Hi all. I'm having a tough time and didn't really know where to turn. I'd appreciate any thoughts and feedbacks. I'm not good with people who bash me or my husband, so please don't go that route. I obviously know things aren't ideal.

Four years ago, I discovered my husband was having an emotional affair with a woman at work whom I was good friends with also. I had checked his email after he hid his screen from me that day. We went to counseling and brought a lot of issues to the table, such as the distance that my brother's death (suicide) and my mom's death (cancer) had caused between us, as well as the stress of raising two little ones, juggling jobs, etc. The following months were filled with a lot of ups and downs, and I eventually couldn't live with the roller coaster and asked for a separation. He moved out.

As we were co-parenting, we still had a lot of contact and eventually we seemed to be moving toward a better relationship. I took a leap of faith and moved to a new city with him (my hometown, so I have plenty of support here). Not long after we moved here, he left his email up and I discovered that not only was he in touch with OW, they had escalated to a physical relationship and were declaring how much they loved each other. At this point I said we needed to resume counseling or divorce. We went to counseling and it was not especially fruitful, largely because I had the sense he was doing it merely to say he had so that when he bailed, he could play the "I tried" card.

So we separated again, but continued to co-parent. Eventually I said the uncertainty of separation was too much and I wanted to make this a more formal arrangement. He bought a house and we planned to talk to his individual therapist (who specializes in working with kids) about how to talk to our girls, how to divide custody, that sort of thing.

In the meantime, it felt like with the pressure finally off to save our marriage, we started to really click. OW was out of the picture at this point, and he would stay at my house until the girls had fallen to sleep and we would spend a lot of time talking and laughing, and I thought that maybe I could find a way to be happy with the positive changes in our relationship as well as a new future.

Except that the future felt so awful to me. I'm sure most of you can relate to the utter devotion I feel to my kids. When I would walk by their rooms at night and imagine the day coming when they weren't there because they were at my husband's, I felt physically ill. Imagining missing out on half their lives was so traumatizing that I thought about suicide (although having witnessed how devastating my brother's death was, I don't believe that will ever be a viable option).

When my husband confessed that he was having second thoughts and struggling with telling the girls, I said I felt the same way and suggested we take some time and let our emotions guide us. That was about two months ago. Since then, he has emailed me every night, shoveled my driveway after every storm (and there have been a lot), turned to me for advice about work and supported some large decisions I have made. We have also spent a lot of time as a family and just had a really enjoyable time.

So a few days ago I told him that I had taken time to think about everything, and I wanted to pursue a relationship with him. I told him that if he wanted to just be co-parents who were good friends, that was fine, but we needed to make some changes in our lives that reflected that. He said no, he wanted to move forward, too, but that his feelings had evolved to "best friends" and he wasn't sure how to move them to intimacy. I said I felt the same way and we agreed to work on it together. That night I was lying around with one of my girls and felt so content about the direction everything was heading.

Well, three days later, he got a phone call and left his computer open, so I checked his email. Frankly, I wish I'd just asked him about OW, but I feared he wouldn't be honest with me. Sure enough, they were back in touch and pouring their hearts out to each other and telling each other how much they loved each other ("I love you so much," each message said).

When I confronted him, he said that he had been trying to end it and he meant what he said to me about wanting to build a relationship with me. Then he got angry that I had checked his email. I apologized but stressed the bigger issue was what he had done.

This was two days ago, and the time since has been very tense and stressful. I have cried a lot and eat and slept little. Just really torn about all this and what it means for the future. It wasn't even a week ago that I felt so good about the direction we were headed. And now I am having a hard time picturing it ever working out, for the following reasons:

- It hurts a lot to know he was lying to and deceiving me for however long he and the OW have been back in touch. The letters referenced a recent get-together, and he definitely lied to me about his whereabouts that day. While I do feel to some extent our relationship was undefined and he had some right to do as he wished with other women, knowing he was so dishonest YET AGAIN is a huge hurdle for me.
- I have a hard time feeling like I can get enthused about a building a relationship with him when he'll have just broken off one in which he claimed to love the other woman so much. Not only that, but he has turned to this woman time and again when he could have been building our relationship.I just feel like she'll forever cast a long shadow over our relationship.
- I resent the way he is nursing a grudge over my reading his email. I have tried to be rational and let him be entitled to his anger, but still, I treated him better in the face of the original discovery of his infidelity than he has treated me the past few days. I get that when he's angry, he has a hard time verbalizing things and he really doesn't know what to say. That doesn't exempt him from basic kindness.

He left the house when I got home from work last night, so it was just me and my girls. And we had so much fun and laughed a lot. I started to wonder if a life with just the three of us was the way to go. Then I imagine being alone on the nights they're over at their father's, having that kind of fun with him. At this point in my life, I just can't imagine being a part-time mom.

Maybe all this will be a moot point because he'll push for an end to things anyway. I don't know. Like I said, I'm really having a tough time. Thanks a lot for reading.