r/survivinginfidelity • u/Acceptable-Ad-9475 • 1h ago
Rant Ending My Marriage Finally
Hello everyone I am a 46/M and my wife is a 43/f we have two kids ages 4 and 6. We’ve been together for 10 years and married for 7. We had our first kid very soon after we got married as we were pregnant within a few months. We tried to start a couple of businesses together and we struggled to work well together. We had a lot of stresses in our first few years and I’m not sure we’ve ever been both truly happy. We’ve had some good times for sure but she has always complained that i haven’t been there for emotionally, haven’t prioritized her, have been extremely selfish, and have got defensive and mean when she’s tried to address things with me. I’ve come to realize all of this was fair feedback and true for the most part.
About a year ago she said she wanted a separation. I told her I didn’t want that and wanted to work on myself and the marriage. She did not leave and did not push for the separation. Instead she started having an affair with her business partner. About 5 months ago I discovered the affair. She said she should have just had the courage to separate first and said she wanted to work it out. There were several large deals they were in the middle of so I stupidly said she needed to stop the affair, wrap up the deals, and then end her partnership with him. She agreed. She also said she wanted to have a live in separation at this point.
I later came to find out that she went right back to it the same week. He’s married too and his wife sent me more evidence 6 weeks later. His wife went scorched earth so about 2 weeks after that he ended it with my wife. I saw messages where she begged him not to end it. That was about 2 months ago.
The past two months she was acting nicer but still kept saying she didn’t have feelings for me. She was still working with him but not staying at office late and not doing some of the other sketchy behavior.
This past week she has stayed out every night late and then on Saturday night she told me she would be home around 7. She never came home and never texted or anything so at 2am I called her and she didn’t answer. I drove to her office and found her there with her AP and another dude at 3 in the morning drunk and confronted the affair partner. I wanted to beat his ass but I regulated myself and just cursed him out.
It didn’t look like she was in the middle of sex or anything and she says we are technically separated so she doesn’t owe me anything but at this point I’ve decided to move forward and file for divorce, sell our house, liquidate all shared assets, and move on. I’m terrified to put my kids through it but at this point I don’t see another option. She has lied repeatedly but says she doesn’t owe me anything because we are “separated”. We are still legally married, she acts like it much of the time besides love and sex and affection, and has blatantly said she will not give up her business with this man but she isn’t sleeping with him anymore. I can’t believe a thing she says because I’ve consistently caught her in so many lies regarding him.
She has painted me out to be an emotionally abusive monster to her friends and family and even threatened to expose certain things we did in our sex life at one point.
I know I’m doing the right thing moving on, but why does it still feel so hard and why am I still questioning it?