Hello
I am in my 5th month since the discovering my wife's affair. Like most, the revelation was in the form of an intercepted email. The evidence of an emotional relationship was clear but at first my wife tried to deny a sexual relationship existed. Eventually, however, she could not keep the lies straight in the face of the evidence and admitted the relationship was deep, future looking, and had gone on for about 4 months. The other person resides in another state so although she attempted to continue contact and the deception, I was able to detect her efforts and confronted her. After about a week she weighed all the alternatives and ended the relationship.
Afterward, she became unbelievably honest and forthcoming with information. She has also agreed to incredible measures...she will give me an uncontested divorce, thereby protecting me from loss of certain assets in the future, even if we remarry. You see, one of the emails she wrote to the other man said, "I can't wait for you to see the incredible view at my house." I took this be an economic assault as well as emotional.
I'm not oblivious to what caused all this. We have been married over 20 years, and she has no doubt suffered the gradual consequences of being taken for granted. I shoulder the blame for letting career, and life in general create an atmosphere of resentment. Nonetheless, I have insisted there were other alternatives.
My wife shows extreme remorse, she is now completely honest with me, she is very loving, and it is evident that love, commitment, and a new understanding of how to treat one's spouse has arrived in our marriage. I'm am equally committed to being who she needs me to be and changing my behavior towards her.
There is one thing that exists in this situation that does not exist in anything I have read, and it is the one thing that is creating hesitation in me to continue...her affair wasn't an isolated event. In fact, far from it.
Four years ago she had an affair with a co-worker. It lasted a year. She ended it out of guilt and immediately immersed herself in her religious faith. I never knew about this affair. Then, about 18 months prior to my discovery of the last affair she was in a job that required travel. She met a man and engaged in a 6 month affair. She ended it because she simply didn't want him any longer. She immediately began another affair with a co-worker who also traveled to the same cities. It lasted 6 months and he ended it when she became too attached. She was devistated and engaged in a series of 4 one-night stands with men she met in hotel lobbies and hotel lounges over the course of the next four months. Finally, she met the man I discovered the affair with. This relationship became the closest and most likely to end in her leaving me.
As I said, the only affair I knew anything about was the last one. She voluntarily confessed the others. She says this was about needing acceptance, attention, and affection, nothing else. She says now that this is in the open and the way we treat each other has changed she can't believe what she had become. All the men involved were married and she now looks back on things and remembers lies that went both ways with them. She resents those men and herself for the whole thing.
Still, because of the extent of her infidelity, common sense tells me this is is a character issue.
Is it not possible that the cause of all this is what is important and not the extent to which it manifest itself?
