I think that my spouse was recently sexually assaulted... But is denying it to herself, pushing it down, and suffering because of that.

Am I way off base, or is this entirely possible?

I apologize for how long this is. I wanted to give a deep context, because it's all in the context of our relationship falling apart, and I really don't know how to tell this story in a shorter way that I trust. And I am having a really difficult time right now, because of what I am processing so it's hard to do better.

If you don't want a novel, read the first two or three sections, then the last.

I'm m35, she is f36.

I've been married to my spouse for 10 years. Her relationship before us involved some truly awful sexual abuse (emotional, r***, non-consensual scat play/being forced to drink urine, intentional non-consensual ejaculation inside of her w/o birth control while she was fertile).

Our relationship has been beautiful but also rough and often volatile. I've suffered from ADHD that was only diagnosed a couple years ago, which has greatly hurt my ability to transition from my life-before-her (touring musician, low expense life) to what we've been trying to build together (FIRE early retirement, real estate development, 2 kids). I've sucked at finances and making money, but have been 100% engaged with being primary default caregiver and doing unpaid assistance with her business and a bunch of Airbnbs we have set up together.

She also had a traumatic childhood that led to some really difficult to manage avoidant attachment issues. She, by her own admission, has been a bit cold, brusk, and mean-spirited for years.

Things had gotten somewhat better over the past few years: I started managing ADHD better, her therapy was making progress.

A while back, she had it introduced the topic of potentially opening up our marriage. I said I could consent if we did some intensive couples therapy first to shore up things between us so that other partners felt like an expansion of our life, and not a replacement or a step out of a messed up marriage. She said she was okay with this. That said, we could never agree on a therapist that was available.

We kind of stalemated here, with her blaming me for not finding a good enough therapist and saying she was probably going to go ahead with seeing other people regardless. I said okay, not because I truly felt good about it, but because it seems less harmful than trying to forbid her or something else controlling.

A friend introduced us to a masseuse/energy healer guy who was cat sitting for him. Both my wife and I went to him while he was in town. Work was done in the nude, whatever, we're not prudes by any stretch.

My wife commits to work in the city said masseuse normally lives in, a couple or three days a month.

She started getting a massage/healing session with him every time she went down.

A few trips into this, she pulls me aside and says,

"Hey, I know we had agreed to don't ask don't tell about other partners. But I've realized that the people I would want to see would want to be known about. I've been talking with someone about starting a relationship together. The masseuse. And we are figuring it out but the chemistry is there "

I was kind of blown away by this- we had actually quite agreed to be clear and transparent about other relationships.

My knee jerk was that I was probably okay with this... but...

1) what about that therapy I asked for? 2) The power dynamic of someone doing intimate, nude bodywork that was also resulting in intense emotional/spiritual experiences... propositioning a client with a relationship felt incredibly inappropriate and creepy to me.

I told her this, and initially did so with kid gloves.

She explosively denied that there was anything untoward about him. She said he promised he'd never every said anything like this to a client before, never had a relationship with a client before, was single, and was falling for her and interested in absolutely no one else.

I said if we're going forward with polyamory, we need to set up some boundaries that work for both of us. My two requests were that we would agree that our relationship had primacy, and that if we were intimate with others, we would always use a condom.

She exploded on me for making unfair rules that tried to control her body. She said that she would only be having relationships with people that were exclusive to her (so her, dating multiple people, but those people all swearing monogamy to her) and that they would be people she would trust, so there was no worry about STDs. And if she got pregnant, she wouldn't be having an abortion but it's fine because she would only be having sex with people she potentially wanted more kids with anyway. And her body, her choice.

I hung with this for a while. And for a month or so, things were really really good. We had some massive massive having it out fights, but made up and our sex life was incredible for the first time in years.

She said that "they had decided that he wanted a full time girlfriend, and I couldn't give him that. I'm crushed that he rejected me and wouldn't have me how I could show up for him."

I found a couples therapist- someone she had previously been excited about finally had an opening a month away.

By the time that session happened, things between us had deteriorated. The initial energy she said she was bringing back from time with this guy had faded for her, and she simultaneously was threatening to end our relationship every other day (with alternate days talking about how committed she was). I felt jealous of not being assured that the love of my life was committed to putting me, the person she'd spent the decade building a life and having two kids with, above other relationships (at one point she said I didn't deserve monogamy with her, and as far as polyamory went, she couldn't make promises and if she decided she wanted to spend most of her time living with someone else that's where she would go).

In this first session, the therapist told us to put the brakes on, and then neither of us should see other people until we sort it out some of the major issues we had.

In the days after that, everything completely fell apart. She was calling me during the work day, screaming on the phone about "why would my let her have her affair?!?". One particular day, on her drive back from her out of town work, she completely lost it on me, telling me that I had been hurting her for years and if I cared for her, I would leave so on someone else could take my place in the family and her life. She also became very explosive around "having to give up my affair, I'm not allowed to see him anymore."

We had a tift the next day. At one point, I point blank asked her if she had seen him the previous day. She said no. I asked her if she had tried to see him. she said no.

A couple hours later, she came back to me and said she remembered, oh yeah, I did ask him out for coffee or drinks but he couldn't come. But just as a friend.

I said "I don't think asking the person your therapist asked you to stop having an affair with out to drinks is in the spirit of these things. That's... a date."

She became unstable and explosive, and did something emotionally and physically dangerous with the kids I won't repeat here.

The same sort of thing has happened- when I've brought up the affair in any sort of pointed way, she has, on multiple occasions, responded by doing dangerous stuff, esp with the kids.

She decided that we are getting divorced. She asked me to leave the house. She decided that beyond a legal divorce (which she sees as solely concerning property), she was done with our relationship.

She continued seeing this guy, "only professionally, for massages."

When a friend told me they'd seen the two of them out on obviously a date and asked if we had an open relationship, my spouse said that "they were going out regularly, but just as friends!"

She's gone "for massages" and come back a bunch of times wearing very revealing "sexy" clothing that I didn't know she owned. I commented on this and said basically, I see what's going on, you're seeing him and fine, just be happy because we're not a couple. Be happy.

She said I was being misogynist and sexist, that she wasn't dressing to impress him, it was just hot that day.

She wore it again a few days later, and a female friend of hers pulled over while driving down the street to jokingly cat call her and ask where I was about to take her on a date.

Our relationship was over. I begged her to try. She refused, and also said there was nothing with him.

Here's the big turn-

Her behavior started becoming... erratic. Dangerous. Nonsensical. Explosive, especially around anything that could be twisted(with a great deal of creativity) into being remotely adjacent to sexuality, shame, guilt.

I started to move on myself. Accepted that whatever was going on... yeah, I just needed to land on my own two feet and build a new life.

Lately, we had a couple of EXTREME fights. Then her being friendly, sweet. Never anything sexual.

(With the exception of one time she came back to her place after a day of work and a date with dude, and then came out naked and tried to have sex with me).

A few days ago, after two particularly extreme fights, trying to patch things over, I took her out to lunch. For the first time... After rebuking months of my begging and bargaining, she brought up the idea that we should separate for a year, get ourselves balanced and occasional go on dates together, and then decide whether to get divorced.

After that, she told me the thing that is why I'm here.

She started talking about what happened with him. They kissed several times, and something else physical happened, and " the opportunity to have sex was there and we started to but didn't."

She said:

"He was in a position of power and he made an advance that I wasn't expecting."

"Looking back, I don't think any of it was non-consensual "

"I got triggered by what happened. It brought up feelings of past sexual abuse. And overall, the whole experience with masseuse was really a bad experience, net negative. I learned things about myself and that's nice but this was not pleasant."

"I'm not a victim, though. I'm not going to let myself get into a victim mindset. I can't afford to let it feel that way. I have to choose my own experience. I have I can't afford to feel like something bad happened, or that I cheated on you. That would destroy me. I can't afford that. I can't be a victim. I have to choose my mindset."

(Due to financial stress, she has the longstanding belief that "she can't take the time to really deal with her traumas, because if she risks breaking down the family's financial security could fall apart if she can't work for even a few days.")

So... she's continuing to spend time with him. Go out to lunch. Grab drinks. I'm pretty sure have nude massages. She likes him as a person so much, she say... but...

To me, everything I said sounds like this: He approached her about a relationship... then went too far. I think he turned a massage into an intimate encounter that she wasn't consenting to (there was one time she came back and said "this session really freaked me out, it released something and made me feel like I had 'dark magic' inside of me. I'm not doing well.").

And right now... yeah. She was sexually assaulted. That's what it was.

But she's in full denial about this, and is continuing to see him to have power over the situation, because of course, why would she see someone if they'd assaulted her? If they're still friends it means it was maybe awkward but not REALLY SA.

She talks all the time about how powerful she things her suspension of disbelief is- how she has to avoid watching TV series because she falls so into it, and gets sucked in and addicted.

I think right now... she was assaulted. She knows it on some level, but is forcing it down. If she admitted it, she feels like it would destroy her in a way that makes her feel existentially unsafe (she feels like if she misses two days of work in a row, she could loose her house and not be able to support the kids). But the cognitive dissonance is really tearing her apart.

I can't bring it up to her, not now. She has become hyper, hyper sensitive to any perceived criticism from me, so I don't imagine it would go well. About fifteen minutes after this, after I had been listening her talk about this and the reason our life wasn't meeting her dreams, I opened my mouth to suggest a perspective that could help us collaborate better. I was excited and hopeful about it. I literally got three words out before she cut me off, saying "you didn't listen to a word I said this whole time! You're awful!" and subsequently made me pull over my car so she could get out and walk the mile back to her house herself.

Am I a jealous, heartbroken person who is seeing something that isn't here? Or, do any survivors of SA think that... well, maybe I've seen something here that has merit?

If so... any ideas of what I could/should do? Can I send her therapist a private note voicing concerns? Should I let her stay in this for a while as I modulate my own behavior with the empathy of what might have happened, then bring it up someday when things are more stable? "I think you got r****" seems like not the thing to say in a couples therapy session that has previously been hot between us, esp on the topic of this affair.

I dunno here.