Here we go again...

First off, my apologies for the novel to follow. I am 47, and have been married for 27 years to my wife who is 45. We have three boys, 28, 22 and 16. If you do the math, you can see our first son was born the year before we were married, and while my wife was still in high school. We were married right after she graduated. I am no stranger to this forum as I have unfortunately been here before, trying to deal long after the fact with a series of affairs my wife had in 1995. She went through a period where I did not even recognize her, and during that time, was involved to different degrees with 5 different men. What happened ranged from EA's with 2 people and PA's with 2 to 3 more, all of which basically overlapped each other. All of this occurred in the span of 1 year, and specifically over a summer from hell. At that time I had no idea what to do, had extremely low self-esteem, and my only thought was to save my marriage. We went to MC, which only lasted a few sessions. Basically, the counselor told her to knock it off, and me to get over it. Our process of working through things involved major gas lighting and rug sweeping on both of our parts. Like a fool, I took 50% of the blame for everything, including her affairs, and even apologized to her for driving her to other men. We moved on, and on the surface things seemed better, but the series of affairs haunted and changed me in ways that affect me to this day. Roughly a year after this behavior ended, my wife became pregnant with our 3rd son, and our relationship seemed to be on fairly solid ground. She would still act out at times, flirting and pushing the boundaries we had agreed to, but again, I was not confident enough in myself to enforce any repercussions for those incidents. In 2008 I was infected with Lyme disease which pretty much took me out of commission for 2 years. During that time, I lost my IT business because I was so sick and could say from day to day if I would be able to work or even get out of bed. The impact on my family financially, as well as the stress of someone being so sick took a huge toll on everyone. On top of that, because I was in such pain every day, and suffered from horrible insomnia, I spent most nights sleeping on the sofa with 2 heating pads, trying to get some relief. In 2010, I was finally doing better and we were presented with an opportunity to move to a new community 260 miles away. My son and I made the initial move so I could get him enrolled in school and hockey, but she had to remain in our home for an additional 6 months to wrap up her job. During that time, things went from good to tense, but overall, we handled the separation fairly well, and were able to see each other at least once per month. Being apart, I found a sense of independence and increased self-esteem that I had not felt in years. When she was able to join us in our new home, things were fantastic and we were extremely happy to be back together as a family. I had taken a job that had me working odd hours, having to get up at 3am and be to work at 5am. Because of this, I would usually sleep on the couch on work nights so I would not disturb my family when I got up to get ready for work. That slowly morphed into me sleeping on the couch every night, and only rarely in the bed with my wife. Things became more and more tense, and out sex life dwindled to the point of nothing. Neither of us was happy with that, but at the same time, neither of us was communicating to the other in a successful way that we needed to change things. My advances toward here were totally misinterpreted, and her blunt statements of "I need Sex" left me feeling like nothing more than a sex toy with a pulse. While I was longing for intimacy, she just wanted the physical act of sex. Because of this, and many other things, her attitude toward me became more and more cold. My efforts to connect with her, to hold a conversation or even give her a hug were met with resistance. In her mind, I could do no right, and she withdrew from me. At the same time, my way of coping with the rejection I was feeling from her was to withdraw myself, and focus on things that I could do alone, where nobody would be judging me. I wanted to be with her, and many nights would lay there thinking "I have a beautiful wife upstairs in my bed, what am I doing down here"? For the most part, I was pulling some odd combo of the 180, holding back on affection while also acting out as a classic "Mr. Nice Guy", trying to make her happy when I could, and upset when she did not live up to my unspoken contract that she would show me love in return. We put on a good face for our son and friends, but in reality we had totally grown apart and were miserable. I did not realize the gravity of how bad things had become, and figured I would find the breakthrough that would make us click again. Unknown to me, she had already started to move on. In January, I approached my wife to discuss something about our son, and she blurted out that "she needed sex because her eyes were starting to wander". I asked her to clarify what exactly that meant, she told me that an older guy that was a customer at her job had been very flirty with her, and the attention was making her feel too good. She said she had no interested in pursuing it further, but it had made her aware that she was vulnerable. We had a long talk but I was very much on the defensive, and somehow what she was telling me did not add up in my head. In the days that followed, I made every effort to get close to her, but while she said that was what she wanted, her reaction was less than enthusiastic Because of this, I started going into detective mode, watching her Facebook, email and the computer history. When the opportunity presented itself, I would also check the text messages on her phone. After a few weeks of this, I finally found the smoking gun I was looking for. I saw a fairly harmless message from a guy in her Facebook mail which seemed out of place. He was a local person, and I had heard the name a time or two. I did some research and figured out that he was probably a client from her main job. Not saying anything, I decided to just keep watch to see what else might come up. The next day I checked Facebook again, and that message had been deleted. No other messages had been removed, so its removal added to my suspicion. On top of that, his name was showing up many times in the browser history, so I knew this was more than someone she had the occasional chat with. My next move was to start logging into her account on my laptop at night, hoping to catch her in one of these chats and get more of an idea of the nature of their relationship. While I got nothing that way, I would on occasion catch a snippet of one of their chats when I would log in as her, mostly harmless stuff. The red flag was the fact that she was deleting them as soon as they were received and read. What kicked me into action finally was a snippet of a conversation she had forgotten to delete… a smiley face from him, followed by the word "tease" from her. When I looked at the browser history, I could see that she had been through every picture in his profile, and had been checking out the profile of a woman he had just become friends with on Facebook. Guess she was scoping out the potential competition. Given the way she was covering her tracks, I decided to confront her on it. Before I did that, I threw her for a loop and showed up in the bed unannounced. She was on the computer, and while surprised, did not say much. I went to sleep, and she came to be an hour or so later. She was having trouble sleeping, so I told her "maybe a good lay would help you sleep". She was shocked to hear that, but after a bit of thought decided to go ahead with it, and we had sex for the 1st time in over a year. The next night I took her out on a little date, and everything was good until we left the bar. She tossed out a remark that was a not so thinly veiled dig at me, and I got quite upset. We went home, and continued our argument, at which point I finally told her that I knew she was unhappy, and brought up the statement she had made about her "eyes wandering". I asked her to explain that to me again, and she pulled out the same story about the older guy. I told her I knew there was more to it than that, but did not reveal what I knew. She denied at first, but when I kept telling her I KNEW there was more, she finally opened up and admitted that there was a guy she had become attracted to, was talking to on Facebook and that the direction it had taken was not good. I became upset, even though she was confirming what I already knew. She came clean on much of it, and over the following days, the whole story unfolded. Basically, he is a client at her work. All of the girls in the office consider him to be Eye Candy, and he had paid special attention to her when he came in for his quarterly visits. At some point, she had found him on Facebook and sent a friend request. He accepted, and they had a chat here and there about minor stuff, usually with him initiating the conversation. Between this, and his in person visits at her office, she started to build an attraction toward him in her head. She got very little in the way of feedback or validation from him on that, and felt she was basically stroking his ego by paying him attention. Gradually, the conversation moved to more personal things, with her being more forward. She confessed her attraction toward him and that he was "in her head". She told him that she should just "unfriend ", him but of course this was a test to see what he would say. At some point, she told him that she had considered the logistics of having an affair, and confessed that she had cheated years ago. Without coming out and asking him, she was letting him know the door was wide open if he wanted to take advantage of it. Well, this raised a **** storm with me, I would not let her sweep anything under the rug, and I held her feet to the fire on exactly what she was doing. She tried to tell me that she did not think she would actually go through with it, but at the same time, she could not guarantee she would not have had he expressed interest. She told me that she was very attracted to him, and that in her mind, he was giving her what she felt was missing in our relationship. She also said that getting attention from another man made her feel good about herself. I insisted that if we were going to work on us, their little chats had to end. She agreed and the opportunity came the next time she logged into Facebook. He was right there, starting a chat seconds after she logged in. This time, I could see he had thought over her previous statements, and he had decided to move in for closure. He asked if he was still "in her head" and told her that he liked her too. She told him the situation was wrong, and that she was going to unfriend him so she could work on our marriage. He told her that he did not see why she had to do that, but understood, then followed up with more statements indicating that he was attracted to her, and letting her know he was an easy lay if she ever caught him out on the town drunk. What a guy! Anyway, she told him it was done, and after closing out, immediately unfriended him. Since then, I have been able to verify most of what she has told me. Some of it came out like pulling teeth, Trickle Truth, but it came. She was reluctant to tell me details out of shame, and did not want to hurt me more, but what she told me has checked out. This was a full on EA, in her own head, and thankfully I believe it stopped short of a PA by my speaking up when I did. She magnified everything she was feeling, and let herself create her alternate reality, which resulted in our recent relationship being framed in the worst possible light. We had many conversations in the following weeks, initiated by both of us, and agreed that we both needed to do major work to save our marriage. I have been doing a lot of reading, NMMNG, MMSL, Not Just Friends, etc. With that information, I finally grew a set of balls and let her know that I was finished with our marriage being disrespected by her. I accepted my share of the blame for our personal problems, but that it in no way made what she was doing with this guy OK or my fault. For the 1st time in our marriage, I let her know that I was more than willing to move on without her if it came to it, and that the decision of whether we stay together or not is one I will make for myself, when I feel I am ready. She confessed that it is hard getting over what she has been feeling for the past 6 months, and that she still thinks about him at times. She still feels an attraction toward him, but that she sees it for what it was, and the disaster it could have been. We have been working hard on mending our marriage, and while things seem to be going well, I am very cautious. Our sex life is in overdrive, which what happened after the discovery of her affairs years ago, but at the same time, things are different. While it was just crazy sex every night back then, now we have opened up to each other in ways we did not back then, and probably had not since that happened. We are talking about things we did not dare discuss in over 20 years of marriage, and have started to develop a level of intimacy that maybe never existed in our past. That brings us to last night. We were sitting on the couch, and out of the blue she asked me why I stayed with her after the PA's she had years ago, and how could I have possibly found forgiveness for her back then.. I told her that when it happened, all I wanted to do was stay together, and that I convinced myself that I loved her more than she had hurt me. I also explained to her that I had a major case of Oneitis, and that I thought she was the only woman I could every love that way. She confessed that all she wanted to do after her PA's years ago was sweep it under the rug and move on. She never wanted to confront her need for attention and validation from other men, and is scared to find out what that means. I told her regardless of what it means, it does us no good to rug sweep anymore, and that understanding her issues, as well as mine, is the only way we are going to have a prayer of staying together in the long run. For the 1st time in any of this, past and recent, she broke down and cried over what she has done to me, to her and to us. It has hit home with her in a way that finally gives me hope that we can take the steps to keep this from happening again in the future. She knows where my boundaries are, and that any PA or EA in the future is the end. I have not let up on my surveillance, and she has been totally open with her email, Facebook, phone, etc. I have an IT background, so nothing in that realm is left un-monitored. She sees this guy every 3 months as part of her work, but is never alone with him, and has agreed to keep it strictly professional. As a surprise to me, she actually brought a VAR to her office and recorded the entire time he was in there so I could hear what happened. To make matters more interesting, it turns out he comes through my workplace every few weeks, and I have had the opportunity to see him in person. Not sure if he knows who I am, but I suspect he does. Well, that about does it. I am sure there is more that I could say, but if you made it this far you are a TAM champion and I owe you a drink! I am not really sure what I am looking for in posting this either. I have read so many of the posts here, and can see similarities to my own situation in both the success and failure stories. I want to give this marriage my best shot, but there is a part of me that wonders if I will ever be able to make her happy enough to not go through this again. What if she can't move past this constant need for validation from other people? Also, I realize I will never know if the attraction to this guy will ultimately die, or whether it is something that will slow burn, and rear its head in the future. I am not sure I will ever feel like I can totally commit to our marriage while waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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