Found out last month. Still confused.

Hello everyone,

I am very grateful this community is here, as I seem lost as ever.

To summarize, I have been married to my beautiful wife for almost 6 years. It hasn't be the best marriage. I prioritized my career too heavily early in our relationship and wasn't as supportive as I needed to be with raising our child. Our relationship hit a bad spot early this year. My wife wanted to take a break to focus on us individually, and I reluctantly agreed. My only condition was that if she were to have intimacy/sex with another person, I need to know. She agreed.

There is/was a man in her friend group that always made me insecure. They would go to baseball games with a third person and I discovered she one day went to get coffee with this man when she told me she was at work. I confronted her about it and she said that he was helping her through live struggles when I wasn't being supportive. Over the course of 4-5 months I would share my insecurities about this man and it was always expressed that I had nothing to worry about.

Almost three weeks ago I told her again about my feelings and she finally said "you have every reason to be insecure about him". She went on to describe that she kissed him once and had protected sex with him once back in April.

I wanted to know everything. Over the course of three days I grilled her to ensure I knew all the facts. On day 3 it became two sex events and multiple kissing events in April. I stopped asking as I could tell she felt so remorseful and regretted all the events with this man. Now this past weekend she shared more information voluntarily and it became 4 sex events, all of which unprotected, and a lot of kissing spanning from April to May.

I had so much anxiety and fear that I went to the ER that night for help and was STD tested.

I just have doubt I will ever know the whole truth. I want to fix things with her, but how do I ever feel confident this wont happen again? How do I trust that she is actually going to work and not meeting up with another man? How do I stop this constant nightmare visualizing her with him?

There is no way for her to verify these events as all texts have been deleted and are unrecoverable. This man (whom she and I have both worked with) wont respond to my inquiries and she has blocked him. He has a fiancé he is trying to protect, but I feel she should know as my wife is a carrier for HPV. To my understanding, their last communication (non-sexual) was in July -- but again, I can't confirm it.

For those that have been in my shoes: Does it get better? Is it fixable? Should I move on?

22 comments posted: Thursday, October 6th, 2022