Please do not just accept this problem and move into the basement and suffer like this for many years until your kids are grown, and THEN end up divorced anyway. What would be the point? If you are going to go that route then just get divorced now. (I am not truly suggesting you do that...just making the point).
Please re-consider what your true goals and plans are. And STAND UP for your own goals and plans! You said your wife stated she will not go to counseling again. Well, that is not up to her to decide by herself. Too many times people just throw their hands up in the air because their partner has made some claim such as your wife saying she won't go to counseling again. The other partner hears this and files it away, and then it becomes an excuse for themselves to not try again. This means that YOU have some responsibility to bring it up again, regardless if you think that she will just refuse. If you just hold on to what she said in the past without prompting her, then you don't really know for sure what she will say. You must allow her the ability to change her mind.
Especially if she can truly understand that divorce is a likely ending to this story if she doesn't!
When you were discussing the friends with the husband who had the affair, did you say anything to defend him? I think she deserves to know how you REALLY feel.
Even if you don't go to counseling, she deserves to know and hear how you feel - - and if you would rather keep it to yourself and move into the basement than face it with her directly and doing the hard work to fix this situation, then half of the problem lays on your end. Do you see this?
Look - please go to my screen name and find and read my first thread. I was a low desire wife and had no desire to be with my husband. We are divorced now. I wish I had understood better then what I understand now: that if you don't have sex with your husband, eventually he will begin to secretly hate you. I just didn't get that, it never even crossed my mind. But surprise surprise, I am the one who cheated. Again please go read my thread.
What I have learned from all of this is that one partner can sit there and tell themselves "I've tried all I can but I'm not making the first move anymore because I feel I have given more and tried harder than my spouse", and yet, when you end up divorced, this attitude didn't help you at all, did it?
What I should have done is said "I'm going to do all the hard work necessary to see if this can work or not, and if after all the hard work is done by both of us, then if it can't work I will know I tried my very best".
So far, you haven't tried your very best because you feel duped and you feel you have tried harder than she has. But it doesn't matter who has tried harder...what matters is knowing in the end if your BEST 100% EFFORT worked or not. If you never give your best effort, which will definitely involve a lot of painful growing, then you will never rest well again in your life, because you most certainly will end up divorced.
And one last thing...
I know you said you can't afford a divorce right now. Hey, just so you know, when it comes right down to it, if you have to do it, you simply have no choice. Yes, it will financially devastate all of your nuclear family, and yet, people do it every single day. Don't worry about that part of it. Just worry about whether you have given your 100% effort or not.
