Am I a fool?

You're trusting and loyal and you're trying to hold on to your marriage. Those qualities make you vulnerable but they're not foolish.

Your wife should come clean and fess up. Then maybe you could start on the road to recovery. It's your wife who is the fool. The lying, selfishness, sneaking around, neglecting the kids. Then she spins it around so you're the bad guy because romeao is afraid of you. My wife has done something similar.

It's stunning how people are willing to blow it. How is an affair better than working on a marriage? Whevetever made the person unhappy in the marriage will just follow them to the next relationship. Deceit makes it more disgusting. I have a low threshold for his. My wife demanded that I move and i said no. She's gone. I can barely stand to look at her. I don't see her as the same person. Respect is gone. She was my love but now there is nothing about her that I admire. I don't hate her or dislike her - I just don't feel anything for her. In fact I'm afraid of her. I, like you, am a trusting, loyal person and I don't want to change that aspect of my nature. So I I don't want to be in the company of people who prey on those chracter strengths. They take goodness for weakness.

I would talk to a lawyer for advice however. Everybody has a breaking point and your wife is very close. Good to have your ducks lined up. I would not leave the house. No need for you to be separate from the kids. Let her move in with romeo. Kick her out when you've had enough. She needs to taste the grass on the other side. I'm sorry about what you and your kids are going through.

some of the posts in "my wife is having a midlife crisis." I am a Navy man with 23 yrs of service and 19 years of marriage that has come to a sudden and abrupt ending - by her own doing. She is, and has, done some of the exact same things you have mentioned in your post.
She drops off the youngest at her parents - or leaves him home alone - spends "some" days with her new man, but not all, and claims she loves him.
It would be good for you to visit the thread I mentioned and read through some of the "symptoms" others have witnessed and how they have delt with their situations.
I have learned that you can't control everything that happens in your life, nor can you understand why it happens. Don't jump to conclusions and rash decisions, but also seek some legal advice. I would start with base legal and move on from there.
I also advise that if you haven't seeked counseling, do that first. That is one option I WAS NOT given when my wife told me it was over.

Good Luck and God Bless,
Jim

As a female who went through a husband-hating phase, I can tell you what i read in a book called "Necessary Losses" by Judith Viorst.

Love and agression are two sides of the same coin.

She is probably displacing her own MLC pain onto you, and though it's not fair, if you can get through it by her owning her crap, your love will be stronger afterward.

So, she may be a rotten human being, or she may be immaturely dealing with the loss of her youth.

can you elaborate on you "husband hating phase"? How long did it last? what feelings did you experience and how did you resolve them? What did your husband do or not do to help you?

another question: My wife told me how miserable I made her. How she HATED ME. I made her unhappy, the whole bit. To sum: She's 46, successful with a pretty good life yet she's unhappy. I'm the fall guy. She said she wouldn't settle for anythng less than a divorce. Never fully explained why she hated me. She tells her friends "Life is too short. I shoul be happy and I'm not."
Well, our divorce will be final in 5 months I hope. What does the husband hating wife do when there's no husband to hate? She has a boatload of unresolved issues and I hink she knows that. Those issues are making her unhappy but rather than work on them, she blames me. As Richard Nixon once said, "She won't have me to kcick around any more."

It started around Thanksgiving, I suppose. My husband did one of his little mechanisms, which was the 'silent treatment.' He did it for reasons I understand. I left him alone to stew with the family while I went off and had fun with my mom and my sister. For three whole hours--what torture! ;) I had said I wouldn't, but I did. He made us leave and go home. All the while he wouldn't talk.

The problem with the silent treatment is, he cuts off his emotional energy and becomes cold and distant. And when he's done that, it hurts more than you'd think. He did it twice before, and I said if he tried it again, I was going to leave. And I meant it! I said to myself, "The countdown has begun!" My youngest is out of high school in four years. Just let me get a career and I'm gone!

Well, we talked it out. I told him I felt scared, alone, and angry. I don't think he quite got the seriousness of giving me the silent treatment, but he did understand when I said I needed him to be a friend to me.

We had that talk about maybe three or four weeks later, and it was a good thing to do. I'm still doing a lot of changing and have still not ruled out leaving, but as long as we keep working things out, I'll stay. I feel sorry that if he should ever have a crisis, I might be gone. So, along with not wanting to hurt my kids, I'd want to help him if he had trouble. But like other people having a MLC I would love to have something exciting happen.

I'm not going to compromise my soul. I've been wishing I'd gone into the military, but then thought maybe that's symbolic of some other wish. I can still go into the peace corps!

Feelings: deep hate. Frustration. Wanted to hurt him--blow up his spirit, crush his hand and rip it with my fingernails.

Other feelings: deep appreciation and caring.

He listened. I could tell because he said back to me what he'd heard me saying, and it was accurate.

I noticed from my post above that both my husband and I discounted things each other wanted, or said.

Now that I'm getting older, it's time to realize that what we do and say and what we want are really not to be dismissed. We can't change the other person, but...if we take their considerations seriously we can help them see. We can communicate. That would be nice.

You're not a fool, I'm going through something similar to your situation. I think that some people just mature on different levels than other people. Unfortunately my husband and your wife aren't where they need to be with family responsibilities and relationships. It's not about going to the movies or watching tv with your spouse, it's merely about taking care of your resposibilities. More than likely she's cheating but she wants to have her cake, you and eat it too, her affair. If you can't catch her, then hire you a PI. I actually caught mine and his chain of command tried to hide it and make me look like an unhappy wife. Army Strong

I think the payback to being the most responsible, mature spouse in the marriage is you're also the most vulerable. You do the right thing and the spouse who hasn't gwoen, hasn't done the work violates or leaves the marriage for instant gratification.

Having an affairs is easier for some people than growing up. Culture makes it easy because "Hey, everybody is doing it." I've never cheated though I've wondered about it, passingly. But it made me feel unwashed and shameful. I frankly could not betray my family in such a way. It's not worth it. You cheat. You roll around in the sack and then what do you have? It's not love. Sex is sex. The euphoria doesn't last. They continue this langud, ultimately sipritless relationship or it's on to the next affair.

What gets into people? Don't they wonder about the character or a person, sometimes a married person, who would sleep with someone's spouse? There is no future in it.

The rationalizations make me ill. My wife felt entitled. She told me she needed to be happy. Loyalty is good but it's not all there is to life. You can't go through life expecting everybody to be so responsible.

I just stared at her. She could not look me in the eye so she looked away. It was like she had revealed to me her nakedness, how little character she had and was a twinge uncomfortable about it.

As others have stated before me, you're a kind, trusting man. You're living up to your marriage vows and you're wife is not. I'm in a similar situation, he has lied to me, swore on the Bible, when I did not believe him, he swore on him mother's picture and then for the next two years accused me of being Paranoid. Then two years later, he owned up. Needless, to say the trust is gone.

I catch him on the internet instant messaging women, always women. His response is that it is harmless and that he was in a chat room, but I'm sure chat rooms have men as well. I know I should have left him, the first time I caught him cheating on me, but I stayed with him, as he cried and begged me to stay. People only hesitate the first time they're going to commit adultery. 12 years later, I'm kicking myself for my stupidty.

As suggested hire a private investigator and once you can prove that she is guilty, contact a lawyer and have her move out. Also, please prove that she is an unfit mother, so that you get full custody of your children.