This will be long, but I really want to list the severity of WW’s affair to see if the sudden 180 in her behavior since being caught means I should give this R a chance.

In March of this year, I caught a glimpse of something suspicious on WW’s phone when coming down from my home office to make lunch, it was a Reddit chat screen full of 18 bubbles. In 2020, she had posted pictures on Reddit for her own gratification, which I didn’t love but she said it was helping with her body image issues (she has no reason to have them). I had caught her talking to men who messaged her for attention at the time and asked her to delete the account. She did. Later that night, I confronted her about it, and after 7 different progressive lies, two hours, and an ultimatum to give me the phone or get a divorce, she came clean. Back in 2020, she met someone from those chats and had sex “five or six times”. Looking back, I had suspicions then but always gave her my trust, she was coy around her phone a few times, and she was suddenly shaving her pubic hair very short, when she always previously kept a neatly trimmed bush that I loved. I went to sleep on the couch, packed a bag, and left the next morning to stay at a hotel for five nights. He did move far away from the area at some point in 2022.

When I was at the hotel, we exchanged emails about the affair, and I signaled my willingness to attempt reconciliation for the sake of our (at the time) 8-month-old, if she came clean about the whole truth. I sent an email with more than fifty questions, which she answered. The sex was 9 or 10 times, she didn’t know his full identity or occupation, she stopped talking to him in June of 2021, conveniently right around the time we purchased our house and conceived our daughter later that fall. She said she “realized she had to focus on us and start over” or something like that. I came back to the house that Saturday and we entered a week of hysterical bonding, with some deep and tough conversations mixed within. However, I started putting pieces together and was able to get out of her that she knew his full identity, as did he hers, and that they had been talking “once or twice a week” up until I caught her, but that it was not much more than seeing how each other were doing. This was the following Friday, so I went to work, she went to talk to her mother. I didn’t want her to come home, but she claimed to be so distraught she needed my help to take care of our baby. We didn’t see each other and slept in separate rooms. Texting that night, I found out that they did exchange “I love yous”, another thing she claimed didn’t happen in the original “tell all” email. The next morning, I went off and said a lot of things I was holding back, she swore to me that was it, and we started back towards R.

The final D-Day is when I found out that they were actively sexting frequently up until the week or so before I caught her, including while I was working in the same home so she could stay home with our child. I once again left for a night, and fully planned to divorce her after that. Somehow, I keep dragging myself back for the sake of my child (my parents are divorced and I vowed never to have my own child go through that), and the financial inconvenience that a divorce would entail, losing our house, money to lawyers, etc.

Throughout all of this, she has steadfastly remained committed to reconciling. She did send him a message saying she never loved him, that it was a mistake, that it may cost her her marriage and that they’re both horrible for doing this, and that she never wanted to speak to him. She deleted all the Reddit accounts, the secure messaging account she used to talk to him and turned on her location for me. We have an open device policy, and she has never hesitated since to hand over her device any time I’ve randomly asked. Of the things people list that show true remorse, she appears to be doing most to nearly all of them. I can tell she does sometimes get frustrated with me bringing up the same topics, but she’s never told me to get over it. She says she is sorry for the pain she caused me, hates what she’s done, knows it was wrong and selfish.

Here's where I am stuck, there are a few things about this that are so heinous I don’t know that she is a safe partner or anyone I can ever really trust again:

1 – She cut a vacation we had planned that October (2020) short so she could “spend time with her mom”, when she was out meeting him.

2 – We had a romantic getaway that February in a hotel, where I took pictures of her in lingerie and nude with a high-end camera, with her wedding ring on. She shared them with him.

3 – For our anniversary that spring, I planned a getaway to a specific thing she’s always wanted to see. She took a nude from that hotel room, with her wedding ring on, and sent it.

4 – She withheld this from me while knowingly buying a house and conceiving a child with me.

5 – She did the physical affair right up until it was time to have a child, almost as if “ok, I’ll get what I want now, so I’ll stop this”.

6 – She was searching for and bidding on houses with me, all the while she was constantly sexting and seeing him for sex.

7 – She trickle-truthed me in the worst ways.

8 – She sexted him while I was home, upstairs, working so she could stay at home full time with our child. This one feels like the ultimate disrespect.

9 – Prior to cutting communication off with AP, after the first DDay, she still felt it necessary to “warn” him, and apparently texted with him that day a bit.

10 – This was premeditated. She had so many times to sleep on and catch herself before meeting him, before having sex the first time, before having sex the 2nd – 10th time, etc… She didn’t. She lied to me every day for three years, through major life-changing milestones.

11 – In addition to sexting the affair partner, she was sexting other people on Reddit up until I caught her.

12 – Lied about where she was going, taking time off work, etc.. to see him, but telling me that it was “very hard” for her to take time off to do things.

13 – He told her he wanted to run away with her, and while she said no, I don’t know if it was only because the logistics of it were too hard, and it was too inconvenient, and because he made too little money and had kids already. Nevertheless, that should have caused her to snap out of it, yet she kept seeing him after that.

She has begged me not to tell OBS, for the sake of his children, because apparently his wife “is unstable”, and he started the affair because his wife never wanted to have sex. He’s also in the military and can apparently be expelled and even face jail time for adultery, though the latter seems to be limited to exceptional scenarios. She told me she’d rather me go out and have sex with another woman to feel better before doing that. She tells me she got caught up in the attention because she never got male attention when she was younger (neither of us dated much and didn’t get much interest in high school/college, we both developed to be much better into our 30s). She said every time she’d try to pull away, the attention and long messages showering her with complements were “like a drug”. We have had some of the deepest, best, direct conversations we’ve had in our 7 years of marriage during this time, though sometimes she did annoy me by casually talking about things she did with him, or saying some things she liked that he did for her, specifically some certain complements, almost as if it was a justification. The worst part is, he’s objectively worse than me in every way, he’s fat, frankly ugly, not intelligent, a cheater himself, she says the sex wasn’t good and that it was just the high from being so wanted that made her do it.

I told her that if it wasn’t for our child, I would almost certainly have left and never looked back. If I did try in that scenario, I’d have wanted a trial separation to see what life is like on the other side. Recently, I said I wanted to try going out and meeting a woman to see what it is like, to help me understand myself. Given the severity of her actions, I thought this was a reasonable request. After a discussion with her IC, she flew off the handle and got really nasty saying that how can I not see that it would hurt her for me to do that, and that she “can’t be under the same roof as me” and implied I should stay elsewhere for a while if I want to do that. She says she "can't bear the thought" of apparently me even meeting a woman for a platonic drink. Mind you, 100% of our expenses are paid by me right now, yet she expects me to leave the house. Her therapist also seems to be pushing her childhood and parents' bad marriage as a reason for what she did, but almost making it seem as if it is an excuse. She told me in a recent conversation, her therapist said I "always have to be the victim" um... am I not in this situation? She's been pushing her to "focus on herself".

My question to you all is this: On a scale of 1-10 for severity of affairs, I’d say this is a 9 (only because I think 10s are reserved for multiple partners). Is there any chance that I could truly get over this level of betrayal? Can she ever regain my trust? Some days I have optimism, but other days I think I’m only here for my child and because divorce would be so disruptive all around, and that I’ll really just be miserable or melancholy at best for the rest of my life. Despite all the seemingly sincere actions of remorse and work (she’s also in IC, and we’re in MC together), there’s still a part of me that doubts it all and thinks it is just to keep what she has, and that in 5, 10, 15 years, she’ll do it again, and/or leave. Despite being highly successful in my career, physically fit, good looking (have been propositioned by more than one female coworker), etc… I feel very low about myself.

Thoughts? Am I a chump for staying? Is there any chance? Am I so terrible for, given the severity of this, wanting to take some time to explore what my life would look like if we separated?

tl;dr: WW had a 1 year PA, 2 more years of EA through multiple major life milestones, stole my chance to make an independent new life, did some heinous pre-meditated things consciously. Can this betrayal ever be forgiven?