Hello. I am sitting here on my deck writing this email. I saw the website through a Google search and enjoyed my reading of dealing with infidelity. 2 weeks ago my wife informed me that she had been having an 18 month emotional affair with a co-worker, but only had one slight physical interaction. I felt pain and sadness but accepted her fault and proceeded to move on. Approximately 3 hrs ago, she "cleaned the slate" and informed me that it's been more than that and she had sex with this person on one occasion and multiple other inappropriate actions. She swears this relationship has ended and I believe her for that part. I feel like 2 atomic bombs have been dropped on me, one with the initial revealing and one after 2 weeks of what I thought was forgiveness and moving on but was a lie. Now the slate is apparently clean. I feel my forgiveness tank is empty right now. If you ask me if I still love my wife, I say yes. We have children together but my love for her goes beyond them. I am so hurt and this is the only place I can reach out to right now because I don't want any of our family and friends knowing about this problem. I'm not even sure if I'm doing this right, but I need to let my anger and sadness out somehow. Can anyone on here please let me know how you can or have forgiven and moved on with a wife who cheated on you?? If I don't hear a response, please know that I am at least happy to have shared my feeling with someone, even if I don't know who they are. Thank you n

Welcome to MB and I'm sorry for your pain that has brought you here.

Who is the OM? Is he married?

Also, keeping the affair a secret is a bad idea. Affairs thrive on secrecy and so you need to plan to expose the affair.

Read this, especially the exposure thread.
Start here first-SAA

Thank you. I appreciate your fast response. At this time of night you don't know how much that means. Thank you! The OM is married with a history of affairs that his wife knows of. He is a POS. My wife was sexually abused as a child. That being said, she put herself in this situation by keeping the relationship going and then going to his house that day. It takes 2 to tango. I will read that article you recommended. Thank you for your time tonight. Again, I just came to this website tonight, so I need to look around and read more. You don't know how much just getting a response meant. Thank you. Have a good night.

The answer to whether your marriage can survive this is "yes". I have done just that, as have many others here. The path to a successful recovery is narrow. You have to do things that don't feel particularly right. This is because your instinctual reactions mislead you. Recovery depends on your intelligence overcoming your instincts.

The overall plan is this: You need to first deal with the affair. You need to take actions that will make certain the affair is over and set in place extraordinary precautions that will prevent any affairs in the future. It starts with exposure. Everybody who can exert any influence on your wife needs to know about this. I know you want to keep it a secret, but this is an example of where your natural inclinations are all wrong. Once the affair is addressed, you will need to rebuild your romantic relationship with your wife. In the end, you will have a stronger and better marriage than it has ever been before.

So, on to the first step. Put together your exposure list. We will walk you through the process from there.

Your WW must leave this job. Otherwise there never will be NC with the OM and chances are this affair will restart.

This affair must be exposed. Tell WW parents and siblings. Tell the OMW. Expose this affair at WW job. Tell the CEO/owner, Director of HR, Board of Directors, ask them what actions they are going to take to end this work place affair.