We’re now back to up in air on remaining in the house together. The advice here has been to stay but think it’s going to be hard due to lack of trust on both sides - I violated her privacy and she had a pretty minor EA. Even though she says she is going to stop, I’m always going to be wondering when she’s on the couch or in her room if she’s texting him and she’s going to be wondering if I’m snooping. It’s going to be tough. She also says she is angry that I’m changing and bettering myself. She’s angry and hurt because she has tried to get me to change for years and I’m only now doing it when she is leaving- says I will now be a great partner for someone else but couldn’t do it for her. She is right, I feel terrible for how I’ve been in our marriage. I will be a better person and so wish it could be with her but she has given up.
I know exactly what you mean. If I'd had my time over again (hindsight is a wonderful thing) I'd have taken and allowed a LOT more space in the aftermath of the EA. I wish I'd have done DB in the aftermath in order to concentrate on healing myself. An injured, damaged, mistrustful and deeply hurt person is in no fit state to do the delicate and often painful work of repairing a marriage. For me, I was in no place to accept any responsibility for the hurt I'd caused my H, or I was so eager to have his love and attention again that I accepted too much responsibility. Both are unhealthy and more importantly, ineffective. It does you no good to leap into repairing a relationship while you're still understandably hurt and betrayed. And perhaps this applies to your wife too. However minor or otherwise the EA was, your feelings are your feelings (and I hate to say it, but you may not have the full truth - bits and pieces were still trickling out in my situation for months after my initial discovery) and that needs to be the most important.
If you feel you can do this healing and introspection while living with your wife, I think it is better to do that. I couldn't. If you can't, then perhaps a more physical separation is best. Are you in the UK? I went to a solicitor when my H left and my solictor told me that while he could argue he'd been primary carer in the past, and so would be the obvious choice for residency of the kids should we divorce, given that he'd left and over the months since he'd left the kids had been with me and I had been doing all the school runs, that it was clear I was their primary carer and he was unlikely to be granted residency of them should be want to apply for it. I think that's worth bearing in mind too.
