Glad to find this place as I need help and advice!
I discovered 5 weeks ago my wife has had an 18 month affair! I am gutted. We have been married 28 years and have 3 grown up sons, 2 still living at home. She said she loves him and that our marriage had got into a rut 10 years ago because I started to ignore her and was more interested in spending my evenings in front of a computer than being with her. This is true to a fair degree and now I deeply regret what I have done. She says she tried to talk to me a number of times about the problem (which she did), but things just drifted along. I do have a lot of interests that I follow on-line. All of them non- relationship(or sex) based.
She started going line-dancing and at the start I used to go along to the social nights (every Friday nioght and some Saturday nights) and then it became clear I was no longer welcome to come - she said she was out with the girls..... I knew she enjoyed it very much, so I just let if go. If only I had realised what was going on.
To cut a long story short we talked all Sunday night after I caught her on a mobile phone call to him and she spent the next day deciding what she was going to do.
I held out an olive branch and said I wanted to rebuild the marriage (I still love her) provided she ended all contact. She met up with him the next night and said she ended it. But no, 10 days later I found a pay-as-you-go mobile being used to communicate with him. I gave her a final chance and again she met up with him and said it had been ended for good. I think it has, but I am having to watch her like a hawk. I spent an hour comforting her when she got him that second night as she cried after ending it with him. Needless to say I have lost all trust in my wife and my emotions are all over the place. Living hell.....
My problem is that she says she is no longer in love with me but she is giving our marriage a final go to see if it can work. She has also said in one of our discussions that when she looks into the future for us, things look bleak.
She shows me no affection and says that she can't be luvy-duvy with me because she doesn't feel that way. She just says she is prepared to give it a few months to see if those feelings come back. I am finding this extremely hard to deal with as I want to restart the affection that I so badly miss. I am spending all my free time with her and have hardly touched the computer for the last 5 weeks, nor do I want to, but now she says I am smothering her. She seems to want the opposite to me (I just want to cuddle her and hold her and hug her etc. to tell her how much I love her) and says she needs some space and time to see if things start to get better between us.
We have had a lot of straight talking and I have said a lots of stuff (some things to hurt her) based on how hurt I continue to feel. She understands this, but when I question her commitment or lack of it, she just says she is spending time with me and that's as far as it can go at the moment and she hopes time may heal things.
I am still very hurt and finding it hard to cope with the way things are. I am comitted to trying to repair our marriage and have told her this repeatedly, but to be honest, somehow I feel as if I am the one who has had the affair! I really don't understand why she is doing practically nothing to make amends and to try to make things better. She knows I am craving affaction, closeness and intimacy and she can barely bring herself to give me the ocassional hug.
Eben an occasional hand on the shoulder or arm would help and I don't even get that. I just don't know how to keep going. I feel as if my heart has been broken and have told her that.