperative that that you take strong action immediately?
I know these kinds of confrontations are not nice or easy, but if your wife is having physical contact with him, communicating with him obsessively, and lying about her whereabouts to be with him, it does not take Sherlock Holmes to see what is happening, and how much worse it will get if it is not stopped.
I would recommend getting her phone and using software called Fonelab (which you can download) to recover any deleted material. If you do not few confident to do that, there are computer shops and private investigators who will do the job for you. Yes, you would have to pay, but private investigators tend to know where things can be hidden, and can do a thorough job in recovering evidence.
If she refuses you access to her phone, that is a huge warning sign.
You need to contact her affair partner's wife immediately, and there are various ways of finding her contact details. Others here can suggest those, but there are lots of sources online for finding peoples' addresses.
You should ask your wife to provide a full written timeline of her affair, because if she was out with her affair partner every night of her business trip and 'holding hands' with him, then they had already established a relationship before the trip took place.
"Basis to R" means basis to reconcile, or recover from her affair.
You have the option of telling her to take a polygraph in relation to her actions. Many here have found them to be successful in bringing further information out of cheating spouses. Frequently a cheating spouse will maintain a cover story until they arrive at the test center, and then they give what is often called a 'parking lot confession', out of fear that the polygraph is bound to catch them anyway, so they look better confessing beforehand.
If she has Googlemaps or Find My Friends on her phone, you may be able to use that to track her movements, and see where she has been. If she has switched those off, it is another red flag, and you can tell her to turn them back on.
If she has her own car, you can put a VAR (voice activated recorder) under the driver's seat, to record any phone calls that she may be making from the car, when she thinks she is alone.
Similarly, you can put a VAR in a place in the house where she may tend to make calls from when you are not around. VARs are available quite cheaply from lots of outlets, and people here can advise on good ones and how best to use them if you are interested.
If you have an old phone that has tracking on it, you can put that in the car and see where she is going.
There is a good book that is often recommended here called "Not Just Friends" that you can download as a free pdf or buy as a book. It covers exactly the kinds of scenario you are describing, where a supposed 'friendship' develops into an affair, and how that happens. Get it as soon as you can, and have your wife read it and then report back to you what she thinks about it.
Seriously, do not delay, download it or order it now and have her read it the second it is delivered.
Ask her what her HR department's policy is on workplace affairs, and see how she responds.
To be quite frank with you, I personally would be inclined to go a bit 'shock and awe' and say something like, "Do you want a divorce, because that is where you are headed if you do not stop all contact with your married boyfriend". That may sound harsh, but you have to realize that your wife is already in a fantasy bubble about her new relationship, and those bubbles can only be burst with a dose of hard reality.
How do I confront her about this again in a healthy way?
This0is0Fine, I understand the whole 'healthy' thing, but the best way to confront is in a strong and decisive way that puts across across a very clear message that if your wife keeps this up, the marriage is over. Draw a very clear, unmissable line in the sand. And do it now.
This has already progressed way beyond 'healthy', and your wife is displaying clear wayward traits (physical contact, lying, secret communicating...) Is your wife worried about being 'healthy', or the health of your marriage? So if you take a 'soft' approach, she will just take advantage of it, lie, and continue doing what she is doing. You are not trying for a merit badge; you are trying to save your marriage.
Again, I am sorry if this stuff sounds harsh or unpalatable, but trust me, it is based on seeing what works, and your wife is on the brink of a full-on affair, if she is not already in one.
Do not delay; blow this crap off the rails. That is the only healthy way to deal with an affair. Being 'nice' just gets you hurt a lot more.
Oh, and be prepared for your wife to subject you to a process called 'trickle truth' (often referred to as TT here). That is where a cheater begins with a very small, minimised confession, and then builds on it bit by bit.
"We never had any physical contact" becomes, "No, wait, I think we did hold hands briefly, but only once, and not for long, and we both got scared and stopped it". Which becomes, "Well, we did hold hands another time, but not for long, and it did not mean anything". And then you get, "Well, we did kiss briefly one time, at the office party, but not for long, and we both got scared..." "Oh, and I think we may have kissed one other time..."
Your wife's heavily redacted account of her interactions with her affair partner smack of the beginnings of trickle truth.
Suggesting she gets another job is a fair idea, but I also think you should insist on going to all future work events and parties with her. Why were you not at the recent one? Did she tell you partners were not allowed to go? You need to check on that.
[This message edited by M1965 at 6:42 PM, December 11th (Wednesday)]