My saga...

My wife and I met when she 16, I was 19. We dated briefly (no physical stuff) until I found out she was screwing a friend and I dropped her like a bad habit. Fast forward a few years, she goes to great pains to find me and starts stalking me. We eventually try dating again, me believing she might have outgrown her wild side. Wrong again, she's involved with a number of other people and I find out, stop dating again, no big deal. Fast forward another 4 years, she finds me again and says she's different. She's convincing in her pursuit of me, and she's actually able to appear normal so we start to date again. We eventually move in together and are happy for a short while (8 months maybe). A few days after having had her little brother and one of his friends over for a visit, she is supposed to watch a neighbor's pet while the neighbor is out of town. That night I go to my computer to do some contract work and notice her IM is open (her computer right next to mine). I see a message indicating a meet time. I walk down the street to the house where she's supposed to be watching the pet, walk around to the side, peer in a window and see her screwing aformentioned little-brother's friend (she's 22 at this point, he's 16!) I walk back and pack up my stuff and leave. She comes home while I'm in the middle of packing, I'm too disgusted to speak to her, and she doesn't understand why, pleading with me to stay. When I finally do mention what I saw with my own eyes, she clams up and acts pissed.

A few months pass during which she contacts be occasionally asking for another chance, claiming she was forced into it (definate BS based on what I witnessed) and felt she had no choice. She keeps working on me and distracting me from forming any healthy relationships with new people, so I finally give in and give her another shot. A year or two pass by and I start getting that weird feeling about a couple guys she hangs out with frequently (sometimes leaving as late as midnight to hang out with one or both of them.) Doesn't feel right to me, and I work a real job (unlike her) so can't be kept up all night with her coming/going, so I call her on it and ask her to move out. She swears nothing is going on (she claims to not get along with females at all), they're just friends, and says she'll reform and end the late night comings/goings. A few months later, she's digging up old friends (males) from her past on the internet and starts IM'ing one in particular quite frequently. I start sniffing packets and end up with a chain of IM's and emails, including naked pictures of her masturbating, sent to him, and detailing her desire to screw him. I call her on it, but don't let on the extent of my knowledge about what's been going on, she denies, again claiming platonic friendship. I drop the pictures/letters, she gets pissed, and we stop talking for a few days. I ask her to move out and she says she needs time to line up housing, job, etc. A few weeks pass and things calm down between us, then she drops a bomb and tells me she's pregnant. We have serious discussions about her changing her ways if she expects for us to have a future together. She wants the baby, I'm not one to argue on that point, and her subsequent behavior fools me into believing that this might work. We get married, buy a house, have a second child over the next 3 years. Nothing happens (to my knowledge) during this time, but she gets diagnosed with severe depression after the birth of our second child. She starts acting suspiciously about a year after birth of our 2nd, and starts what I can only describe as stalking a 20 year-old tatoo artist who happens to be staying with much-older relatives a few houses down. I start digging, reluctantly, and find messages from her talking about sneaking out of the house to meet under the guise of walking the dog. She starts hanging out a lot at the tatoo parlor he works at a lot. I call her on it, she denies anything innappropriate, I drop the messages I intercepted, she get pissed for me invading her privacy (I own her computer, our network, our mail server) and claims it was a manic episode. I tell her she needs professional help that I am not able to provide, she reluctantly starts seeing a shrink and ends up on heavy duty mood stabalizers and anti-depressants. She's diagnosed with manic depression, bipolar, and boderline personality disorder. We work through the tatoo artist episode, she claims her mental problems caused it and that it won't happen again. She discontinues contact with him (and he moves.) Fast forward six months, she finds myspace and starts digging for old (male) friends again. She starts going out with and emailing/calling/texting one that was and still is strongly attracted to her. I start monitoring again (why do I do that to myself, lol?), see some things I consider innappropriate (notes between then debating what constitutes cheating), and tell her to watch it. She cools it down a bit (to only a few messages per day, all pretty harmless), but soon starts talking with someone she's never met before (27 yo unmarried guy, she's 30 at this point). They chat electronically off and on for a few months, then communication picks up dramatically. This point was about 1.5 months ago. He's actually educated (the previous guys were all morons, but decent looking, the opposite of this guy) and she becomes smitten with his writings and even shows some to me exclaiming how wonderful they are. They decide to meet in person and hang out, so she goes to a bonfire in the woods with this guy and some of his friends/family. Two nights later, she has him drive about an hour to out by where we live so they can meet and have coffee at Dennies. This was early last week. After the second meet, I notice another dramatic increase in her time spent on the computers (she's a SAH mom of our 3 and 4 yo). I start digging again (talk about punishing yourself...) and find some strange messages. Some are cryptic, typed all in numbers (haven't cracked these yet...), others mention his girlfriend's animosity towards my wife and some mention that they can't wait to see each other again and really like each other, etc. I can tell a lot of messages have been deleted and, perhaps due to my past electronic surveillance, she doesn't use email and religiously deletes her phone text messages now. I call her on what I had found and she reveals that he kissed her on that second "date", but that they talked about it and set up boundaries and she really just wants to be his friend. I try to tell her again that friends that desire more than friendship will never be true friends, but to no avail. She plays the "you're too possessive and won't let me have any friends" card, so I back off and warn her that she needs to be careful with this "friendship." A day or two later I find a parable posted on his myspace and her comment to it, i deals with burning fires and basically can be interpreted to mean that there's a fire burning between them, but they need to keep it in check (or hidden?) or bad things will happen. I post to it, with some choice idioms (since they're playing with words..) such as dont play with fire or you might bet burned, can't have your cake and eat it too, etc. Here's the myspace message representing her reaction to my finding/replying to the parable:

"Wow, well that was a nice comment from XXXXXXX. Shit. lol. Didn't take him long to catch onto the meaning of the parable... wish he'd catch onto other things that quickly. damn.. I'm sorta speechless after reading that. Point taken. ha ha.

Um, yeah, so we'll stick to myspace. I just text you to to tell you have a msg. ;)"

She now deletes text messages from her phone as soon as they are received or sent (I'm guessing she's exchanging 10+ per day, but can't verify until I get the next bill), and changes all her passwords frequently. She's also been hounding lately for a picture of her naked (taken a while back, tasteful and artsy, but still naked) so she can send it to a one of her girl friend who wants to see it (she really has no girl friends to speak of.) He, the current flavor of the month, actually calls our house phone (as well as her cell) almost daily. My kids know his name and mention him every once in a while in their babblings. So, I've finally decided I'm through. I've tolerated her this long (and tryed to help her be a normal person), but once the kids started talking about the other guy, I about lost it. I'm just mad at this point, I've been hurt so often in the past by her that I'm kind of numb to a lot of the emotions involved now. I guess my reason for posting this here is just to get it off my chest. I've internalized/repressed all of this crap for so long out of fear of destroying the impressions everyone has of her (family, friends,... everyone.) The constant drama is wearing away at my ability to work effectively, be a good parent, etc, so I'm just done with it, I'm sick of being shat on. As in the title, I guess a leopard never can change its spots.

My question for those that have been down this road and have seperated/divorced: how much is it going to damage the kids (I'm assuming I'd have primary custody, I do all the feeding, bathing, putting-to-bed, etc because she is too easily frustrated with those tasks), what can you do to lessen their pain/exposure (what should they be told, what shouldn't they be told?) Any tips on how to insulate them from the mess that's about to unfold?