Wife Cheating Suspicions Confirmed. Now what?

Hello - I'm writing this message a few days after I finally confirmed my wife's infidelity. I'm 43 years old and been married to my wife for 15 years with 2 kids. We've had our share of problems with the marriage. I'm not a perfect husband, but I was good to her. We've had several massive blow-out fights after which I walked out and lived in hotels for several weeks before we would reconcile and I would move back in. The last time I left was about 2 years ago. We've talked about divorce several times, but neither of us had the guts to file for it. For the last year we've lived relatively separate lives. Communicating minimally, and only related to the kids. Sex, or intimacy has been non-existent for the last year. In the last 6 months the fighting really tapered off. About 4 months ago, I noticed some strange behaviors from my wife. She would make up excuses for going out 'with friends' and said she would be back late and not to wait up for her. She would then secretly sneak back in the house early the next morning before we all woke up and then go into the guest bedroom where she had been sleeping separately for the last year. My wife is a bit of a partyer and she likes to go out and drink heavily. I shrugged this off as her going out with her girlfriends and staying over to avoid DUI. Well this pattern continued repeatedly over the summer to the point where it was happening nearly every weekend. I installed a new alarm system in the house that let me remotely arm/disarm the system from my phone. This system also kept detailed logs of each door and when they opened/closed. A few weeks ago I was folding the laundry and noticed a pair of underwear from a brand/color/size that were clearly not mine (or my two young kids). I shrugged this off as potentially being from WW's father (who sometimes comes over and leaves his dirty clothes). We then went away on vacation over the summer and the day after coming back, instead of going back to work, she said she had to run 'errands' and wouldn't be back until later. I checked the security system alarm and she didn't get home until the next day at 9:15 am. After becoming more suspicious last week, I decided to look into her cell phone records. I downloaded a copy of all of the calls from her phone for the last few months and found 3 numbers to a city/township nearby. I did a google search and all 3 of these numbers were linked to the same man (let's call him Jim). Last weekend I had to take my older son to a sporting event that lasted all day. I left my younger son at home. I later learned that she planned an entire day outing with another young boy and Jim (the boy's dad). My younger son told me that the Jim is getting divorced from his wife. Surely enough, "Jim"'s first name matched my google search. I remember hearing about "Jim" and his son about 2 months ago during another summer weekend trip where I was gone with my older son. "Jim" and son spent an entire the day at the zoo with my wife and my son. Sometimes my kids would wake up early on the weekends and go to her bedroom not to see her there. Later my kids would innocently ask where she was and she'd say either "I went to workout" or "I went out with some friends". At this point I had several circumstantial pieces of evidence that she was secretly sneaking out of the house and sleeping over someone's house (possibly Jim's) on a regular basis. And the fact that WS has secretly introduced my younger son to "Jim" twice. Although I had no firm proof at this point, I decided to try and find out more of what was happening before confronting her. Three nights ago, I went into our family computer room to check my emails and noticed that she hadn't logged out of her account. I went into the computer to do some web searching and her email account was still open. While there I found at least 100 emails from "Jim" over the past few days in my wife's trash folder. My wife was still upstairs awake, so I only had a few seconds to decide what to do. I secretly took some screen shots and saved them to a USB stick. I read about 20 or 30 of the emails before I had to shut down the computer. There were various photos of "Jim" sending pics of himself naked, bare shirted, and of his penis to my wife. There were a couple of photos of them both together cuddling on a bed. "Jim" also sent a video of himself masturbating. In each and every one of the emails Jim mentions that he loves my wife. In one of the mails h e tries to persuade her to leave me and 'start their new lives together'. In one of the email threads he tries to make her decide on whether "I am in your future". My wife replies back that it is complicated and difficult to write up in an email and that she would discuss with him over the phone. It is clear that Jim has fallen in love with my wife and that they have been seeing each other for about 6 months now. I dont think she is serious about moving in with him, as she's asked me to block off dates to invite friends/families over for dinner parties over the next 3 months. She's also asked me to block off time for Xmas holidays so that we could all go to visit her brother in California. If she really wanted to leave me for this guy, would she ask me to do all this? Its now been three days since I found the emails and I'm still in shock. The night after I found out, I did NOT confront her about the affair as I wanted to gather more evidence. I met with her and told her I wanted to try and reconcile and try to rebuild our relationship. She explained politely that she felt emotionally checked out and had made 'new friends'. She agreed to work with me to improve the relationship. She then waited until I fell asleep then slipped out the door and then told my kids that she was running errands the entire day. The past few days a variety of different emotions have been running through my mind: anxiety, sleeplessness, and most notably the irrational fear of losing her. Although its true I've emotionally checked out of the relationship for the last couple of years, the thought of her prancing around with another guy enraged me to the point that I feel that I need to win her back. I know this is irrational but I feel that in order to save the marriage (and spare my kids unbearable anguish and pain) that I need to try and work things out with her. The issue is that I do most of the afterschool care for both of my kids (taking them to/from sports, etc). My wife's job is about 1.5 hours away so she contributes little to the afterschool care of our kids. I know she doesn't want to move out and live with "Jim" because I'm the primary caregiver for both boys afterschool and on weekends. Jim is also of another ethnic/religious background and I'm sure her parents would not approve of her marrying Jim. Although I'd love to confront her at this point, I've held back because my older son is applying for private schools and has a big exam in November. My wife helps with preparing him. I don't want to do anything to jeopardize my son's application process for private schools. I also don't want to wait another 2 months. I obviously want to keep this affair a secret from my kids, but don't want them dragged in case my wife goes ballistic. A bit about our financial situation. Both of us have professional degrees and earn 6 figure salaries. Our combined assets total approx $2 MM USD. We own a home and 2 cars. Both of us are employed full time and we married shortly after completing our education. We have several joint accounts. She opened up a checking account in her name only about a year ago and deposited about $70K in it without telling me (who knows why? perhaps she was contemplating D last year?) Now here are my specific questions for TAM: Should I try and collect more evidence in case of divorce proceedings before I confront her? I live in a state that allows both "no-fault" and "fault" proceedings for infidelity. What type of evidence should I collect? Should I hire a PI? When and how is the best way to confront her and plan DDay? My main concern is with child custody. I do realize that most courts assign joint custody agreements. But because of all of the driving/pickup from school that I do with my two boys, it makes sense for the kids to live with me. How do the courts decide? Do they ask the kids? If there is a chance that I won't be allowed to live with kids, then I would seriously consider not filing for D and instead try for R. My kids are entering adolescence and they have suspicions that something is going on. What is the best way to keep this affair from the kids?

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