Hi,

I bet you get questions about affairs here all the time here. But I am in a difficult situation and I hope this sub can help me navigate my struggle. Technically it started out as non-ethical as my wife had an affair without my consent, but I am seeking to understand and learn how to handle my own emotions and values around this topic.

I am sorry for the very long text. To me it is a very complicated situation with many nuances, and I don't know how to explain it any shorter. Maybe someone will be interested in reading.

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TL;DR:

In my mind, I want my wife to be free to pursue an online fling because it makes her cope better with her mental health situation, but in my heart I am shattered and jealous as fuck.. How to process this in the best way by myself, without talking too much about it with her?

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Me (36M) and my wife (37F) have been together for like 15 years in what I assumed was a fully monogamous relationship. She has Borderline Personality Disorder, which caused us tons of friction for the first 10 years of our relationship. Then she finally got diagnosed, and went to a great treatment and her life and our relationship significantly improved. Then we got two kids, so we now have a 1 year old and a 3 year old. Both times she suffered pretty badly from post partum depression for the first year, and she had difficulties bonding with both of them. On top of that, our kids are beasts that doesn't give us a moments peace ever. They hate eating, sleeping, dressing and doing just about anything (except climbing around getting into trouble). This is taking a huge toll on us, and we are just wrecks at the end of each day.

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On top of this, my wife's BPD has made a bad comeback the last few months. She is home entirely on sickleave from her work because she can't handle it. Plus there is a load of really bad drama with her parents and family. In short, she is miserable and has massive mental issues at the moment.

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Then about two months ago, she reconnected with this ex from 15 years ago from her home country. For about two weeks they had some sort of online affair that had both sexual and emotional components to it. She even told me about the conversation when it started, and it was mostly a bit funny then. But then a couple of weeks into it I accidentally saw some screenshots she had made of some parts of the conversation that was uploaded to our family Dropbox, and then I didn't think it was funny anymore. This turned into the longest month ever where my whole world was turned upside down.

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There are so many nuances to what happened, but basically, to her, this whole thing was just a band-aid for a much bigger mental health problem she has. She has this whole "other" larger problem that she doesn't want to talk to me about, and she is waiting to get back into the therapy again. And this was a way to reduce her anxiety just a bit to stay afloat in life. Sex was a big coping mechanism for her to deal with her issues before we met, and she has a lot of identity issues related to this now. She doesn't really have any close friends she can discus difficult things with. And she wanted to feel seen and validated by someone that is not her husband. She assured me that she ultimately loves me and have no wish to leave me and the family, and I fully believe that, and I have no desire to break up with her over something like this.

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She basically asked me straight out to just stay out of the affair. That for the sake of our relationship, I should just trust her to do what is right for her right now, and that it will eventually be the best thing for our relationship. And I tried, but in the end I couldn't. I was feeling too bad about it myself and I had to keep on poking at it and talk to her about it. I wanted to communicate and resolve whatever issues we have, and together find a way that works. But in the end I basically made her stop talking to him, but it wasn't clear that it was the right solution. And after that she did feel much worse again, and our relationship has been worse too. But while I do want to help her in any way I can to feel better, I cannot get myself to accept what happened between them.

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In many ways I am glad the whole thing happens because it led us to talk so much and for me to do a lot of soul searching. But I still feel so lost around everything. Every day I am torn between on the one hand that I cannot and should not try to control her desires, and that I also of course would think it is hot and exciting to do something similar myself. I have never done it, but I know that I could have a sex chat or even full on sex with another girl and still love my wife just as much. But on the other hand, I feel extremely bad about the fact that she has a "bubble" and a connection with another man, even if it is only via text messages. We are from different countries originally, so long distance relationship over text messages is how we started. I know what it means to be on the other side of her text messages and attention like that. And it is just a technicality that they haven't actually had physical sex in this affair. Had they lived closer together I'm sure it would have already happened. Meanwhile, our love, while solid, doesn't have much of that old spark left. And we are both just struggling to get through each day with kids and stuff. So for another man to have something with my wife that I don't have hurts me so bad.

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And then I think, so what, it is just a little jealousy. It is normal. We should be stronger than this. I want to be stronger than this. If I was confident enough in myself and us this kind of online flirt really shouldn't affect me, because I know that at the end of the day I am the one who she is with. And if she gets turned on by something else, and then have sex with me, why stand in the way of that? But then I don't actually feel that strong. In fact I get heartbroken, and feel quite weak. And then I just get kind of needy, and desire that connection with her. But that is not at all what I want to "project" to her right now. She is not looking for a needy man. She is desiring assertiveness and a good fuck. And since this whole thing started I have gotten massive performance anxiety around sex with her, which just makes me feel even worse about it all.

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And she is not in a state right now where she wants to "reconnect" with me. She has compassion for me, and she doesn't want to see me hurt. And it's fine, we're doing what we can to keep our relationship functioning. But to her, this wasn't about us. This was about her dealing with her mental health issues. So what to me turned into a life changing event that shattered my world into a million pieces that I am now trying to reassemble into something better, is just one small aspect of her even bigger problems. So then I also feel even more stupid about the whole thing. I want to work on our relationship, and we will eventually when she has sorted herself out again, I'm sure. She has battled borderline before and I know she will get better once she gets proper therapy again in a few months. So we don't have to fix all our problems now. But still, it sucks that we are in such different mindsets right now, were I want to be constructive and learn from this, and she just wants to hang on and not lose her mind. We can't really talk anymore about it, it just turns into argument, at this time where I feel we need communication the most.

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There is so much more that I am thinking of this but I've already written a novella. In the end, life did move on for me, and I started to slowly get back to normal after the affair was done. I got more personally okay and could sleep more normal and start taking care of myself again, and we have been sort of okay in our relationship as well. But also, I feel like I started losing some of the "edge" that the whole experience gave me. The need to take a hard look at myself and see what is actually important in life, and slowly I feel like I am returning to old habits of comfort and fake assurance that things are good.

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Anyway, I'm pretty sure she started talking to him again now. I haven't confronted her about it yet, because I want to see if maybe we can resolve it differently this time. I have all the emotions again, and I don't sleep well which makes everything else even harder to deal with. And I am again torn. I want to try to let her "have" this fairly harmless outlet to help her feel good about herself in her shitty stage in life. And I am pretty sure she will end the affair after a few weeks, and then she'll do it on "her terms". But everyday I am soooo close to just bursting out my strong suspicions, that I think she has resumed the affair and I just want to make her understand how shitty I feel from it. But I know nothing good will come from doing that. We are just gonna fight again for weeks, and she will feel even shittier than she already does. Both for betraying and hurting me, and for losing her outlet. And in the end we will both just be miserable and she'll still have that "itch" that she didn't quite scratch. Ah.. I don't know. :(

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In my mind, I want my wife to be free to pursue an online fling because it makes her cope better with her mental health situation, but in my heart I am shattered and jealous as fuck.. How to process this in the best way by myself, without talking too much about it with her?

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Thank you for following my story if anyone read this far.. I love my wife, and I don't want to vilify her. It is a difficult situation for both of us.

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Please, if you have any advice or thoughts I would appreciate them greatly!