Hi Greg,
Please do have a look at The Healing Library on this site. There is a lot there that you can read, which may help as you try to get a perspective on what has happened.
One thing I can say is that your worth is not in any way dependent on your wife, or any validation from her. I know that is easy to say, we all do look to our spouses for that, but the truth that comes across time and again in the forums here is that people who cheat have frequently lost sight of their values or their conventional boundaries, and their judgement is somewhat impaired.
What your wife has been doing to you is, sadly, 'classic' cheater behaviour. Twisting things around to make it seem like things are your fault is called 'gas-lighting', after a famous old movie in which a husband tried to convince his wife that she was crazy. Blame-shifting is par for the course, as is plain old lying.
I know that it hurts to have those things done to you by someone that you love, but what is apparent from the many stories in this forum is that those who commit infidelity find a way to bump their spouse/partner off their emotional/moral radar during their affairs, possibly because they have had to shut down their values/morals to enable them to cheat in the first place.
Instead, with those higher functions switched off for the duration of the affair, what you often get is pure selfishness, callous indifference, and a total rejection of personal responsibility. It can be horrible to deal with someone when they have switched off so many of the boundaries and values that you observe, and take as a natural part of life, but as I say, without switching them off, a person could not cheat and lie to begin with.
I think that is why some people who cheat look back on their behaviour and feel genuinely shocked by what they enabled themselves to do during an affair, but that only happens when they switch their honesty, morals, scruples, boundaries, etc, back on, and that can only really happen after an affair is over. What you are dealing with is a version of your wife that is probably unrecognisable to you. Many, many people here have had to deal with that, and some have likened it to dealing with a 'pod person' version of their spouse, like the old "Invasion of the Bodysnatchers" movie.
What I think you should cling to, greg, as your absolute rock and foundation in all of this is that you have not changed. You are the same person you always were. You have not switched off your higher values, you are not a 'pod' version of yourself, you have not gone into kamikaze selfishness mode. I am very sorry that you have been hurt by your wife's actions, and I hope that everyone here will do their best to help you heal.
For my part, I really want to emphasise that what your wife has done does not reflect on you, but on her. She has lost her moral compass, she has switched off her decency, and she is operating on a much more basic, and base level. That, unfortunately, is 'affair mode'. Do not expect anything approaching good treatment from her while she is in this frame of mind.
Instead, please take care of yourself, and know - do not just think - but KNOW that there is nothing a person can do if their spouse willingly enters the mental and moral free-fall, all-bets-are-off, helter-skelter, do-anything-you-damn-well-please world of having an affair. She knowingly chose to enter that world, you did not push her into it, but having an affair requires people do disable their sense of responsibility, so the poor betrayed spouse often gets blamed. That is one of the many injustices of infidelity, greg, but please do not take it to heart. This is all about her, not about you.
The positive thing is that you have found this forum, which has close to sixty thousand members, and which is full of people who can advise you from their real-life experiences. As you will be aware by now, there are several forums here, covering different aspects of infidelity, so please do check out all of them to see which may be useful to you.
For now, know that you have been heard, and that there are people here who will try their best to support you to extricate yourself from infidelity. That does not necessarily mean divorce; it can equally mean reconciliation, but a meaningful reconciliation based on honesty and remorse. It all depends on how things play out.
Take care, greg, and we will be thinking of you.
