Alcohol addiction & escape affair
TW: Substance abuse, childhood trauma, sex acts (relevant for context)
This is my (41M) first post, so be gentle. I want advice but I'm worried people will judge her (39F) too quickly. Please consider all the context first. I also don't know how to write this as in what style I should write it? Some of this deserves narration but at the same time I know this post will probably be too long.
I met my wife while we were working temporary jobs at a factory together. At the time, I had just got my first apartment that I rented with my brother. My brother and I came to the city for work and were homeless at first. Even though I had nothing but a room in an apartment I shared with my brother, my wife agreed to date me. For the next 11 years she stayed by my side while I struggled to build a life for us. I went back to finish highschool, then to college, then started (late) my career in programming. I went from low-class/poverty to comfortably upper middle-class where I make 6 figures and have an incredible benefits, retirement and insurance packages. Along the way, we had 2 kids. She stayed at home to raise them and turned the humble places I could rent for us into warm homes. She was amazing at it. She genuinely loves to cook and she took pride in what she did around the houses. She was an amazing mother and a wife I would brag to my friends about. Over time, things got easier and easier... As kids get older they need you less and as I made more and more money, the stress of every-day life just kind of stopped. It was replaced with vacations, camping, hiking & stuff like that.
She was always a drinker (alcohol) and I was a smoker (marijuana; it's legal in our country). I drank too, but it was my secondary substance. In the last 3 years of our marriage (Beginning 2023), her drinking escalated uncontrollably. As best I can recall, it escalated rapidly & dramatically after her car accident (She was involved in a single-vehicle accident on the highway. I have the dashcam video and it looks like she passed out, 'cause she drifted from the middle lane all the way off the highway and hit a barrier). After the accident she quickly escalated to drinking an entire 750ml bottle of whiskey every day. I drank too and didn't connect the dots, but in retrospect I can see now that the more she was consumed by alcoholism the more she disconnected from me. It was progressive over the course of 3 years, until she had a seizure in Oct 2025 after not drinking for 3 days. After that seizure she changed toward me completely. She was no longer passive aggressive and withdrawing, she had completely given up on me and checked out of the marriage. She felt cold and was quick to anger.
The coldness, disconnect and short temper got worse and worse over time. At first it would only appear when she was heavily intoxicated. For example in 2023 she somehow found my estranged oldest brother. He's estranged from me because he molested me as a child. I told her this and I told her I wasn't comfortable meeting with him. She spent about 2 days convincing me to "give it a chance" & "seek closure" or something. At the time it was annoying but I figured she just didn't understand. I agreed and we spent the night at my brother and his wife's house. We drank all night long in the backyard (My wife put back at least 22 beers). As morning was rolling around, my wife's body language was unmistakable to me.. Picture a table surrounded by chairs in a backyard patio, on one side is my brother in a chair and my wife kneeling beside him. I'm across from them alone in a chair shivering because I gave her my sweater. She then put her arm around him and snuggled into his side, saying "omg he's so warm". This turned into her rubbing his back with her right hand and with her left, she stroked his beard while looking at me and said "Why don't you do your beard like this?" She then looked at him (while still stroking his beard) and said "This looks so much better. I hate his beard". She then looked at me right in the eyes and said "I hate your beard". I italicized it 'cause she put so much sass and anger behind the word hate. I was shocked. This kind of inappropriate behavior continued for a little while until I confronted her and him about it. She went into the house and passed out in the guest room. I stayed out back with my brother and made it clear where we stand. I told him I'm not going to make a scene infront of his wife at their home, but he's dead to me and I'm leaving in the morning (I literally drank all night and we're ~6 hours away from home so there was no way I could leave). I went and laid next to her and tried to sleep but couldn't. She woke up the next morning claiming to not remember anything. To this day she claims she doesn't remember this, but it's burned into my mind. I should have left her or given her an ultimatum. Like wtf, that's crazy what she did right? I still can't wrap my head around the fact that she seems to have pre-planned it, like she wanted to flirt with my childhood abuser inront of me while making fun of my beard (she knew I'm subconscious about it as I have self-esteem issues.
Over time, her coldness toward me and short temper kept spreading through-out the day and then eventually even in the morning she was like that with me. Looking back I can see now that during the last 2 years she was never sober. She'd drink until passing out and then wake up to finish the beer she was drinking when she passed out. I really blame myself for not seeing how deep she was spiraling and not doing something to try and help. I was thinking about it and treating it like a marriage problem. I increased frequency and quality of our random date nights. Started to try and get her to watch movies and cuddle with me like we used to.. To go for drives together in my truck like we used to. These efforts lasted about 1 year (2024-2025 overlap). The disconnect never stopped or even slowed down.. Our movie nights turned into her sitting in a single-seat recliner and me on the couch by myself; her face in her phone for the entire movie. When we went for our drives, she'd be in the passenger seat with her face in her phone. I tried to reach her, but we're both terrible at communicating (We're both shy introverts with avoidant attachment styles).
I think 2024 is the most important year in my failed marriage. A series of traumatic events, perimenopause, her avoidant attachment style and the cliche "empty nester"/"bored housewife" all mixed together with alcoholism to create a monster.
I was suffering from severe depression after my cancer diagnoses in 2024. I kept motivating myself through the chemo, surgeries and surgery recoveries that "normal" was at the end of the road. When I got my final surgery done (No more medical devices or restrictions, I was "back to normal") I would break down crying when I seen myself in the mirror. I never got the normal they promised me. I already had self-esteem issues and now my stomach's disfigured and full of scars. My energy levels had plummeted and I had gotten completely out of shape. I started eating healthier and exercising but primarily I withdrew to my office (I work from home). I wasn't strong enough to deal with my own issues and still be able to see she was struggling too. In my mind, keeping my cool (not freaking out) and focusing on work made sense to me. I figured with time we would heal and be normal again. I normally worked 9-5 in my home office (in the basement), but the more depressed and defeated I felt the later I worked. I'd frequently work until 8pm. After coming upstairs from my office at 8pm I'd find my wife heavily intoxicated and it was always tense; I had to walk on eggshells around her, but I still tried for awhile.
March 1st 2026 lives rent free in my head. On Friday February 27th she came down to my office at ~3pm in a dress, with makeup on, fake nails and her hair done up. For context: This is wildly out of the ordinary for her. It's a look that for 21 years has been reserved for me and nights out with me. It's how she dressed to go to a wedding. I said she looked beautiful and asked what the occasion was. She said that she wants to dress up more in order to feel better about herself and get more self-esteem. I hugged her, told her I she's beautiful and encouraged her to do whatever she needed to feel as good as she looks to me. I didn't think much of it, except the next morning rolled around. For conext: Saturdays are TaeKwonDo days where she takes our youngest to TaeKwonDo. He's a student and a new instructor, so he's there for 3 hours at a time. Saturday morning my wife got up early, showered, got her hair, nails and makeup done and put that same dress on... To take our son to TaeKwonDo. I still trusted her and so although it felt like it's right on the border of inappropriate, I was ok with it. She'll go and get attention and maybe feel better about herself; it seemed harmless. Then on March 1st, while I was making my lunch in the kitchen she comes up behind me and just started into a sentence (Like she had been kicking it around her mind for days and finally just blurted it out).. "[Our oldest son] is going to drive me and [our youngest son] to [a city 4 hours away] for the weekend, for a taekwondo seminar". I was so caught off guard at so much of this.. I immediately asked why she didn't mention the seminar or why I wasn't going to take them? She said "Oh I didn't want to bother you, I figured after a long week of work you just wanted to relax" - That was such a rehersed response, it was worded and sounded wildly out of character for her. I immediately connected the dots (I'm slow, I know..). She's dressing up for someone specific at TaeKwonDo and now she wants to spend a weekend in a hotel without me with those same TaeKwonDo people. I laid out everything that I thought right there in the kitchen.. "You're dressing up to get attention from another man at TaeKwon and I want you to talk to me about it". She denied it. I said "Please, would you just talk to me" and then I started to tear up and literally begged her. "Please [wife], don't do this. Talk to me. Open up man, we can work through this". She said "we do talk, there's nothing to work through. What exactly do you think I'm doing?". Then I started to doubt myself. At least for a little while. Later that night I started a text-based discussion with her about it. That spent the same way.. Me laying out the obvious pattern I'm seeing and her denying everything. I call this the March "makeup argument" and this was it, folks.. This was my chance and I blew it. She hadn't fully connected with him yet but she was about it. It already crossed lines but not too many for me to work through, you know? I hate myself for not having a spine and giving her an ultimatum right then and there. I didn't have the spine, though.. Re-reading that text-based argument I can't believe that I let it end the way it did.
May 13th 2026 after carrying her to bed (This was a frequent occurrence at this point, where I'd find her passed out in the living room and have to clean her up and carry her to bed), I felt compelled to search her phone and discovered an affair going back to December 2025. On the phone I found her sexting & exchanging pictures with a man (man #2) and I also found her sexting, exchanging pictures and discussing physical meetups in the past and planned in the future with man #1. I found her reaching out to man #3 but he was ghosting her (lol). This is all in the span of December -> May. I was up all night pulling data off her phone and thinking about how I was going to confront her. (Pro tip: Do NOT immediately confront them. This was a huge mistake that I deeply regret. Get your situation and yourself ready first before letting them know you know. Get all the evidence you can and make backups!). I let her sleep in until 1pm and then woke her up, told her that there's coffee downstairs for her. I let her drink her coffee, smoke cigs and chat on her phone until about 2pm. I told her we needed to talk and I went to check to see if the kids were in the house. Since they were, I told her I'd like to go talk in the truck. That's where I asked her "Do you know why we're sitting in the truck right now and I want to talk?". She said "No". I then asked "So there's nothing at all you think you need to tell me?". Again she says no. So I then told her about putting her to bed last night and that I looked in her phone. I asked again after that if she wanted to talk. Still nothing. So I told her I read her chat log with man #2 and wanted to talk about it. She reluctantly admitted that she had been flirting with him, but it didn't mean anything. I asked if there was anything else and she said no. I then told her I also read her chat log with man #1. She then admitted that she was flirting with him, too. I asked if it had gone past flirting and she said no. I asked how long it was going on and she said 1 month. I then told her how much of the chat I read and that I knew they had physically hooked up at least once. She got quiet, defensive and sarcastically asked "are you going to sit and dig through my phone all morning?". I agreed that "Well if you're not going to talk to me, I guess there's no point. Get out of my truck". She got out, walked through our house to the backyard and sat on her phone for the entire time I packed my stuff into the truck and left. Before I confronted her, I confronted man #1. I told him I knew, said he had no honor or integrity and then asked him if he could take her in as I'm kicking her out. He said he would not take her in (I guess she was just a f-buddy to him). I found his wife and sent her all of his text exchanges he had with my wife (Well, all of the ones I had at the time. Quite unfortunate, really. I've since added her to facebook lol).
I separated from her and left the city for a couple days. I think after 2 days I came to the realization that I shouldn't have left my house (I didn't do anything wrong, why the hell am I in a trailer while she's at home). I convinced her to go stay at her mom's and I'd come home to think. She responded with "Like a separation? Would you want to try that?". I replied with "If you mean sleeping with other people, no. I need time to think and process everything". This isn't important but it lives rent free: "I don't want this to come off the wrong way, but if we try to work on things I want to still be able to dress up and go out with friends and have a social life". She was still drunk and was merely inconvenienced by my discovery. As time went on, she slowly revealed more and more of the details I thought already knew. I learned the term "trickle truth" here and that's what she did to me. She would deny things, downplay them and spin them around on me.. Until I showed evidence that I knew and then she'd admit to only what I could already prove. This is where my pro-tip comes in.. Never confront them early. It was probably the 2nd biggest mistake of my life (The 1st being March 1st lol). She spent the better part of a week deleting evidence from her phone that I hadn't managed to get (I didn't understand how Facebook Messenger worked at the time).
Here's where things take a dramatic turn; where all my confusion and paralysis comes from. After spending a couple weeks living at her moms, she went to detox. After 6 days in detox and 4 days sober (With multiple AA meetings per day) she came out as a completely different person. She was the woman I fell in love with 21 years prior. She seemed to have no anger or resentment for me anymore and was incredibly affectionate towards me. For the past ~3 months we've talked a lot every single day. She has answered/answers every question I have (Even the unhealthy questions I had regarding the physical affair) with full honesty and no BS. She wrote out a full timeline that spans from November 2025 to when I discovered her affair. She has given me full access to her phone and all her accounts. She is still sober and still going to AA every day (She'll be getting her 3 month chip soon). She's going to individual therapy to understand why she escaped into an affair like she did. She can describe what she felt, but she can't explain why she felt it. During these open talks, I discovered she had wrecked her memory. After some research I learned about "alcohol-induced dementia" and "alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD)". Over the 3 years of extreme drinking she was losing memories of us. She was replacing them with the lies she was constantly telling about me.
We went from talking every day -> Daily hookups -> Dating -> Her moving back into the house with me. I just keep going through the motions. I can enjoy moments with her (We've always been each other's favorite company). Our communication is amazing (In that it actually exists now lol. We never really communicated before) and our sex life is incredible. She showers me with daily affection, attention and intimacy she starved me of for so long.
I try to stay busy with work, exercising, trying to rebuild the relationship with my youngest and enjoying time with my oldest.. I'm eating a lot of marijuana edibles every day and I'm drinking a lot more now, too. I feel like I'm living some kind of weird ass dream (Nothing feels real. It's sometimes hard to separate reality from dream-like state). Every day is different, but what is consistent is that I'm up late at night (Usually around 2:30 - 5:00am) unable to sleep and unable to control my thoughts. I wake up angry, sad, frustrated and defeated. It's hard to get out of bed most mornings lol but yeah I don't know. Part of me thinks I owe it to her to help her get healthy and better. Another part of me thinks she doesn't deserve me and that I'm killing myself doing this. Or maybe this is just what "reconciliation" is like?
It's not even the sexual part of the affair that haunts me. I mean, of course the thoughts about sex intrude. I was giving her a back massage and couldn't stop thinking about him touching her in the same way. I can't stop re-reading their messages and looking at his pictures. I compare myself to him and even though I am in better shape and my penis is larger, it somehow hurts even more. If I could find a tangible shortcoming I think it would make more sense, but none of this makes sense to me. It's knowing that for at least a year she happily lived with me, looked me in the eyes and told me she loved me. Laid in bed beside me and cuddled into my chest.. All while being totally disconnected from me and chasing other men. Humiliating me to all her friends and family behind my back. Withholding sex from me, knowing my sex drive is very high. The way she would pretend to be fine and happy with me, but once we were in the company of other men she would start to criticize me. I was always the butt of her jokes. Knowing she didn't just leave me in 2023 and instead led me on, manipulated me, used me and tormented me for 3 years while having extra-marital affair(s) behind my back. She split up the family unit, alienating my son and me from each other. She has likely forever changed our son's perspective of her and their perspectives on relationships in general. As sad as it is to say, they've both broken up with their girlfriends. I can't help but wonder if watching what happened to me influenced them.