Title: Still struggling
Your Story: Phillip's Bio Im a 42 year old father of 2 kids, daughter is 16 years old and my son is turning 3 in Feb 2022. I work in the agricultural industry for the past 11 years. I am married for 17 years, and are together for 20 years. We had a shaky start as my wife got pregnant before we got married with our first daughter. Our daughter had to be born on 7 months because my wife develop hypertension and the baby and her life was in danger. She only weight 570grams at birth, she only survived for 3 weeks. We got married in the hospital just before she was born. A year later Zoe was born and all went well. We were happy so I thought. Building up ours lifes from scratch to where we are having everything we dreamt of today. We had our ups and downs in the marriage going through financial difficulties and for me the normal issues we had. A lot of fights was because of money not moving fast enough forward in life for her. She has a very strong personality, and gets her way when she wants it, always wanting more, materialism means a lot to her as she grew up struggle to get by. I came from a more stable background and materialistic stuff don’t matter to me. About 10 years ago a day after a fight she met one of my friends and now her cousins husband at our home and they kissed. She came to me about two weeks after that and told me what happened. I was devastated and fell into depression. Had a lot of pressure to perform at work to earn money as it felt I cannot provide as she would like it to be. We went to counselling two or three times. Luckily I got the right help and got out of the depression. I started running again and felt good about myself, the marriage was still shaky but I thought thats life. Four years ago 2017, I trained for n big mountain race of 40 miles called the skyrun. I was really in good shape and good headspace. Unfortunately I got little support from my wife and the running actually irritated her. Things in our marriage got worse by the end of that year. Two weeks before my race she me told that she doesn’t want to be married anymore. That we do not fit as a couple and never had. I begged her to give us another chance. I finished the race and got back home preparing for the worst. She went on to see a therapist maybe two times. In this time she was flirting with a well build younger guy and said nothing was going on and that she only enjoys the attention. She stayed never telling me why she stayed. Later she told me that she was trying to look at my positive points to try to like me again. I stopped running spending more time at home. And so life went on both of us climbing the corporate ladder and fulfilling our(her) dreams. She got pregnant again and the son she so wanted to have was born in 2019. I thought this will maybe help in our marriage struggles having this baby in our lives. The first year and half went fearly well. Then by the end of 2020 by November/ Desember al wheels started to came off. She was more irritated with me than ever before. Snapping at me every occasion she got, I could not do anything right. I stayed defending myself, at one time told her to go for the perfect man she so despartly wanted. Never expecting anything, I went on being busy at work and life. Still taking shots from her. The first D day was on 20 Feb 2021 the night after my sons 2nd birthday party. We went in two separate cars. I came home after her before stopping for a snack at the shop. I came home and she was pulling out of the driveway. I stopped her and where she was going. Very rudely she said that she is going to the shop to buy stuff. I asked if I can come along, but she immediately said says going alone. Thats when something clicked in my head and that something was not right. After being paranoid my daughter came to me and told me that she was expecting that her mother was seeing and talking to this guy. I confronted her and she admitted that she only had an emotional affair with a married man. Starting off as friends from Oktober 2020 and they never had sex. I was devastated once again. I contacted him and told him to tell his wife. So he did. They were also married for 17 years. She was devastated. My wife said that she was sorry for the first week after d day. Then she started to say that we should have never been together and that the whole 17 years of marriage was bad and that she never wanted to be married to me. I tried everything, begging her to give us another chance, starting to change and over compensate. All she said was it was to little to late, that nothing I am going to do is going to change her mind. I could not eat, could not sleep I was a mess at work. Just before the end of April I decided maybe it was time to move forward still hoping for a miracle. In this time I had a friend in the ministry trying desperately to help me. I even had one session with him taking her with. But she was so hard and almost evil that nothing helped. The weekend before the end of April I planned to go out with work friends to try to see if I can get my mind off things and maybe move forward. The Friday at my work my phone rang and it was the affair partners wife telling me that they were seeing each other the whole time. I was devasted all over. I phoned her told her to meet me somewhere as I know now what was going on. I phoned the affair partner and cursed at him, but he only lied and said that they were friends. I met her at the filling station. I could see she was devastated. She disclosed that he told her that it was over between them and he cant do it to his family anymore. She told me to phone him so that we can get together to sort it out between the four of us. I phoned him and we met at his shop. On our way there I asked her if they had sex, she said yes about 4 times and ask me not to tell his wife. But she needed to know the truth and told her. There was a lot of disclosure in that session. But knowing that she doesn’t want me anymore, I said that it doesn’t matter and said I don’t want to hear anything anymore. We drove back with her sobbing about him leaving her. I said to her that I am not coming home. Just as I climbed out of her car, she grabbed my arm and beg me to give her another chance. As there was still a bit of hope I went home with her. That night she disclosed everything I wanted to know. Maybe I should not have asked so much as the pictures of them having sex is haunting me every day. It was a weekend of hell. I phoned the affair partner the Monday before work and asked him to leave my wife alone now. He said he would. She phoned me and asked if she can phone him one last time to get closure. I agreed. She sent me message of how sorry she were and how she was looking forward to a new life with me. I was like a crazy detective the whole time. She went to a therapist once a week trying to heal her broken heart. Two weeks after the hell of a weekend she came to me one morning before work, and told me that he phoned her again three days after the weekend and that they had contact again only over the phone. She told him the day before that she cant carry on like this anymore and wants to fix her marriage and he must leave her alone. At that stage I grabbed at every hope there was. I said that it was ok but any contact further on and I am leaving. That’s 8 months ago. In this time up until now I went through all the emotions of distrust anger, rage towards the affair partner, checking her up all the time. In August when I was away with my daughter for a sports event she unblocked his number on her phoned and I could see it when I returned. I confronted her and she denied it and told me truth about it a month ago. I caught her on his facebook page in Oktober, checking it constantly for two weeks. I confronted her again and said I was over reacting and it was nothing major. She constantly tell me to get over it. I cant talk to her about how I feel, she say that she wants to move forward and not to be reminded of him. I this time she also say that half of what happened was my fault and that I didn’t treat her good and that her needs were not met. She really pretends that nothing happened. I can see that she tries treat me better and talks to me in a loving way. But get super defensive when I have questions about how she feels. At one stage she told me that she will fake it until she makes it. We had a couple of good times and then hope arises again, but the triggers and stuff she sometimes say is putting me back again. I asked her once if I leave now if she would fight for me. She told me if I want to leave I can leave. The other time she said she wants to feel about me as she feld about the affair partner. I am so confussed.