My (28M) wife (26F) and childhood sweetheart cheated on me after 14 years
My wife and I have been together since we were about 13. We are both each other’s first and only partners. We have had a pretty great relationship over the last 14 years. We rarely fought or argued, we travelled the world together, and she has meant everything to me for as long as I can remember. Over the past few years our communication has not been very good. She is extremely avoidant, with a lot of childhood trauma, that made it very hard to work through issues together. Last December she sat me down and told me she was having doubts about our marriage and that she did not know any more what she wanted. I was devastated. I tried for several weeks to find out why she felt this way and how we could work on it, but she kept giving me vague answers. I asked her repeatedly if there was someone else and she said no. After a couple weeks she decided to go house sit for a friend for 2 weeks and “take some space”. I was still completely in the dark and going completely insane. I would pretty much beg her to come home and talk to me and she was acting like I suddenly meant nothing to her. After 2 weeks she came home, but was still not herself and then planned a trip to hawaii with her girlfriend to “take more space”. Every day this was happening was an eternity of pain and uncertainty to me. She came home again after her trip and we started going to counseling, but she was still not very invested. Finally around mid-march she suddenly decided she wanted to make things work. She started making a real effort and things quickly improved. I could not get over the lingering questions I had and kept bringing them up. Finally she admitted there had been someone else, her coworker, but that she never told him how she felt and nothing happened between them. She said her feelings for him were a symptom of the issues in our marriage and that he had little impact on her behavior. For the next few weeks I was trying to come to terms with this and kept asking questions. But the answers didn’t add up. Eventually I was clearly just suspicious and not believing anything she said. Finally she told me.
When she went to her friend’s house to “take space”, one of her coworkers took their own life. This person was a close friend of the guy she liked and she said they drove around and talked about it.
The next day after the funeral he came over with several other people to talk and mourn. Everyone else eventually left and he stayed up talking to her. Then he left. The next night the same thing happened, except when everyone left he “tried to make moves on her”. She told him she couldn’t and he left again. Then the THIRD night everyone came over again and he stayed late again. This time she offered to let him sleep on the couch but she says he “followed her upstairs” where they had sex and then spent the night together. She says this is the only night it happened.
The took full responsibility and sobbed while telling me how sorry she was.
I am beyond devastated. I don’t know what to do and I feel incredibly trapped. All I have ever known is my love for her, but now I am also so full of disgust and anger. I feel like we had such a special and sacred bond that she has destroyed. I have nowhere else to live and neither does she so we have to stay together for the time being.
How can I possibly forgive her for not only sleeping with this guy, but treating me so callously for months afterwards? She says she instantly felt guilty, but apparently not enough to avoid doing it after the first time he made moves. And apparently not enough to try to make things work with me until months later.
I feel like I am so attached to her after all these years that I cannot possibly leave. But I don’t know how I could stay either.
How can I possibly ever trust her again when she has slow rolled every part of this truth? First it was just a crush, then she admitted they flirted, now she says they had sex but only once. How can I even believe it only happened once when she was still ghosting me for weeks after. She has also clearly still been hanging out with him since it happened. I saw a video on her phone of them hanging out at her friend’s house at 2am in march. She says he just went home that night and nothing happened.
Tldr: my wife cheated on me with her coworker and I don’t know how to move forward.