I'm new to the forum so I apologize for the long post. My wife and I have been together for over 11 years, married for almost 3. We are in our late 20s. We started dating in high school and have pretty much grown up together. A few years ago we got married and up until recently, things were great. We have a great house, we do a lot of things together, take vacations regularly and I thought we had a good marriage. We never really fought or had issues that couldn't be resolved. Our families are pretty close and we have most of the same friends.
About 2 months ago I noticed that something was off with my wife. She was staying up hours later than she normally would saying she fell asleep on the couch, she started carrying her cell phone every where with her, and she just seemed detached from our relationship or anything else really. To make a long story short, I saw on her phone one day that she was texting with someone else and I asked her about it. She refused to address the text messages saying they were nothing but she instead said that she wasn't sure if she was happy anymore and that I had gotten too complacent - with the things we do, how she plans everything we do, we always hang out with the same people, and with life in general because I was happy where I worked but she wanted me to find a new job to make more money. A lot of this took me by surprise because while she did plan a lot of the things we did together or with others, I focused on making sure we were set financially and long term - basically making sure we could maintain or improve our lifestyle. Never before had she put any of this like that. We talked about those issues and I tried to make changes to things - I started trying to plan more things for us to do on our own and also just tried to change my approach to things.
Unfortunately, I tried to push past what I saw in those text messages and I was in denial up until a few weeks ago. A few weeks after I saw those original messages and we had this conversation, I figured out that she was having an affair with a client of hers. I continued to try and believe her when she would say it was nothing but anytime I would try to confront her about it I would give in and basically believe what she was shoveling. Basically I think it just escalated from casual conversations, to an EA, to now a PA.
I confronted her two Sundays ago about everything, showing her proof that she had been lying to me and that she was seeing this person. She denied having an affair but got upset when I threw the proof in her face. I told her that if she didn't break off this affair and either want to be with me OR work at our issues that I thought it was best if she stayed somewhere else for the time-being. I told her that all I ever wanted for her (and us) was to be happy. If that wasn't with me then I would have to deal with it but she can't continue to string me along. For the next two days she didn't come home, telling me she stayed with a co-worker. That Wednesday she left work early sick and was home when I got home but basically passed out in bed - she had been sleeping in one of the guest rooms for about a week at this point. When she came upstairs I said that we needed to set a time for us to sit down and figure out what was next for us. At first we were going to do it the next night, Thursday, but she didn't come home that night again and then Friday we actually went to a wedding together - which didn't go well. I also don't entirely believe that she stayed with her coworker and instead stayed with him the nights she was out of the house.
The following morning we sat down and talked. I said that we had a few options but that we need to figure out what we were going to do because we can't continue to live like this: work at our issues, take some time apart to continue to figure out what we each want to do, or call it quits and make whatever arrangements we need to. I expressed to her that I certainly didn't want our relationship to end but that I can't continue to live in denial and I need her to be in our relationship. I also said that I was willing to look past her affair but that she had show she was committed to our relationship.
We didn't really speak much over the next week and she went to visit her family for the 4 days before Easter. Sunday night after dinner we spoke again and at this point she told me that she wanted a divorce. She said that she felt guilty for how she had treated me but that she's at the point where she doesn't know what she really wants. She doesn't consider her affair a "relationship" and that it had no bearing on why she doesn't want to be married anymore and that she doesn't want to be with anyone right now. She said that she was tired of doing what everyone else wanted her to do and being pressured into everything.
Needless to say I was not happy with how this conversation was going because I got the impression that she didn't want to be married to me anymore because of reasons that were out of my control - her doing what everyone else wanted her to do, her being pressured by others. I also know that her affair is more than she makes it out to be, at least to me. Basically I tried convincing her to change her mind but at some point I just stopped.
We spoke yesterday morning on the way to work but it wasn't a good conversation and it resulted in my getting angry about everything. At some point we decided that we were going to talk last night about making whatever arrangements we needed to until I suggested that we take some time to clear our heads before having that conversation. She agreed and said she would be home tonight after work.
Do I continue to push for some sort of reconciliation or do I give in and let her go? Despite everything that's happened I still want to work things out with her but I know that I can't control how she feels and at the same time I wonder if I should really be trying this hard to fix things - when in fact I'm the one that's been wronged and it seems like she's basically checked out. At this point I'm absolutely torn.
