Awkward situation

[Tate]

The biggest fear of my wife right now is exposure of her EA with my BIL and the effect on my kids lives. They are like siblings with their cousins, and exposure would mean very little contact with their cousins. From the same token, exposure would destroy my wife's whole life. She has tried to build a life independent of me, but outing her would destroy all of her relationships...my family, her own family, my BILs family who we are also close to. It would shatter her world.

Our kids lives are everything to her, and outing her would have dramatic repercussions on our kids lives as well as my sisters 4 kids.

My wife wants to stay together for the kids. She told me she feels trapped now...and her physical affair dying off has made her feel stuck like this. She also said that she agrees with me that our current situation is not a stable one in the sense that I likely will not want to continue in a loveless marriage. She swears she has no intentions of divorcing me now and that a divorce would have to be initiated by me.

I believe her in that regard. She told me that for years she has just been playing the role of wife, showing me affection just to keep us together but that she won't do that anymore.

This hurts me because I care dearly for her in spite of everything she has done.

I can threaten to out her or at the least tell my BIL that I know what's going on, and she will make a clean break from him to save the relationship between the cousins. But, that will make me the bad guy and make her resent me more.

So summary: I can force a cold turkey stop to the EAP with my BIL, but that will act to trap my wife further. She is not scared of me divorcing her because she has no interest in loving me again. She is terrified of me outing her, destroying her lifestyle, my kids relationship with cousins, my sisters family, and many close family relationships...it would be a horrendous windfall.