I’m (44m) am having a real issues with finding a way to forgive my wife (42f). We have been married for 20 years. When she got pregnant with our first daughter, she had been seeing another guy. To this day she swears it never went further than over the clothes dry situations. Other acts of infidelity include kissing guys she worked with, an affair that lasted a couple months, and reaching out to an ex that she had threesome with (who also happened to be a co-worker), after I took her back, or before idk really her story keeps changing.
We fought a lot, and frankly still do, and through it all after her affair, I really believed she left because I was fighting and yelling over nothing. Years later, we are celebrating and she gets drunk and slips on her bodycount and what she had done while having her affair. Some details trickled in, but overall it has been 12 years since her affair and truly I could get over it if I knew what I was getting over. I’ll also say anyone who has been cheated on in such a way and gaslighted about it will understand the confusion and self confidence issues it brings.
Never has she actually come clean about anything, she has slipped up and as I’m getting ready to pack says something that generally resembles, “ok, this happened.” And then admits to what she slipped about… but of course nothing else happened.
After confronting the OM, I realized why she came back, he really is an asshole. But even then, the trickle down truth thing applies. I have resolved that it is in the past, and I was an asshole at times. Instead of just leaving I yelled and fought(never physical) with her. In the middle of the whole trickle down truth, we have this guy from her high school years, but she reached out to him, it would appear during her affair. Her story is she reached out to him, while she was gone (she left for two months when I caught her with him), after the OM treated her horribly. See, she talked like he was a good guy until very recently, even crying when he ODed on heroin two years after she came back.
So this other guy, went so far as to ask if she wanted to have a fling with him while he was on a layover in our city. She confessed that after I questioned why she had deleted all her messages with him. But then yesterday Facebook is recommending friends, and it connected me via friends you may know, with a guy we used to game with, and it spawned a who is this guy conversation. It for a change didn’t cause a fight, but later she mentioned how it felt good to have everything out there, and no more lies… I mentioned that it her contact with that guy (started on facebook).
I mentioned that it was obvious the reason he thought he could get away with even asking is she trying to rekindle old shit. Asking his relationship status, about kids, and if he left there hone state. (Oddly she has previously mentioned that she saw he was in Cali and reached out). She kept saying talked to… and I kind of spat at her, “so it wasn’t texting you guys were talking on the phone a lot?”
She says back to me, “I told you before, a long time ago, like back when I talked to him…”
I replied, so you were basically sitting around one day and decided to reach out to the only guy you had an extreme sexual encounter with, but you weren’t trying to rekindle shit, or figure out your options?
She said no he just popped in mind, I said so after I took you back, the guy you did (x,y, and z) with you just decided to reach out too?
Then she comes clean with I reached out while I was gone, which I knew because let me see the Facebook records, but she doesn’t realize that as this is the first time she admitted it.
I ask her, “so how many other exes or old friends did you look up that didn’t fuck you?”
It really was kind of a gotcha moment. She says it wasn’t her keeping options open, I tell her stop lieing to me, she says she isn’t. I get out of bed and stop talking to her, she says, “forgive me” after I tell her “I warned you if you got caught up again you had problems.”
Do I forgive without knowing what I’m forgiving? Do I dig for how far it really went? Does it really matter atp?
TL;DR: wife of twenty years got caught up about trying to rekindle with her ex that she had a threesome with in high school. Asks me to forgive her, but won’t exactly tell me what I’m forgiving.