From catfishing to emotional affair and sexting and then a mental breakdown. I don’t know how to proceed.

TLDR: my wife of ten years fell in love with a guy she was catfishing and turned out to be mentally ill after getting arrested for assaulting me when I caught her. She is currently in a psych ward. Diagnosed with Bipolar 1 Disorder.

Married ten years. Two girls 6/7

I (35m) bought my wife(34f) a laptop a few months ago and she began playing an old MMORPG video game form her childhood. She was playing late into the night.

Prior to that, she had been depressed, disconnected, neglectful of our children and even neglectful of her hygiene. I knew something was going on and I had been trying to help her come out of her shell. I signed the kids up for some extracurricular activities to give her some breathing room and started doing the cooking and helping more than usual around the house. She was being very mean to me in spite of this.

Her mother lived with us over the summer. Her mother is severely mentally ill with bipolar and schizophrenia. Her mother would yell at our kids often making me uncomfortable.

Her mother would often lecture me and tell me I was a bad husband and tell me that I was paranoid and delusional because I was constantly trying to figure out why my wife was so out of it. She told me to leave my wife alone and let her play her game.

My wife started pulling away more and more. She was wearing headphones in the house and refused to spend any time with me. She stopped putting the kids to bed and stopped cleaning or doing anything domestic at all except for cooking and leaving a huge disaster in the kitchen. She would be distant during family activities outside. We work in the same office and she would ignore me at work even though I’d often get her coffee or come visit her.

Even then, I never expected what she was doing. Turns out she was catfishing people on the game she was playing and then moving into discord where she developed one of the relationships into an intense emotional affair that would progress into a delusional fantasy relationship.

So how did I find out?

The other night I found her sleeping in the living room while on a discord phone call with a weird contact. I woke her up and she jumped up and out of the blanket with no pants on shouting angrily about how she was on her period which seemed completely irrelevant. Then she told me it was her mom on the phone and then she switched to it being her sister. It was fishy enough, but then she started frantically closing apps and deleting stuff. She refused to let me see her phone.

After hours of begging her to come clean, I tried to take her computer and she straight up attacked me. She fell during the scuffle and I took her phone also. I locked myself in our room and found the whole thing. She busted the door and assaulted me trying to retrieve the phone.

She called the cops when I ran out the door with my tattered clothes and scratches. They interviewed me and fortunately I had video evidence since I had been recording her chats in a video with my phone as I scrolled. The cops decided that she needed to go to jail. The cops wouldn’t let her bring the laptop.

I spent the night reading her entire chat history on discord and crying. It was all ridiculous fake fantasy catfishing stuff, but the intensity of the emotions and the fabricated things she was telling him about me were hurtful. Obviously I was devastated and disgusted by all the sexual stuff. I haven’t eaten well since reading and listening to all the sex chatting. She sometimes talked about a character in her fantasy world that would allude to me and she was calling me her crazy ex boyfriend. She said I beat her all the time which is completely false.

She was sending him messages all day long for months. Morning, noon and night. She was texting him and sexting him from work. Disgustingly we work in the same office so this was all happening while I was in the house and also while I was at the office down the hall from her. I am so ashamed and disgusted by what she was doing.

Anyways, while she was in jail, I sent the main dude and all the others she had catfished a message on discord explaining that she was in fact much older, a mother, and a wife. I sent some recent family pictures to prove it. I told them they had been catfished. I found an app on GitHub that allowed me to backup and archive all of her chats including media which included photos and audio clips. I kept it for evidence.

She returned from jail completely unremorseful and angry at me for violating her privacy. She wanted me to feel sympathy for her because she spent a night in jail as if four months of sexting people and having an emotional affair were nothing.

She kept saying "it wasn’t real" and “the relationship was already over”

She said she wanted divorce since she knew I’d never forgive her. And she kept talking about custody stuff saying she’d never let me take away her kids. We had previously talked about divorce before this because honestly I was overwhelmed with her depression and dealing with my own. She cited that as proof that "the relationship was already over anyway" and used that as an excuse to downplay what she had been caught doing red handed. That said, I was genuinely trying to make it work during the time when this happened. I thought she was too.

She apologized sarcastically only when prompted and continued to refuse to give access to her phone or devices. I told her that I would forgive her if she just came clean about everything and logged into all the accounts and showed me what was going on. I didn’t need to read every word but I expected her to go through and honestly and systematically delete everything while committing to never do it again. She sarcastically swore that she had ended everything and said she had deleted all apps and discord without actually proving it. She kept leaving the house and taking all her devices with her disappearing for hours on end.

She accused me of blackmailing her with the backups I made. In her mind this was all my fault.

It became clear to me that she was only remorseful about getting caught.

The only thing that didn’t make sense to me is that she was just not acting like my wife of ten years at all. It was like a demon had taken over. She is normally very kind and compassionate and I had never seen her act like this. Our kids were terrified of her. She would act overly normal around them and they would give her hugs and snuggle her but they would look at me while doing so as if wanting permission or approval to make sure it was safe.

I was obviously distraught and angry and I wanted to know what was still going on since she was acting like a completely different person.

I bluffed and told her that I could still see all her discord chats, stating that I "hacked her computer." I told her I knew she was still talking to him.

My bluff was rewarded with her admission and she texted me that she wanted to end it on her terms. She was furious with me for ending her fake fantasy relationship.

She spent the rest of the day out of the house with her devices. She was trying to figure out how to unhack her computer lol. She texted me that she deleted everything and was sleeping in her car and finally eating food. She sent me pictures from inside Target.

When she came home I bluffed again and told her I knew she created a second discord and demanded she log into it. I demanded she log into that mmorpg and let me see who chats her. I knew I caught her again by the look on her face. She argued with me and treated me like shit for the rest of the day. No sympathy remorse or anything else that I would expect from a person who intended to change.

At some point she did give me her phone and then when I started actually going through apps like YouTube and notes, she snatched it back. Acted dumb when I asked her to give it back and provide access. Pretended she couldn’t remember any passwords. He dad called and then I had to take the kids somewhere. I would later find out that she texted her dad asking him to call her urgently so that she could get me off the idea of rummaging through her phone.

She took a shower later that night and I stole her phone and left the house. Miraculously she never reset her Face ID.

While the phone was pretty well cleaned out, I could see that her App Store app had "discord" typed into the search bar which told me she was still planning to use it.

I tried to get into discord for a while but I could t do it.

I was about to give up and give up and face her in defeat only to see a "recently deleted" section in her text messages. when I went into it, I realized she had been texting him and calling him that day. There were texts there about not using discord anymore. She must have given her phone number using the game.

I was so sad that she had indeed kept up the fantasy relationship and had spent the past few days using this internet dude for "emotional support" while her husband of ten years was literally on the verge of cloying of a broken heart. She was telling him all kinds of horrible untrue things. Thankfully the dude was able to begin seeing that she was not well because all her stories were unraveling.

I was and am so furious that she had been playing me and lying to my face.

I took a deep breath and texted the dude from her phone asking to talk. He called her phone and I explained everything to him bro to bro. We compared notes for a while. He had concerns that she was genuinely suicidal. He pledged full support and went no contact. I recorded my phone conversation with him using my phone and sent it to herself, myself and her father as proof. Along with the screenshots I took of the text convo I found.

I went home and gave the phone back. She accused me of deleting all the incriminating evidence she had supposedly compiled documenting things that never happened. She claimed she had been recording voice recordings for years and that I had deleted them. It was delusional bullshit and I didn’t delete anything.

She confirmed to me verbally and also via text that she was In-fact suicidal and felt cornered. I could see that her world was spinning. She locked herself in the bathroom.

I called the police and asked them to come for a suicide wellness check. She realized I called and ran out of the house, driving away.

She tried to contact the dude who promised to go no contact and like a champ the dude forwarded me everything she sent me without responding. She started to go ballistic sending him angry messages that sounded exactly like the way she had been talking to me since I caught her.

The cops spent a few hours out there looking for her and finally she got bored and came home. She said that I should tell the police she was home. I called them and told them and they took her to the hospital.

She’s been in the hospital for a few nights now and I really believe that she was having a bipolar event following a long depression period that she had gotten stuck in. I think the curtain got pulled too fast and she couldn’t cope with the reality of facing her indiscretions and the fact that she may have destroyed her family. The family she had prior to this affair is certainly gone.

She’s been in for a few nights and as of today she’s been calling me and her father from from the psych ward. I brought her some clothes and things. They are evaluating her and obviously also believe she is not well. She thinks she is where she is supposed to be and has begun to show some remorse over the phone while calling from the ward. I don’t know if it’s genuine.

She was diagnosed with Bipolar Type 1.

I do believe this is all some sort of mental illness fueled nightmare and this is the only episode that I’m aware of. I’m trying to have compassion, but I’m also struggling to reconcile with the pain she caused me. I also worry that she’s been doing this off and on for years without be knowing.

There were times over the the years when she was often taking selfies and using filters like the ones she used to catfish these people. I worry that she’s addicted to this behavior.

Plenty of mentally ill people don’t choose to cheat on their spouses during their episodes.

Family wants us to make it work. For whatever it’s worth, I’m broke, up to my ears in debt, and we both rely on each others income to survive. If we part ways I will have to file bankruptcy.

I don’t know what to do. Advice welcome.

99 comments posted: Saturday, October 14th, 2023