AITA for confronting my wife about a past affair she denies, blaming it on my cancer-induced “false memories”?
Throwaway for obvious reasons. I’m (M45) and my wife (F43) have been married for 15 years. We have two amazing kids (twins, now 7) who came from IVF embryos we created back in 2016. This is a long story, but I’ll try to keep it concise. Back in 2016, we attended my best friend’s wedding. It was a big celebration with heavy drinking all around. My wife and I got back to our hotel room (where the whole wedding party was staying) and passed out. I woke up in the middle of the night to noises and saw my wife having spicy sleep with one of my closest friends right there in the room. I froze—I couldn’t believe it. We were in a good place in our marriage at the time, or so I thought. I didn’t say anything or cause a scene because I didn’t want to ruin the wedding weekend for everyone. Plus, we were in the middle of IVF treatments and had embryos ready to go. I saw those as potential lives and our future family, so I buried it deep and decided not to divorce or confront her right away. I just pretended it never happened to keep things together for the kids we hoped to have. We went on to have our twins successfully, and life moved forward. I never brought it up, and as far as I know, she hasn’t cheated since. But in 2020, I was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. The prognosis was grim, but my wife was incredible—she stuck by me through chemo, a stem cell transplant, and all the hell that came with it. The treatments messed with my memory big time; a lot of things got wiped out or fuzzy. Fast-forward to now (2025), I’m in recovery and doing better than expected. As my health improves, memories are flooding back like they just happened yesterday. One of them is that night in 2016. It’s vivid, it’s painful, and it’s eating me alive. I finally confronted my wife about it because I can’t look at her the same way anymore. She flat-out denies it ever happened and says the cancer must have planted false images in my head during the memory loss phase. She insists I’m confusing dreams or side effects with reality. Our kids are here and thriving, and I do think staying together back then was the right call for their sake. But now? This betrayal feels fresh, and her denial makes it worse—like she’s gaslighting me. I don’t know if I can move past it or if I even want to. I’ve been distant and short with her since the confrontation, and she’s upset, saying I’m ruining our family over something that “never happened.” AITA for bringing this up now and believing my memory over her word? Or should I just let it go again for the kids? I feel like I’m going crazy.
Update:
Thank you all for the kind words. I’ll do my best to address all the comments.
My sons are mine. Since our sons embryos we made in a third party facility, both my wife and I we DNA tested and we are both their biological parents. The hospital had some cases in the past where the wrong embryos were transferred to people and lawsuits were filed. They wanted to eliminate any possibility of that happening again and made us both get tested.
I have been in contact with my mental health professional at the VA. I am getting additional help with this along with getting help from my service in Iraq. That’s made the hallucinations I think. (That’s probably how I got cancer in the first place)
The friend in question hasn’t responded to my texts or my calls. I think my wife might have reached out to him to give him a heads up but I’m not sure. I’ll check the call logs when I get my cell phone bill.
Again. Thank you all for your kind words and support. I’m leaning towards it not being true.