'I think my wife is having an affair...and I've come up with a major plan.' UPDATED

"I think my wife is having an affair...and I've come up with a plan."

I’m in my mid 30s and have a young child with my wife. Ever since he was born she has been distant and short with me and it’s gotten worse over the last 3 or so months.

She has made friends without kids and started going out more and when I ask to be included she always has an excuse to not bring me along. Not hard when one of us has to be with our child.

When I brought up how I feel she told me that she feels like she’s lost her identity through the process of being pregnant and then breast feeding and being a mom and she feels like she just wants to get out and be around people who don’t have kids and live her own life for a bit.

As a part of this she’ll go out until 2 am and take weekend trips without me. It feels like she’s withdrawing from me and I know she’s not always being honest with me. I don’t go through her phone but I’ve noticed that she doesn’t leave it out ever, even taking it with her to the shower which is something that she never used to do.

I don’t think she’s being unfaithful but the thought has certainly crossed my mind. I asked her directly about this and she got very upset and told me that this isn’t about that.

I told her that I want to be a part of what she’s going through and she told me that I don’t have the passion for the things that she wants to do and she just needs me to find my own passions and my own friends.

I genuinely enjoy her main hobby but when I try to tell her that or be included in it she insists that I don’t enjoy it like she does and she just wants to be around people who love it like her.

I feel like I’m losing my best friend of 15 years. My toddler is the lone light in my life. I don’t know what to do and have been so sad.

Here's what people had to say to OP:

synn0829 writes:

As much as I love going scorched earth, you need to hold your hand here. Back off and act like you believe her. Play the game, man. Get with a lawyer and use that evidence to get a good divorce.

Again, DONT DO ANYTHING YET. Do what your lawyer says. Keep gathering evidence til they tell you it's not needed.

Think long term, not short term. It's hard, but you will have time to grieve, but atm, you need to be logical. Courts are not fair on men even more, so if you're the breadwinner. ETA. DNA test.your child. Not to leave them but to get a better idea of how deep this betrayal goes.

pinkmoneyball writes:

My mom did this same thing to my dad. 20 years together down the tube. I was 14 and my little brother was 8. The math wasn’t mathing. Not only was it an affair, it was one that had been going on a while.

Then OP provides this update a few days later, "My wife is cheating on me":

Things have been off with my wife. We have been together for 15 years and married for 5 We have a 14 month old and things have been rough since he was born with them getting a lot worse in the last few months.

She’s gotten face injections and has gone through weight loss that would point to drug use. She’s been protective of her phone and generally dodgy.

I confronted her and was completely gas lit. To the point that I set an appointment with a therapist because I thought I was being paranoid and insecure and had to figure out why I felt the way I did.

She went to the mountains yesterday saying that she needed a weekend to herself and she wanted to go snowboarding and get a full nights rest away from the fussing baby and it didn’t feel right.

She went back on birth control without discussing it with me, she went and got face injections, she went and got waxed and asked me to put the board rack on her roof, despite claiming she was the only one going. There were too many red flags for me to not hire a PI.

The PI immediately secured photographs and video of the affair. Turns out she’s fg her boss. They are up there until Sunday. Probably still fg right now.

I feel like a fool. We’ve all hung out multiple times. I’m so mad that she could blow up not just our lives, but the life of our 1 year old. I’m stuck having to deal with her because of our shared son for essentially the rest of my life.

I contacted a lawyer to file for divorce and plan to confront her when she gets back but the divorce isn’t likely to process for over a year. This is going to suck for a long time.

About a week later OP came back with this update, "I confronted my wife about her affair":

I found out that my wife was having an affair with her boss. For context, we have been together for -15 years, married for 5, and have a 15 month old son. I found out while she was going on a 'girls trip' that she actually went and picked up her boss and spent the weekend in an air bnb.

I had been suspecting infidelity for a while and even confronted her about it, but was completely gas lit. I thought there was a problem with me.

I made and went to appointments with a therapist to figure out why I had so much trouble trusting my partner and couldn't get the feeling that there was something wrong to go away.

When she left for her trip I made the decision to hire a PI and thought that the apology for the betrayal of not trusting her while getting validation that I was just being paranoid would be easier to deal with than not knowing.

After not even 45 minutes on the clock the PI had photos and video of her picking him up, them very casually kissing, and finally ending the night going in to the air bnb.

I got this confirmation on a Friday and she didn't come home until Sunday morning. The whole time she was gone she texted and called and went on like nothing was up. I had a small breakdown after finding out and the first person I called was my therapist. Having an established therapist is one of the silver linings of the gas lighting.

The second phone call I made was to my sister who lives in the same state but a while away. She came up and was there for me and helped me to stabilize. My next thoughts were how to move forward and set myself up to be out of the house but still be in a position to have my son for at least 50% of the time.

I'm going to outline my actions quickly in case (god forbid) anyone else finds themselves in a similar situation. I have seven major steps. Contacted my hunting buddy and asked him to take my rifles and bow. I didn't want any claims of unsafe space from my wife citing the rifles being in the house (even though I keep them in a safe).

Bought and installed a nanny cam for the confrontation. I didn't want any claims of DV or abuse to come down to he said/she said. I live in a 1 party consent state so this was a no brainer. I found a furnished month to month rental. Needed to accommodate working from home and have 2 bedrooms and be in a good enough area that there could be objections.

Found a short term Air BNB to bridge the gap between then and when my month to month lease would start. Had to check the same boxes as the month to month rental.

Talked to a therapist. As crazy as it sounds, figuring out what you want in this situation feels impossible. Are you willing to allow your spouse to steal your ability to live with your son for 50% of his life between 1 and 18+?

That's 9 years. Not seeing the decision to leave as your decision is so much harder than you'd believe and it fg sucks.

Practice practice practice. I laid out the conversation to be 3 to 5 minutes to avoid escalation. I laid it out as: I know about the affair, I'm not ready to talk, I'm moving out while I figure out a path forward.

We need to have a conversation about how we are going to handle custody of our son in the short term while we figure out a path forward. Play it through in your mind or out loud and do that through a number of expected responses. Expect them to be angry, sad, mad, denial, try to work it around to be your fault...

Don't try to win, but you cannot lose. This is way more important if there is a kid or kids that you plan on fighting for. Don't get petty. Don't set their stuff on fire. Don't go out of your way to piss them off.

You are going to have to have a relationship with this person for the rest of your life through your relationship with your son. Shit is already going to be really hard. Don't make it harder and don't give them any ammunition to bring up or use against you.

Unfortunately for me I didn't expect the 'no response' response. My wife sat there and said nothing. Not I'm sorry. Not it was a mistake. No copping to it. Just blank slate.

In the days since I have continued to see my therapist and identified the gas lighting and emotional abuse that had been taking place in the months leading up to discovering the affair.

This is apparently very common in instances of infidelity as it gives the cheater 'justification' to their actions. Helps them sleep at night. Even now I feel my wife trying to manipulate me into taking her back and 'work it out for the sake of our son.'

I don't trust her and what's worse is I don't trust myself to talk to her about what happened. I'm afraid of getting gas lit again and feel like the whole thing was my fault.

I set time on Monday with a marriage counselor to finally have the conversation on what's happened and how we can try to move forward as co-parents for our son. She has already tried to claim that this was the first time and a mistake.

I don't believe her but also don't have proof that she is lying. Not sure how I'm going to handle that on Monday.

I can't imagine a path forward that involves staying married with her. I also can't imagine forfeiting being there for half of my baby's life without being able to look them in the eye when the time comes and tell them that I tried everything that I could to be there for them. This f-g sucks. This is going to suck for a while. Don't cheat

About 9 months later OP came back with this update, "Caught my wife cheating [Final Update]":

A while back I wrote about catching my wife in an affair with her boss. Let’s call him ‘Benny’ and her ‘Chrissy’. I’ve had a crazy amount of DMs asking me if I was alright and asking for updates so I’m going to drop this last post before deleting the account.

If you want the background you can check my post history, I’m not going to rehash it all again. Also understand that this is not a complete history. It’s been a long 8 months.

Very shortly after I moved out, I had a friend tell me that Chrissy went out to dinner with his wife and the wife of another friend of mine, who were her friends. He said that she got drunk, told them what happened and then when they weren’t sympathetic invited Benny out with them. Said that it was a whole scene and she was all over him.

She later admitted that she went and spent that night at his house but swore up and down that they didn’t sleep together and spent the night on his couch. Swore that she just felt alone and like none of her friends cared about her and didn’t want to be alone at the air bnb (at the time we were switching off staying at the marital home when it was our days with our son and the other would fuck off to an Airbnb).

We went to see a therapist at that time. Therapy went the way of straight trickle truthing. She would wait to see what I knew, cop to only that, and swear there was nothing else. She swore that the time that I caught her, which she spent an entire weekend with him in an air bnb, was the first and only time. She cried and begged for me to believe her and give her another chance and take her back.

She said that he was old and she didn’t find him attractive and called him short and said it was just a mistake. She said that it wasn’t about him but rather what she was going through and he was just a symptom. She said that she’d do anything. I said she had to tell me the truth and she refused to budge from her original story.

So after hitting a brick wall in couples therapy and her refusing to tell me the truth about what happened I said I couldn’t keep going. I signed a long term lease and tried focusing on myself with the understanding that we would try therapy again in a few months.

We continued to split custody 50/50 and Chrissy made a legit effort to try to help me to settle in to my new place. We started going through mediation for a divorce.

Why start mediation if we were planning on trying therapy again? What we said out loud was because it takes forever and if therapy went the same way as the first time, we didn’t want to be stuck in limbo longer than we had to be.

A couple of months into mediation, the mediator asked us if we had seen a therapist that specializes in infidelity. We said that we had seen a couples therapist but not a specialist. She said that she had some referrals if we were interested. Chrissy said she was and that she’d be willing to go if I would agree to it. I agreed to it as well. With how far we got through mediation it felt like it was then or never.

Going in to seeing the specialist, I had given our marriage a 5% shot at surviving the year. ‘But Mr. Throwaway, how could you not be 100% done after knowing that she was still lying about the affair.’

The plain answer is I wanted to believe that she would show up and tell the whole truth and ask for forgiveness for what she had done and for not being able to come clean the first time.

If she had done that, I think I would have seen a path (albeit a long one) back to try to make our family whole. Also, the prospect of missing half of your son’s life when they are so young is difficult to face down and just say that’s 100% off the table.

So we have a joint introductory session with the specialist and then a week later an individual one. It was after that I was given information that Chrissy had still been seeing Benny. I didn’t believe it. I looked into it and checked with a few other sources and then was presented with indisputable evidence that she not only had continued to see him, but had brought him around our son multiple times.

I haven’t mentioned it but we had an agreement that we would communicate to each other and get sign off if anyone outside of family was going to be introduced or hang out with him. She had broken this agreement.

I was crushed. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t understand it. Why agree to see the specialist if you’ve been seeing Benny? Why not just file and move forward? It felt like some sociopath shit.

I flat out asked her if she had been seeing Benny in an accusatory tone and she said that she had. I asked if she had brought him around our son and she straight lied and said that she saw him when she didn’t have our son and after our son had fallen asleep. I asked why she would agree to see the specialist if she had been seeing Benny.

Why not just go through with the divorce? She said that she didn’t want our son to grow up in a broken home. I lost it. I said some mean shit that I honestly can’t remember but was along the lines of her being just like her mother and hung up.

Then the fishing began. She texted and asked questions and tried denying without being specific about what she was denying with lines like ‘you jumped to an awful lot of conclusions there.’

She tried gaslighting me into thinking that it wasn’t a big deal. ‘I thought you’d be pumped to not have to go through any more therapy and make me be the one that called it quits. I honestly am appalled that you’ve taken the stance that you have.’

I started thinking on why I was so upset. I had said to myself that the odds of therapy working out and her coming clean about the whole thing were low. This was the likely outcome. I wondered why I would agree to go back despite being told that she spent the night with him AGAIN after the first time that I caught her.

I started taking long walks at night when I didn’t have my son to think on the whole thing. I reflected on all this for a while and came to the conclusion that I was upset that I felt like she chose him over me and that made me feel worthless. I ignored a lot of the shit in an attempt to not feel worthless.

After a few more walks I came to the conclusion that that just wasn’t true. She begged me to take her back on her terms and I had refused her. She didn’t choose him, she was stuck with him.

Benny is sending his kid from his last marriage off to college. If he sticks around he’ll be collecting social security by the time Chrissy and my’s son is out of the house. He’s supposed to trust her, knowing how they met? And she’s supposed to trust him knowing that infidelity doesn’t bother him? Plus, imagine the anxiety that would wash over you when people ask how they met.

She took away any doubt that moving forward with the divorce is the right thing. I’m stuck coparenting with her but I get to do that from a place of having seen her and can go into with eyes wide open.

If this seems disjointed, it is. I wrote this over several sittings and did it for myself to help with introspection as much as anything but by the time I was done I figured there wasn’t any harm in changing the names and giving a last update.

To those that reached out with support, even though I didn’t respond please know it was appreciated. For those that only reached out to ask for updates out of what I assume to be morbid curiosity, I’d recommend some long walks and a bit of introspection.

And to Chrissy, if you see this, please know that you are just like your mother and you’re going to end up just like her.