It’s now been just over 72 hours since I told my wife about the affair.
They say that learning about a partner’s infidelity is like suffering death from a thousand cuts and the last few days have felt like that on both sides.
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down with my wife for about 3 hours discussing the affair and what led me down that path.
We both acknowledged mistakes were made by each of us throughout our marriage, especially over the last ten years, right around the time she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Disease and her life was turned upside down.
She felt like by holding back her emotions she was somehow protecting me, but at the end of the day it was just something that slowly started to drive us apart.
I guess right now the reasons seem irrelevant, because no matter what the cause, here we are at what appears to be the end of a 23 year marriage.
It’s a marriage that given my infidelity she still doesn’t want to end.
She thinks this is something that we can get past if we are both committed to giving our marriage a second shot and fourteen, sixteen months ago that would have sounded much more appealing, as a matter of fact I may have jumped at that opportunity to start over.
We have made some amazing memories together, have built a life and a family together and it’s not an easy decision to tear that all apart.
I’ve wrestled with this over and over and over in my head, so her case for me staying in the marriage isn’t something I haven’t tried to make to myself on numerous occasions and maybe it’s a good case?
Maybe for most people, it would be worth giving this another chance and maybe just maybe I would still have considered that…but there is obviously one big catch…
I’m now in love with someone else.
In order to try and repair the damage done to our marriage I would need to sacrifice my relationship with this other woman and I just can’t bring myself to do that.
I love her and I am no longer in love with my wife. I don’t know how you get past that, how you simply erase that from your heart and soul.
My wife thinks that with time this other woman will just fade into memory and that she and I can learn to fall in love again. I guess I just don’t see the same image when I peer into my crystal ball.
I see myself living a life where I resent her for making me give up this relationship because I “owe it” to her to sacrifice my happiness for the greater good of the family and my marriage. I am well aware of ALL the sacrifices that she has made over the years, she gave up a home she loved and a career. Those were choices that she made, but now it seems it’s payback time and I need to offer up my pound of flesh to even the score.
To Be Continued…
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Previously published on medium
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