I met my wife online in 2013, where we chatted back and forth every day for months getting to know each other. Just before the holiday season, she revealed to me that her roommate was actually her husband, and she was currently still married. That was hard to hear, and I felt like I had gotten punched in the gut. I was falling for this girl, and she was still married. We continued talking and she revealed that her husband was emotionally abusive and gaslighting her constantly, and she wanted out. I encouraged her to follow her heart, and she divorced him and moved back in with her mother in Tennessee. About 6 months later she decided to get her own apartment in Kentucky and moved up here.

She mostly stayed with me, and rarely at her own apartment. It was a fun relationship and we liked to go to shows and restaurants. I moved into her apartment, and later we would get engaged, buy a house, get married, and have two beautiful children. Our growing family and my improving career meant that we could afford a larger house, albeit slightly outside the city limits, which we purchased in 2021.

In 2018, I was having a bit of an existential crisis. I wasn't happy with myself. I had a family and successful career, but my weight was out of control and I had no hobbies to speak of. I was also rather introverted and only had a few friends I kept in touch with. So I bought a bike after my son was born and started training for a triathlon. 3 years later, I had lost 50lbs(22.6kg), qualified for USAT National Championships, Ironman 70.3 World Championship, and the Global Triathlon Final for Team USA. My wife approached me and told me she was feeling a similar identity crisis and that she was only a mother and nothing else. We argued because it seemed like she wanted me to stop, but ultimately she just wanted some time to herself where she could also exercise and meet new friends. Immediately, I adjusted my training schedule to ensure that she had whatever time she needed.

A few months later, the night before my first Ironman 70.3 event, during our nightly ritual where our son would come to our bed and want to sleep in it, I asked my wife to go and sleep in his bed with him so I could get some rest. I noticed she had left her phone, and my suspicions of her had grown lately such that she was spending all night out in the living room and hiding her phone screen around me. I discovered a long text thread with a guy named Scott where she had clearly been in an emotional affair with him, sending nudes and videos for several months. Our youngest daughter was only 9 months old when it had started.

I confronted her in the middle of the night and we argued and had a huge breach of trust. She had been having an affair for 4 months with this guy. She met him on some chat app and he lived across the country. With maybe 2 hours of sleep total, all night vomiting, and zero calories in my body, I completed my first Ironman event and eventually would earn a rolldown slot for World's. She and I agreed to go to marriage counseling.

Over the next 9 months, I would discover more nudes and more men that she was meeting and talking to on different apps. Last summer, we had agreed to divorce, even though I still loved her and wanted the marriage to work. One afternoon, she had a breakdown and told me that she didn't want the family to fall apart and she wanted to be evaluated by a psychologist and get her medicine changed. I pumped the brakes on the divorce proceedings and gave her my patience and another chance. She refused to go back to counseling.

Despite a somewhat strained relationship, we continued trying to rebuild things. We would hang out, go to restaurants, take care of the kids, have fairly regular sex, and do basic married couple things. Lurking underneath, there was still an element of distrust as I didn't know her new phone password and I knew she actively used Snapchat and Telegram. A few months ago, I asked her to recommit to me by writing new vows together. She said she wasn't in the headspace for that, and pressure to write them would simply turn her off of the concept. I told her I'd give her some time but that eventually it would expire.

About 10 days ago, I found her secret Reddit account (by guessing, actually) and confronted her about it. She had been posting nudes and flirting with dozens, if not hundreds of other men, for well over a year. Since only a few weeks after she had changed her medicine in 2022, even. She told me she kept asking her therapist why she wasn't happy, and that her feelings had changed. In a last ditch effort, I offered her a polyamorous marriage, which she inevitably declined after a day of consideration. So now we are in the process of waiting for each other's attorneys to start working out terms, while I remain in the house with her and the children due to abandonment clauses.

I was not a perfect husband, and I'm sure there are many things I could have done differently. I had a single photo sharing session with an ex-gf in 2018 when I was at my lowest point, and admitted that fact to her during our initial reconciliation. In my case, however, I had blocked this girl afterwards and had not had contact with her since. After my transgression, I felt so guilty that I wanted to die, and I had only wanted her and my own family in my life. Considering how often I was repeatedly cheated on in favor of random internet strangers though, I am having a hard time truly feeling like the end of this marriage was primarily because of my actions. It seems like she just changed, perhaps due to a loss of identity, Covid, and resentment towards me picking up a time consuming hobby. I suppose there were more red flags than I gave it credit for, and ending things may ultimately be for the best. Despite having to confront a lot of harsh truths with my therapist, I still grieve our relationship, as it lasted nearly 1/3rd of my life. I miss the person she used to be, and wish we could just go back and do things differently.

tl;dr: we both had identity crises and drifted in opposite directions, with her cheating on me repeatedly over a span of 2.5 years

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