tl;dr of us: me 33, him 29, together 6 years, long term engagement (thanks, unexpected pregnancy!), two little boys, 3 and 8 months

tl;dr of affair: he works with her (22, honestly acts like a 15 year old schoolgirl with her first crush) and I have always believed/known she has feelings for him. It began after some text flirting with a fuck in his office, they had sex approximately 15 times over a two year period with 3 breaks (or as I prefer to see it, they started an affair 4 times) all in his office except 3 hotel fucks. He says it was a spoken agreement that it was purely physical, until the last time which restarted about six months ago and in the last few months he began to develop feelings he calls an infatuation. She has predictably loved him from the start, started really laying it on thick a month ago, piling on pressure for him to leave me, he says he considered it for a moment but then knew he didn’t want to and didn’t know what to do. I found out by accidentally finding their texts, read back a week and already I found them meeting up when I thought he was working and her asking if he wanted a hotel later on with her, he refused. Also a massive long confession of love that ends with her saying “I need to know how you feel about me” and him saying “we’ll talk” and then I found out. He admitted everything, she quit. For bonus points, he’s the fuckin boss and could lose his job over this and so much worse. Goddamn he’s a fucking dumbass.

I can’t believe I’m calling the above a tl;dr but here we are.

So here’s the point of my post. It’s an “is this weird? Am I insane?” request. Please tell me if I have lost my mind? I don’t know anyone in rl I’m comfortable asking this to, though a few people I’m close to have gone through this.

Ever since I found out, and I told him I owed it to our family to at least consider trying to get past this, I’m craving attention and affection from him so desperately it’s embarrassing.

Like all I want in the world is to lay quietly in his arms while we talk about how he’s going to do anything he can to fix this. He needs to hold me close and tell me he regrets it. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I’ve literally never wanted to fuck him more, like I’m reclaiming my territory. They last had sex within the last month.

Don’t get me wrong, the thought of him inside her makes me sick to the stomach. These thoughts circulate my head like a plague all day and night since I found out the extent of it, it’s torture. I hate her so much it gives me energy - she wanted to spend more time with my babies so they could get to know her “to make the transition easier”. She thought when I found out he’d leave me for her. I messaged her and told her she was disgusting, and she immediately screenshots it to my fiancé sitting next to me, then replies telling me she hopes I can move on quickly because I deserve to be happy, and she’s sorry I was deceived for so long. Fuuuuck her. She’s held my kids when they were both weeks old (though they weren’t fucking yet when the oldest was that small). She knew what she was doing. Yeah my fiancé is a total shitbag but she’s no better.

I just need to make him mine again. I feel like I should have thrown him out. He knows how hard it’s gonna be for me to get past this and he’s willing to put in the work. It’s not like he’s trapped, he knows that I would never keep the boys away from him and that we don’t need to be together to coparent just the same. Neither of us would stay in something that was toxic just for them. I’m not having my boys learn to disrespect women or resent their partner or that love means winning arguments.

It’s such a weird feeling, to be so hurt by him but so desperate for him at the same time. He was meant to be mine the whole time and I was sharing him without knowing it. I’m like a cat trying to get the small of another cats pee off his favourite rug.

Am I crazy? Have you been through this? How do you know what to do here? Sorry this is so long and not entirely kid-centric, but obviously they’re a massive factor in whatever happens because we’re their whole life. This is all I can think about. I’ve only told a few people because if I stay the angst from family and friends would be torment for me. I can’t take people telling me what to do right now, at all.

I’m writing this dog tired at 1.30am, please forgive autocorrect and my fat fingers.

Thanks for reading, moms 💕