Hey All,
Just wanted to post my story to see if I have the right mentality on this, or if there are any red flags with the situation/how I am handling it.
As a background my wife and I have never had great communication. I had to rely a lot on internalizing my emotions growing up and she was suppressed on speaking her thoughts by family/past boyfriends. And things got really bad right before the pandemic when I was going through bad work stress, we got a new dog that was a handful and then the pandemic hit.
Because of our poor communication, I didn't feel like I had the support I needed to make it past these life obstacles in a healthy way. So I turned to video games and heavy drinking (blacking out/browning out) 4-5 times a week, and eventually narrowing it down to 3 times a week over the last year and a half.
The drinking, and lack of support, also made me more angry and I was yelling at her a couple times a month along with checking out on household chores/spending time with her.
Over the last 11 months Ive realzied the rift we have had and tried to express I want to be more intimiate with her. We had a blow up about it in September. We talked about what I could do to help her feel more connected to me through a MC session and several one-on-one talks between September-December. Since then I've tried helping out more around the house, took her on dates once a week, and dedicated the majority of my weekly evenings (4ish nights) to hanging out with her. However I was still getting drunk and playing video games multiple nights a week, and we weren't getting any closer together.
A little over 2 weeks ago, I discovered sexts/a nude on instagram that my wife had been recieving from an ex. Could see any more than a few posts because she had vanish mode on with him. After taking a day away from her and staying with my friend (she tried to go over to his place to talk to me, but I was too emotional to talk) I went back to confront her the next morning.
After calling her out on some things I knew weren't true about her story of the situation, she revealed she began talking to him around the same time we had the blowup in September. It progressed to heavy flirting in December. And she began sexting him about 4.5 weeks prior to me discovering the sexts. At first she denied sending him nudes as well, but I eventually got her to admit that she did a few days later.
That same day I also dumped all the alcohol out of the house that day and haven't drank or played video games since.
I was strongly considering a permanent separation, but 5 minutes after she did the initial confession about the online affair, she told me she was pregnant with my child. Which makes me mad in 2 ways. The first being she took away what should have been a top happy moment in my life. The second way is she wasn't able to stop the affair for the sake of our future child's family dynamic (which she didn't deny when I brought it up to her).
Definitely haven't been the husband I always told myself I would be, and I've been trying to live that out every day since. In fact recently she told me she feels like she has the husband she's always wanted. But it's definitely not easy being this way. I want to believe this is over and she is really over cheating on me. And there is good evidence she is like;
1) Actively working on communicating me and showing me affection the way I've expressed I need
2) I don't see any weird names popping up when she gets alerts on her phone. Ive also looked at her texts and social messaging (facebook/instagram) and I am not seeing anything weird like I did before
3) She showed me she blocked her ex on instagram, facebook and his phone number
4) She is paying for our new MC (which is hundreds of dollars per session, not cheap)
5) She is seeing an individual therapist (so am I) to resolve her issues on loving herself and why she cheating on me (still don't have a great why explaination)
6) She has said sorry several times (while breaking down crying) and said she is glad she got caught
7) She's opening up to me a lot more about her past struggles with me and her childhood, which helps for our rebuilding
8) She is checking in on me a lot more when we aren't in the house together
However, its still very fresh. And I still get hurt and parinoid a lot. So anyone who has tips or advice on how to navigate please let me know. I do truely love her still and want a good family dynamic, but I also won't raise a child in a toxic parent situation.