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I should mention that 20 years ago, this had happened before with the same woman.

Sir, you are looking down the barrel of a 20 year LTA without a timeline and polygraph to confirm it wasn't.

Sir, you are looking down the barrel of a 20 year LTA without a timeline and polygraph to confirm it wasn't.

Perhaps OP is ok with that. Honestly can’t tell…..

I guess your W wants to rugsweep, and you're willing, but you're stuffing your feelings. You stuffed them when they happened, and 7 months later, they came back to haunt you.

She says it won't happen again. But she's been on at least a slippery slope a number of times that you know about. What makes that OK with you? Look, I'm happy I don't own my W. She made vows, as did I, but we can disavow them at any time, so she doesn't owe me all that much (though I'd be devastated if she told me she was done with me, and I'm betting she won't do that). But I'm pretty sure I would not be satisfied with a W who only goes as far as the slippery slope, except once in a while.

At this point, you're not ready to risk your connection with your W, but you have to risk your M to deal with your feelings about what your W did - and what you saw.

Right now you're dooming yourself to stuffed feelings that will come up time and again. You're telling yourself she's the only partner you can want, even though she's a less than great partner, and even though there are other women who are likely to turn you on as much as your W does. Believe me, I'm hooked on my W. I haven't had a date with anyone else since 1966, and all during those last dates, I heard a message in my head shouting, 'I want to be with W2b.' Even so, I've met numerous women I would have at least attempted to get close to if I had been single.

What's keeping you from demanding a relationship without betrayal? What's keeping you from demanding that your W change from betrayer to good partner?

You can't change your W, but you can change how you respond to her.

Note: I'm not saying D. I'm saying that you have a problem, that it's hard enough to solve that you came to an anonymous Internet forum for support, and that the best way to deal with the problem is to address it with your W as soon as you can.

You're accepting less than you deserve. If you can't bring yourself to address the problem head on, a good IC can help.

Bro, I know this is difficult and extremely painful, but you can solve your problem with your W, even if you don't realize it yet.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:06 PM, Wednesday, March 25th]

Thank you all for your continued responses. You are giving me a lot to think about.

Pogre: The proximate cause for me being here on this site is an argument that we had last week about a restaurant dinner for two in which she thought I wasn't chatty enough and I thought she wasn't affectionate enough. Afterwards this escalated into something that sent me into a spiral of revisiting everything that had happened and feeling we really needed some time apart and I needed to harden my heart. This floored me, so I guess you're right that I've been in denial about how hard it hits my emotions and nervous system.

The subject of couples therapy has come up, but it still feels to me like if I can join her in getting back to normal, we wouldn't need it. I did feel after that argument that we needed it though. It comes and goes.

She did get a session of therapy for herself after it all happened: she said she was pretty sure it was just perimenopausal hormones crossed with the big decade birthday memento mori, but that she thought she should just see what a professional said. She found someone online but only did a single session because she felt this therapist was too judgmental.

I don't know if I need personal therapy. I've discussed it to death with ChatGPT. I feel like the person that needs to talk about it is WW.

BondJaneBond: I think what's happened is that my hysterical bonding has spilled over into a sort of limerence. It's an infatuation rather than the love of a 31-year marriage like it used to be. When she meets me in the middle, it feels great, like this is easy, what she did is nothing, we're back to the way we were. When she doesn't, I feel like I'm a kicked puppy going back to its owner.

Yes, I am hurt by the ways in which she rejected me, and I've been revisiting that moment she turned me away from our marital bedroom quite a bit this past week. A couple of weeks back we went to the pub with OW and her spouse to watch sports, which is the first time I've seen OW since that night. Because of the way we were arranged, every time our team scored it was natural for WW and OW to celebrate together; nothing remotely sexual about it, but I got a pang of jealousy every time.

I don't want this in our lives. But if WW needs it, I want to make it work if I can, because I want to be with her.

Letmebefrank: This is the thing I've always struggled with. If a friend told me that having other friends was evidence of them being "not enough" for me, I would call that unhealthy jealousy. So I don't see how it necessarily means that WW has something the matter with her. It must be possible to be able to be "not enough" for WW without it ending in tears. But I'm still hoping not to have to cross that bridge.

DRSOOLERS: I can't quite work out whether I need to be bothered about the mini-affair with OM2, or whether it was just a couple of drunken kisses and a bit of fondling. I don't think she would have fallen in love with him and left me; maybe I'm being naive. Outside of that, she told me everything pretty much straight away. And if that's the basis of things, then if it happens again, I'll know about it and we can take it from there. If I ask her what led to them, she's just going to tell me the same thing as she's already told me: a decade birthday and some wayward hormones.

Do you mind if I ask you what you mean about happening in a vacuum? I don't think anything ever does, which is why I don't tend to have red lines but rather treat everything on a case-by-case basis.

Bigger: She's an academic. The university area is absolutely teeming with pubs. These are not organisational drinks.

You might be right about the sub-category thing. She drinks minimally most of the time, but does have occasional blowouts. But we did have a big party last month where she had plenty to drink and then dealt just fine with this other colleague hitting on her.

I absolutely think this has to do with validation, and so does she -- that's what I mean when I talk about mini midlife crises and decade birthday memento mori. BTW, WW went to a girls boarding school and then half a year (and zero sexual partners) later, she was with me. So OW was understandable experimentation, even though it was "late" at 30.

Neither of us wants to remove OW or OM from our lives, and quite honestly, if I would need to do that to prevent something happening, then I'd rather it happen and I know about it, instead of it being hidden at work.

This0is0Fine: Do people really base this stuff on polygraphs? They're hardly infallible.

gr8ful: I can see how it looks, but no, I wouldn't be okay with that. If she told me that she wants to live her life having sex with women as well as men, then I would try to make it work, because that's fair enough, it's no reflection on me. But if she lied to me for 20 years, it would be over.

sisoon: I think you and I see eye to eye on ownership, but I've never really understood why people think the "forsaking all others" bit is immutable, but the "till death do us part" bit can be broken at will. As for finding a better wife: nobody is perfect. My home is my castle, even though it has its idiosyncrasies.

When WW and I argue, we aren't our best selves, and some arguments can just about last longer than those few hours at the party between what she did and when she came to me to tell me how much she regretted it.

Does counselling have to be individual? I feel like I want to be there when she talks about it.