It's over when YOU say it's over. You are not a victim here. You are in control.
You are moving the situation forward for the following reasons:
1. Self-care/Survival.
2. Peace of mind to rebuild your finances, which is of benefit to your kids and your wife.
3. Regaining your self-respect.
4. Gaining your wife's respect.
5. Offering your wife consequences for her actions for the first time in her life. Giving her a reality check.
6. Changing the game. Regaining control and power.
All of these things are pre-requisites for either you saying it's over OR shocking you wife into a reality check where she sincerely and deeply repents of her actions sufficiently for her to come back on YOUR terms and with the help of a real family therapist to help her do the REAL work she needs to do.
There's plenty of time and room for her to change. This is the only way she's going to do it Frank.
Either way, you are doing what's necessary to move on.
Most people on this forum who have followed your situation are probably of the opinion that you are very likely to take her back too easily and that she'll end up in the same place in the next 2-5 years. They are of the "enough is enough" school.
The moderators will always take the position that reconciliation should always be left open.
I lean with the nay-sayers in this case. This is her third go at this infidelity thing. However, we haven't seen what a REALITY CHECK can do for your wife.
In my conversations with you, you said you might take her back. You even admit this is a weakness for you.
I think your wife needs to get her own apartment, get responsible, get a regularly paying job and be on her own for at least 1 year before you even consider letting her back in your house. She needs to be able to come back to you as a mature, strong, independent woman. She needs to not need you financially. If she's on her own, if she can make it without you, if she has all her choices of "spiritual" boy-men but THEN she wants to come back to you, Frank, it's for real. You will know if it's for real. It will be a miraculous change in her. Right now you are the safety net -- the paycheck. You need to be the treasure that she wants, not simply the lesser of two evils.
I think perhaps in our attempts to save our marriages at any cost we accepts crumbs (baby steps) of affection and change, throw a party and then jump over to piecing.
She's a three timer, Frank. I think this time, you need to hold out for a real miracle and REAL change, if that's what you want.
I'm OK with any choice you make Frank at this stage.
