Hi 1loststone,
I am sorry that you had reason to go looking for a place like this, but I am glad that you found it. The things that you are going through and the challenges you need solutions for are all ones that others here have faced.
What you will find is that there are no one-size-fits-all answers. There is an old Johnny Cash song called "One Piece at a Time". It is about a guy who works in an auto assembly plant who starts stealing car parts, hoping to build himself a complete car once he has all the parts. It takes him so long that by the time he has all the parts, the car is a complete patchwork creation. Despite that, the car works, and he enjoys driving a totally unique vehicle that he built.
The process that both the betrayed and the wayward go through in the aftermath of infidelity is similar. They have to build themselves a vehicle to carry them forwards in life from a combination of all the advice and resources that are available to them. Forums like this can be one of those resources, and you can pick and choose the pieces of advice that feel 'right' to you, and leave those that do not.
There are many books on the subject of surviving infidelity, and they can explore issues in a lot more depth than we can in forum posts.
I truly believe that the first person we have to reconcile with in the aftermath of infidelity is ourselves.
For the betrayed, that can involve a struggle about "Can I stay?", "Should I stay?", "Am I letting myself down if I stay?", etc. For the wayward, it may be "How did I do that?", "Why did I do that?", "Is that who I am?"...
So when your wife says...
...she doesn't believe in A
...she is not being honest with herself, because she was actively involved in one. The place she needs to reach is one where she accepts that her disapproval of the principle of affairs did not stop her from having one.
To do something and then claim she doesn't believe in doing it may be an attempt to distance herself from it, but that is all it is. And I believe it is counter-productive and a waste of time, because it is meaningless. If she believes that she can be a safe and trustworthy life-partner for you in future, she has to engage with what she did, own it, and figure out why none of her beliefs, views, boundaries, etc, prevented her from doing it.
Similarly...
She said that she suffers with her decision everyday & wishes she could change what she did but unfortunately she can't.
...is a waste of time and energy. Much as we all wish for a 'rewind' button in life, they do not exist. We only ever exist in the present, and the question should not be, "Did we want to be here?" but, "We ARE here, so how do we go forward?"
If you think about a marriage as a porcelain vase, and infidelity being the act of dropping it on the floor and breaking it, it becomes a good analogy for where we are in the aftermath.
What we have instead of a single unbroken thing is a bunch of pieces. So what do we do? Presuming we do not just sweep the pieces up and put them in the trash, do we get glue, and try to stick the pieces all back together, to recreate the vase? Or do we throw a chunk of clay on the potter's wheel and try to make a new one?
And the question, of course, is do you have enough clay to make a new one. That clay consists of the good things from the old marriage, and potential good things that you believe could be the building blocks of a new, different marriage/relationship.
Making that choice - trashcan / get glue / make a new one - can take time, so please give yourself time.
And in making that choice, you need to be selfish and exclude any entreaties or pleas from your wife. Staying with her has to be what is right for you. Her A was a selfish act, all about her, made in exclusion of you. Whatever you decide must be your decision, made in exclusion of her and what she wants.
That may sound harsh, but what you are thinking about is what you do with the rest of your life, and that has to be about you and only you.
She said the grass isn't greener on the other side & she was sorry! It felt sincere.
For both of you, she needs to dig into that statement. It may be sincere, but is she sorry for herself because her gamble did not pay off?
Two questions to ask her are these:
1) If the grass was greener on the other side, where would you be now?
2) Are you only still here because you landed in a patch of crab grass, and you think being here is better for you?
She said that I am still the love of her life & she made a HUGE mistake by letting another man into her life sexually & mentally & it will NEVER happen again.
A big issue in these forums is using the word 'mistake' in relation to affairs. An affair is never a 'mistake'; affairs are the result of hundreds of conscious and deliberate decisions.
Backing your car into a tree because you look in your rear-view mirror and think it is further away than it really is can be described as a legitimate mistake. Backing your car into a tree to see what happens or because you think it might be fun is not a mistake. The fact that people may regret the consequences of their decisions or actions does not make them a mistake. It means they have faulty decision-making processes.
For you, as you consider your options, clarity on why your wife thinks her affair was a mistake is important. Is it because her decisions and choices did not work out for her, or because of the pain she has caused you? If she is trying to prove herself as a potential life-partner for you moving forwards, she needs to prove the latter to you.
Put simply, if she is feeling sad that she messed things up for herself, that is a continuation of the selfishness that fueled the affair. What you need is to see evidence that she understands how she hurt you and let you down. And how, in reality, she let herself down.
None of this is about punishment or revenge.
It is about her going on a journey where she accepts what she did as deliberate, conscious choices. Where she identifies the problem elements in herself that allowed her to make decisions and take actions that she knew would damage the marriage and hurt you.
The aim is for her to reach a level of self-insight where she can begin work to disable / neutralise the parts of herself that allowed her to do those things. And by doing that, to become someone that you can commit the rest of your life to with an acceptable level of confidence.
This is a challenge that she has set herself, and she needs to take that to heart if she wants to remain with you.
Put simply, as others have said, she has to prove to you that she can be trusted if she expects you to embark on a future with her.
People can and do work through the many challenges and questions that they face after infidelity, but to hark back to Jane Fonda's 1980s aerobics videos, an underlying principle of the process is, "No pain, no gain". Which means your wife accepting that she chose to do what she did.
It was not an accident.
It was not an act of God.
It was not a mistake.
It was her choice.
And she has to investigate the why's and how's of that before she can expect a commitment from you to continue the relationship. I write that not to be harsh to her, but to be protective of you. If she really wants to build a future with you, let that desire be the fuel that drives her efforts.
Your wife may not be able to go back and change history, but let her know that changing the future depends on her actions now.
And maybe your ongoing discussions here can help you identify what your needs are.
For your wife, what really counts is how she is going to change. And only she can prove that. Let her know that, because if she is genuine about wanting to stay with you, it will be a motivating force for her.
Lots of couple stay together after infidelity, but not all of them are healthy or positive. The aim is not just to stay together, but to do it in a way that will be positive and good for both of you.
For your wife, searching for a re-wind button that does not exist will not provide that. Examining why she did what she did may. And if she really is committed to change, the tears will all be worth it.
[This message edited by M1965 at 3:22 PM, April 13th (Saturday)]
