17 years shot to hell

I've been with my girlfriend for 17 years, i call her my wife even though we have never tied the knot. We have 2 children together, 11 year old son and 16 year old daughter. 2 months ago we got into a horrendous fight that lead to me losing control and hitting her in the leg. She called the police and i left the house and came home a few hours latter. Now let me just say this, i have never laid a hand on her, ever in this 17 years but this day i was at my lowest so let me back up to explain why. Years ago she had a high school reunion that she went to, well she never came home that night and never bothered to call. she shows up in the morning from a night of drink with old buddies at a hotel room. We fight about it and get past it, years pass and i forget it happened but its still buried somewhere deep inside me. Jump to a few years back and my oldest daughter tells me that my wife is emailing some guy and the are professing their love to each other. I ask and the wife denies it, well the daughter insist its true. This causes major turmoil till one day i decide to install a keylogger on the computer. It only took one week to find the truth, i printed out the email and took them to my wifes work where i gave the emails to her. She left work and we fought, she acted like it was no big deal. Well it turns out its the same guy that she stayed out all night with at the reunion, in fact one of the emails even talked about their night together, im still not clear if anything happened that night, the wife says nothing did but why should i believe her. We fight and fight about it till she finally opens up about why she was having an EA with this guy. Turns out she had some major issues with me that she just never really talked with me about except for one and that is my name calling, i would verbally lash out when fighting. Other than that i thought we were good. Now let me say the name calling did not happen every day, in fact it was few and far between but regardless it should have never happened as i truly worshiped the ground she walked on. Well i thought we had worked this issue out but i had trust issues after the EA. She would not stop talking with the guy, i got ahold of him as he was in iraq at the time and told him i would be more than willing to let his wife know what he was doing with mine. He contacted me and said he was sorry and blah blah blah. After that he did back off but one day while having lunch with my wife at work guess who shows up as he had just returned from the war a month before. WTF, im pissed but we are civil to each other. This just reopend the wound and it led to more distrust on my end. My wife just could not wrap her head around why i wan ted her to stop talking to this guy, yeah they where good high school buddies and i was being made to feel guilty for wanting the friendship to end. Well he fades out of the picture and lo and behold a friend from facebook that she knew in school contacts her, he is coming to town to she his dying mom and want to get coffee with my wife. I said it was cool but deep down it wasnt with me. She said they were going to McD for coffee and that he was staying at the capri motel. Well my curiosity got the best of me so i drive by the hotel and there is my van, wait a minute i thought they were going to McD. I stake it out for hours and then i see them leave his room. I freaking boiling at this point, i watch and she give him a hug and get in the van and heads back home, i follow and come in behind her and rip into her, accuse her of doing ever ything under the sun with the guy. She gets pissed at me for thinking she did anything, again WTF should i be thinking. Now this guy looked like he was a good 350 pounds and just not a guy she would be attracted to but really? She actually could not understand how bad that looked. I said you could have called and told me what was up and he could have come and hung out at our house but she just couldn't get it, couldn't see how that would look to me especially after the EA she had not to long before this incident. So more time goes by and im just not trusting her and im throwing this in her face everytime we have an issue. She says you will never let it go and im like well stop doing this stuff and maybe i can. Over this time our relationship is crumbling and another school reunion comes up and guess what, she meets up with another old friend from school and she gets his # but she tells me about it so im alright with it but just a little part of me deep down is no t. Well they start calling each other but it not when she is home but when she is a work, always on her lunch or in the morning. Well that seems odd to me but i let it go for a bit. Well after a bit i start having major trust issues with her again as i sense something it not right. So hear comes the breaking point, One day we are sitting in the living room and her phone rings, she doesn't answer it, just lets it ring. well a few minutes latter im looking at her phone and it rings again and its the guy. I answer it and toss her the phone, she totally panicked and froze up with he guy and got off quick. Bam im set off at the point, if nothing is going on why cant you have a normal conversation with the guy. she gets defensive with me, big blow out and names are being called. Around this time is when she cuts me off of all psychical aff ection. A total of 5-6 months where i got one HJ and gave her Oral and that was it. Im turning into a monster as time goes by and she is acting like no big deal yet knowing full well what it was doing to me. She said i called her one to many names and now she had shut me out. This just kept going and going till one day we had our major fight that i mentioned in the beginning. I snapped, i couldn't be treated like that anymore and i went to far. Well about 2 weeks after the fight we get into a yelling match over the phone and next thing i know the cops are at my house with a restraining order that said i could be back in my house in 3 days. Next day she says i can get some stuff from the house, i go and see she is moving and my son is there, we call the wife to see if a can take him to the park and she said yes and we fought some more about her moving out like that. Well guess w ho shows up at the park, the police do, she called to tell them i violated the order and i get ticked for it. A few weeks pass and we start to get along a lit bit better and she gets an apt and drops the order on me but i get stuck with a violation ticket which leaves me with a criminal record which i have never had out of 43 years. Now to back up just a bit. Before i got served i had just read the 5 love languages book and it opened my eyes BIG time. I realized my LL is physical touch and the wifes is words of affirmation and here we both were witholding from each other what was most important to us. So during this time i started to put it into practice with her, sending her loving text, buying her flowers once a week, telling her how beautiful she is and such. Its been two months of doing this with only a few arguments. I cant expect it to change over night but she just is not having it. she say i went to far by hitting her. She makes me feel like i beat the hell out her but i did not, she says im making light of it but im not, i know what i did was wrong. I tell her about what she did to me with the EA and the other guys after it and she says its not the same but she's sorry for it yet she continues to text or call this last guy until just the other day when she realized he was playing her. I absolute adore her even after the rotten thing we have done to each other. I look back at it now and see where it all really began for me and it was the night she stayed out all night, that planted a seed deep side me, a seed of distrust only to have her do it again and again. Its like a snow ball rolling down a hill, it got to be a bigger and bigger issue till it smashed through a wall. She doesn't way, she blames me, i blame us both and i think this is repairable. Its my family and i want to save it Why do people think its okay to do this to each other and the kids? why cant we just stop and do the right thing and save our family and show our kids that family matters and that its not okay to tuck tail and run when the poo hits the fan. I want us to stop punishing each other for the past and more on to the future with us. I think we had a great relationship minus the EAs and my name calling, We had amazing sex and after 17 years i still find her to be very attractive. I know that if she put the 5LL into practice we could make this work. Im speaking her LL everyday and she says she does feel loved by me but says im only doing to get what i want. well your damn straight thats why im doing it, i want you and i want my family back and how else do you keep a family together if you dont show love?

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2629979