Okay, apologies ahead of time for the long post. However, in order to give a fair assessment of the situation, I feel like I need to give some background information as well.
Nearly 11 years ago (May 04) I was in a motorcycle accident that left me paralyzed from the chest down. At the time my wife and I were engaged and set to be married in October of that year. I spent 3 months in the hospital, all of which she was at my side every single day. There was never anything but unwavering support from her through all of it. She never questioned staying with me and said the thought of leaving me was never an option for her. When I finally went home from the hospital it was really just the beginning of my recovery, and I wasn't at all self sufficient for at least a couple of years. Oh yeah, and we ended up moving the wedding out to May of the next year.
When I was finally able to start working again I actually ended up getting a job at the same place she worked. Sometime after we started working there, the bosses daughters fiancee (we will call him FuckFace) started working there. From nearly day 1 I could tell I didn't much like the guy, and it also seemed pretty evident that he was at least attracted to my wife. I never put too much stock into the attraction because well, my wife is very attractive. I wasn't worried about it at all because I completely trusted her, and so what if this guy was into her, just so long as he didn't make any moves on her I didn't care. But outside of that, I just didn't like him because he is a sleazeball. He is the kind of guy that would BCC the boss on all emails just to try to stir up shit. He is a backstabbing prick, and I just never cared for him. So this is all probably 5-6 years ago. Through the years I knew they kept in contact to some extent, and I always told her I didn't really like it, but I never made a huge issue of it. Especially once we moved away from that area and are like 400 miles away now.
Fast forward to several months ago when I made my first post about maybe separating from my wife. I could tell something was wrong with her, but getting my wife to talk about anything is seriously like pulling teeth. If there is a serious conversation to be had she completely clams up and just won't talk. After badgering her about what was going on she finally tells me that she is just really struggling with a lot of shit that is related to my disability. From being able to go for a hike with the kids, to playing at the beach, to our sex life. All normal things that most people probably don't even think too much about. So I insist we go seek counseling and see if there is any way for us to work through this and see if we can find a common ground. At the counseling session it felt just like my wife and I were having any other conversation, and she sat there silent the majority of the time. The counselor sort of looked at us baffled and was like, there isn't much I can tell you to do. Your wife wants X and you can't provide that. If there are no other issues, I don't know what to say.
Few weeks later and my wife tells me she wants to go visit her best friend for the weekend, without any of the kids. Her best friend had been through a divorce and she wanted to get her take on it and how she was feeling. Her best friend also happens to live quite close to where FuckFace lives. So she posts on Facebook how she is on her way to visit her best friend and can't wait to see her, and FuckFace replies with a smiley. I find that to be quite odd and immediately start to question things in my head.
A couple weeks later we are driving in the car and she gets a text message. Now, at this point I am already wondering if she is hiding things from me, and so I ask her who that was. Oh it was FuckFace. I ask what he wanted and she told me what the text message said, and it was clearly in a response to something she had said. She says she doesn't know what he is referring too because she doesn't know what her message to him was before that. So I quickly figure out she is deleting messages, awesome. This then leads me down a road that I never wanted to go down, or thought I would be the type of person to do. I check the phone bill and find his number, and hundreds of text messages and lots of talk time to him. Like, a lot over a couple month span.
One day she is in the shower so I decide to look at her messages. Still nothing from him but that same message, so I decide to look at a couple others. She has one exchange with her best friend about going down to visit. She mentions she may be having dinner with another friend down there, and he will just drop her off at the airport. The message goes on to say that he can't make it so it will just be them for the weekend. I immediately get a sick feeling in my stomach and confront her about it. I ask her if she was planning on seeing FuckFace while she was down there, and she immediately says no. Heart. Broken. I should take a moment to explain something else about my wife. Up to this point, we had always joked about how bad a liar she was. She would try to lie and immediately start laughing. She doesn't like lying and so avoids situations where she has to, or she just tells the truth. So at this point I am pretty broken up about it as I know that trust I had is gone.
So I immediately call her out and told her I just saw the message. She then tries to backtrack and said they were all going to go out to dinner. I counter with how she is lying again because she clearly says in her message that they are going to go out to dinner, and her best friend was never part of that. I continue grilling her with her swearing they are "just friends" until she finally tells me more. They have been talking for a while and she has feelings for him. It has been going on since September (and I believe I found out in early November) and they clearly have been talking a lot. I am constantly grilling her about the extent of all of it, and turns out they have exchanged I love yous. At this point I am ready to leave and she apologizes and swears she wants to work it out. I tell her she has to cut off all contact with him, and I send him a message asking him to back off as well. Nothing threatening just asking him to stay away from my wife while we work out our issues. So all of that happened back in mid December I guess. So from that point on they supposedly have no contact.
So now we are at present day. It is Monday night and I still just have this weird feeling. I go and look at her phone and see on her Facebook messenger a note from him on February 14th, Valentines day. I open it up and it says January 2nd, and simply a note from him saying he hopes all is well. So already past the time when they were supposed to not be in contact. I get to thinking and realize that she must have deleted the message from the 14th, and once again call her on it. She says FuckFace sent her a message saying Happy Valentines day and that was it, and she didn't respond. I ask her again, are you sure you didn't respond, and she says she didn't. We have a long conversation and we actually make some progress, and I am feeling pretty good. The next I decide I need to send him another note asking him to back off, but before I do that I tell her that I prefer she do it. And I ask her once again, are you sure you didn't respond. And then the truth comes out. She did respond to him that she missed him too. I blow up, tell her to fuck off, and start packing up stuff to leave.
So this is where I left off with you guys. I went to a bar down the street to finish work (hey, they have wifi and it's quieter than Starbucks! Not my fault they just happen to have an amazing beer selection on tap as well). Before I got out the door she was begging me to stay, telling me this is not what she wants, she is sorry, all the BS. I told her I don't believe she is sorry, because she could have fixed this forever ago, and I am leaving. When I am gone she says she is going to send him a message telling him not to contact her and she will block him on Facebook, and for me to please come back home. She showed me the message and promised to leave it on there as proof she isn't still talking with him.
So, here I am now. If there were no kids involved I would have been gone as soon as this started. I have more respect for myself than to put up with that, but my kids mean everything to me. I have already been through a divorce once and had to watch my 2 kids grow up in another house, and I never want to go through that again. Not only do you miss out on a ton of day to day stuff, there is inevitably drama with their mother with how they are raised and some of the things they are allowed to do. I have very little influence over much of that because I am not in the house with them, and I hate it. I don't like going days without seeing my kids, and the thought of doing it again was tearing me up.
Let me be clear on another point though. There isn't a bunch of animosity between us on a daily basis. We don't fight much (outside of all of this), and I honestly think yesterday was the first time my daughter had even heard us yell (well me yell at my wife) because she came in to see what was happening and looked scared. If you didn't know this one situation was happening, you would think we had a perfect marriage. I know my cousin who I had confided in about this was floored that any of this was going on, and if I told anyone else in my family they would feel the same way. They all think my wife is God's gift and can do no wrong.
So there it is. We have the 3 little kids together, and my 2 older kids who she has loved since she met them. Oh and of course there was also the added complication of the surrogacy that she just finished for our friends. Baby is here and she is pretty well back to normal now (as normal as a woman can be). I have a lot more thoughts on this, but figured I would stop here since you all at least now have a full background. Ask whatever you want and I will do my best to answer. Sorry for the length
