More R talks today. I said to the wife please don't keep lying to me, just say nothing at all. I said I knew very well that this has been going on a long time, years and I can deal with that she is with someone else but to please just stop lying, just say nothing at all. Ill be leaving soon. From this is stemmed off into 2 hours of talking about us, our D8 everything where we went wrong everything. We both agree that for our D8 we have to be friendly and civil and make this as best as we can for her. For our sakes as well. We will always be a part of each other as we have D8. We both empathised that we're both hurting and that it is going to take a lot of time to move past that. Explained I wont be just coming round all the time as I need to move on with my life which we both agreed on. It ended calmly. both upset but calm. My pride and ego still stand in my way to fully let go but the truth is I let her go a long time ago. years.
Well I'm glad you finally confronted her on this. Know that this (not being willing to be openly lied to) will likely be a boundary that she will re-test in the days and weeks ahead. I hope you'll remain 100% consistent with this, as it WILL need reinforcing. It's good practice for you to flex your new "boundary muscles," as it's definitely an acquired skill.
You handled the convo decently well, but one thing I would urge you to do is NOT make this a moral equivalency with her. You should say things like "Look, I know I was _____, ______ and ________ in the marriage, but I'm also WORKING on those things. Deciding instead to have an affair is not only obviously not fair to ME, but something you are going to have to decide why you took that outlet to deal with your own issues. I'll own mine, but I will in no way condone your decision to go outside of our marriage" (or something similar in your own words).
I say this NOT as a pride thing, but something your WIFE is going to need to work on going forward. You do her no favors by smoothing over the necessary introspection that she's going to need to do in the months ahead by applying the conveniently-soothing salve of moral equivalency.
(this also applies, albeit differently, if the betrayed spouse ALSO cheated earlier in the marriage. There you should say something like "Look, I'm obviously in no position to lecture you on infidelity; I made the same mistake and I've learned since that it was a selfish, horrible thing to do and not an emotionally healthy way to handle any dissatisfaction I was having with our marriage. But I also owned up to it, and have tried to do the things necessary to work on myself and on our marriage, and you haven't done that yet. That's something you're going to have to decide, but make no mistake: despite what I did in the past, I will NOT live in an open marriage now. So we both have some decisions to make here."
