Is there hope?

[hoosjim]

Core, I'ma chime in here, too. I have been exactly where you are at now and you have got to keep yourself from getting carried away by what you saw and what you are feeling and from the guilt you are experiencing for your wife's so-called agony. My wife was in the exact. Same. Place. "I'm dying inside", she said, "I feel so alone and abandoned", "every day I cry on my way in to work."I don't think we were ever happy together".

Now, were either of us, you or I, perfect husband's? Clearly not. But we were also not the completely monstrous and callous failures my wife made me out to be and your wife is currently making you out to be. The truth of the matter is that my and my wife in our situation, and you and your wife in your current situation, walked the path that got you to this point TOGETHER. Marriage is a partnership that requires teamwork and effort by both partiesand you don't reach this point in a relationship without failures and weaknesses on both sides.

Yes, you need to take care of your side of the street, change yourself as a man for the better, etc, and, yes, it is even acceptable to, in a calm, confident, manner, take responsibility and apologize for specific shortcomings and indicate that you know that you need to do better, but you absolutely cannot let your failures lead you to let your wife off the hook for hers. Let yourself go down that path all you're going to do is look beta, and weak, and drive her further and further away. You need to take care of your side of the street right now, and she needs to take care of hers. And given that she is currently in an affair, she has a lot of stuff to take care of. Don't let her off the hook because you feel like you were less than perfect husband. Fix yourself, improve yourself, and leave her to do the same for herself, if she so chooses. And maybe, someday, if you both address your own shortcomings, you will be blessed with the opportunity to reconcile. But rolling over and playing dead because you are taking on full load of guilt for both of you is not going to get you there.

Trust me, I know, I have been there and come out the other side.