That's why the whys belong to her. There had to have been holes in the marriage before the A's, the marriage likely needed work from both of you. You chose anger and she chose bringing other men into her life. If your anger was an issue and is something you feel you need to work in to be better you, great, work on it. Work on how you handle things if it will help you.

She needs to work on herself and how she chose to handle things. My husband cheated to feel validated and desired. We had grown apart for reasons we both take blame for. I reacted by pulling further away from him. He reacted by escaping into the fantasy of an A. Life a child in a candy shop who goes home every night to green beans and burgers with a serious belly ache from that days candy. They return for more treats day after day knowing that what's at home is better for them but the candy is addictively awsome.

My H went back for the same side dish of candy for 3+ years. I wish I had some great inspirational response but at this moment i am in a similar boat.
Good luck

Gettingintune - I've read a lot of your recent posts and I'm concerned for you. Yes, there is definitely an undertone of anger to most of your posts. And, of course you are angry. However, continuing to be in the state of mind you are in is only going to make things worse. You need to get help. You may need some separation from your wife. She's got issues and that's not your fault. You can't fix her. But, you can fix yourself. Please, please get help.

I'm doing MC and IC and 12 step.... i am seeking out support and help for myself

maybe i do need a break from her

I was going to go the opposite direction on this ... given that your anger was such a big issue and her infidelity was such a big issue. I think you're both even and you can stop holding it over her. You guys are at least equally at fault for the state of your marriage. You're not responsible for her affair and she's not responsible for your anger ... but they were both very destructive to your relationship. Call a truce, draw a line in the sand, and decide that from this point on you're both going to work on your own stuff to get to a healthier point.

Please think long and hard before taking a break from your marriage. Whatever problems are there won't go away. The only change is that you'll be stewing over what she's doing and won't get to see your kids as often.

I agree with Lisa, just because she didn't get anger from these guys… It's like when men say: well I didn't get nagging from these women, they never said no to sex , I didn't have to think about the bills isnd the house I did have to think about anything. nobody complained they had to pick up my clothes off the floor nobody complaining about the chores I never do.
It's like talking to people online… You could be anybody anybody you want I could be a fighter pilot living in Iraq nobody would know. I should be 6 foot tall blonde hair blue eyes size to supermodel… nobody knows. No IRL you do know what the person looks like but you could be anyone you want to be. Single, no children and then you wake up in your own bed. You again.
What went wrong, instead of knowing how to fix the problem you got angry and she got affection from others.

I am the first one to say, We didn't do this alone! Our 2nd MC was great.. No bullshit, and marriage builders helped a lot!

The only reason I suggested a break is that your anger seems to be getting worse, not better. You're spiraling down right now for no apparent reason (other than a year of trying to fix things without any feeling of closure). After a while, some of us have to realize that you're just torturing yourself if you aren't able to start to forgive and forget. It seems to me that you are desperately seeking closure to this, but you are unable to unless you can rationalize the "why's" of this. You wound like a very "rational" person who likes to fully understand the logic in everything. However, there is no logic to an affair. It's completely the opposite.

If you overanalyze the affair, you're just torturing yourself. After a year of recovery, you need to accept that it happened and move on. No, you aren't going to be completely over it after a year. It's 4 years for me and I'm still grieving the loss of marriage as I knew it. However, after a year, I realized that I had to start some level of forgiveness or I was going to continue to torture myself.

inhappyagain brings up a great point. Do you think we have to reach the acceptance phase of grieving before we begin the process of forgiveness?

i think for me, lately.... i feel stuck.... i feel like.... stay and commit to work on the marriage and push past the pain....or divorce....which is the last thing i want to do as we have two young children , and i my parents divorced when i was 3...and i made a promise to myself that if i ever had children, they would not be raised as i was.

but i feel stuck...i feel with out any choice...i feel the only sensible thing to do is divorce...implode the family.. let my wife fester in the fall out of her choices

she said to me, that she' can no longer be the one i talk to when i am triggering about the affair
and I've told her, I'm no longer the one who can support her in her constant state of unhappiness and stress

i get angry with myself when I'm the nice guy...i think...why should i be the one to make an effort. I'm not the one who wiped their a$$ w our marriage vows....

she has done a lot of work
so have i

she says she is a different person now...she accepts it was her choices that got us where we are now but wants to work on making our marriage better

me.... i just don't know anymore

sometimes, i think i just want my pound of flesh....

sometimes i think, i am not every going to be able to move on , as long as she is around me every day

sometimes, i want to hold her so tight and tell her how much i love her
sometimes i want her to hold me and let me cry in her arms and have her tell me how much she loves me
sometimes i want to just file the papers and cut my loses and never have to deal with her again aside from figuring out how to split custody
sometimes i think it would be easier to get over if she had died in a car accident or of a terminal disease

this is just the hardest thing i have ever had to try to make it thru

Just be careful about using divorce as a way to get your pound of flesh ... its likely to end up hurting you more than her. I really don't know what the answer is in your situation, but I hope you find peace with whatever you decide.

"she said to me, that she' can no longer be the one i talk to when i am triggering about the affair
and I've told her, I'm no longer the one who can support her in her constant state of unhappiness and stress" --I like where you are going with this thought.

You can't fix her and she can't fix you. I hope she, too, is going to IC. Sounds like it's going to be tough for you to move past the triggers when she's still acting "off" and you have to worry if her mood of the day is the predecessor of another affair. I dealt with the same thing. Any time my H would come home and would act a little off, my mind immediately started racing. Than, I would start accusing him and we would fight...etc. etc.