I posted here some time ago, but it has been a long time so I will start over. I have been with my husband 31 years. I supported him through school for five years in the early 1980s, then he worked for 17 years, was laid off in 2003, and I have been supporting him ever since. He tried starting a business, but it went nowhere, so he gave up and just started playing. He does shop and cook but that does not take more than 4 hours a day at most. I have been working full time for the last 30 years, and have in addition taken care of both my aging parents for the last 7 years. I had very little time and he had lots of time, so he started an affair in August. He did not tell me until October, and then he admitted only that they had been thinking about having an affair, but that now they were giving their spouses a second chance. I never got a second chance because they were immediately back with each other. We tried marriage counselling, and then I tried becoming more attractive, becoming a more interesting person, etc. The latter worked very temporarily in November, to the point where he was telling the ow that he was "working on his marriage", but he never stopped simultaneously working on his relationship with her. Then he lost interest again in working on his marriage, and since then has been splitting his time between my place and her place, but with me we are like brother and sister. Lately he has been increasing the number of nights per week that he spends with her. I did go and talk to an attorney a few months ago, who told me that if he decides to divorce me, he can take a huge chunk of the money that I worked very hard to earn. I am exhausted and have been wanting to retire, but he can destroy not only our marriage but my whole future, into my old age. My only hope is that he would have some compassion during negotiation. Despite all this, I still love him. We used to talk about being each other's soul mates, and tell each other we were glad we married each other, and we seemed to have a powerful relationship. But I have to admit that this affair is wearing me down. He has told me more than once since this started that no matter what happens, he hopes we will always be friends. I have started seeing a counsellor, because at the same time all this is happening my father just died, I am still dealing with my mother's death less than two years ago, and my favorite cat also just died, and I have enormous grief. So I am open to any advice that will work. Thanks for listening.
