u/why-why-why-2027

I'm trying to be supportive of my wife as she suffers with perimenopause symptoms. We are 3 years in and she is just outright emotionally abusive at times. She's on HRT which absolutely helps, so the rage and demands of isolation are reduced, but when she slips into pm mode now it's absolutely abusive. The hate and vileness is unbearable. I'm in therapy. She is not. Our daughter is 19 and has two years of school left. It's affecting her career, our marriage, my career, our whole household is beholden to her moods. I'm contemplating telling her off, to behave, to go hard; but I do not feel like I can do that. At what point do I call this and go find peace? It's my home and my family, but this is fricken painful misery. How long can this go on for???????

I've been with my wife for 33 years, married for 28. We met in college. A friend told me she cheated on me when she was still in school and I'd graduated and moved away for work. Early in our long-distance relationship and not crazy, but still sucked. When she graduated I was able to move back and we both worked near school, maintaining many friendships from school. We married a few years later and bought a house.

Over the years we traveled, explored and had a good time, including years of swinging, and she even had a girlfriend for a few years - who we both liked a lot. Our rule was always to keep it in the open, no secrets. It worked for us. For a while.

She had a hard time at a start-up during the tech bubble burst and ended up having a nervous breakdown, around 2004. Over this time period her sex drive and interactions with me charged. She just sort of stopped participating in everything, all our hobbies. She was not the same in many ways. Once she got her money out of the start-up, she bailed on her career and demanded to move "home". We were not doing great and had a number of arguments over the winter months. In the Spring of '05 we had a big 5-week trip to Asia for a wedding. It was a great trip, but fell right before she set a move date ultimatum, "with or without me". I gave up and turned in my notice and started looking for work near her parents. We sold our house and I moved away from everything for her.

Our time there was up and down. She turned 30 and hormones kicked in, for the first time she demanded a child. I said no for a number of years. She went back to school and landed a great job in a new field - career #2.

A few years after we moved, her sister gets pregnant and that's all it took. My wife said baby or divorce. So, we have a kid, who is unique and fabulous, and at 19 is one of my strongest pillars of support. I thank the heavens I have her around.

My wife's new career took off and she became a rockstar in her field. She literally worked for the best of the best and became world ranked. However, the best of the best was in a different city which meant monthly business trips.

To climb higher required more school and that caused us to return to our college area. Thankfully! I loved moving back and our relationship got better. We reconnected with friends from school and settled on a great street with other families. Old hobbies came back into our lives; biking, scuba, motorcycles... Many things we were able to share with our kid.

For a time we found a couple to swing with again who were really fun. Things felt like old times again! We were in love and loving living.

Being in school and in a new area for her work, she picked up new clients, one of whom was very flirtatious, and open about his life. We found out that he and his wife liked some of the same clubs we liked and we went to dinner and dancing with them a few times. One day I got home from work and my wife asked if she could fool around with this client - it would be his first woman outside of his marriage and his wife approved (she had girlfriends). I approved. Not too unusual for our lifestyle, but sort of risky involving work and play. Over the next few months it went from flirting, to sexting, picture sharing, and then I found out she was buying lingerie for their hookups and sending him pictures I wasn't seeing... Outside of our rules. I know ... Really, at this point you have rules? But yeah, no-secrets was a huge deal to me for this to work in any way. I told her she needed to be transparent or it stops, and the whole thing fell apart. Not too messy but it did end the second romance we had been enjoying.

One thing that I never liked but didn't stop was an email correspondence my wife had with a guy in California that carried on from early in our marriage. She actually met him once, that I know of, on one of her business trips. I don't think anything happened between them because of who he was - not her type - just someone she could talk to - apparently about things I wasn't supposed to know. Mr. California.

A few months after the client breakup she asked me to look up something on her phone, it was just such an innocent nothing - like "what time is the show tomorrow night?" - and the subject line of the first email - from Mr. Cali - dropped the bottom of my stomach out. Its doing it again as I write this:

Subject: LA Hotel Room

I knew I didn't want to know, but I tapped the email anyway. It's been a while but the gist was basically, "I need to hear more about the night in the LA hotel room with the two cousins! I need to hear more details! Did you get DP'd? What happened!" I closed the email. Reset it to unread and found the info I was sent to collect. Then I reread it. Then reset it to unread again. I died inside. You have to realize, she hadn't been traveling to LA for years! This had happened at least 3 maybe even 4 years ago. I also flashed back to this time in my memory. Did I know? Were there signs? Yup. Like the sexy photo she sent me from a hotel room of her with a wine bottle and the story to go with it. The times she got back from some trips and was more physical. Now I start to question everything!

At some point after not sleeping for a few days she asked me what was wrong and I told her what I knew and demanded to know what I didn't know. It took a few hours but eventually she started telling me things.

Yes, picked up a guy in her LA hotel, and he called his cousin and she had sex with both of them - refused to tell any details, so imagination goes wild.

Then, back when she was at the start-up in 2003-2005 she was hooking up with a married guy we both knew. She admitted to twice, but I didn't trust her any more so who knows.

Then, the guy she cheated on me with in college - they were actually living together for about 7 weeks, it wasn't a party hookup

Then, the client. She had been giving and receiving oral at his office for weeks before speaking to me about it.

At this point I was realizing she had been lying to me for our entire time together - and for what reason? Even if she'd talked to me about any of this it would have been possible anyway! She did it just to have secrets! Now that I knew this, evening fell apart. I ended up having some serious health issues due to the stress and insomnia this caused. This was in 2015. Our kid was 9.

So here I am. 11 years later. Still with her, because the reality of finding out years, even decades later just makes separating at that point seem - I didn't know - silly? She was a year from graduation. Our kid was 9. If I left or kicked her out all our lives would be worse, and for something that happened so fricken long ago? I figured I could leave her after graduation but that never happens.

What really pissed me off, if she had told me in 2005 about the lies, I never would have moved for her. We wouldn't have a kid. I wouldn't have had to leave my job. My life would be so different. She took that alternate life from me.

Why am I still here? She's absolutely an amazing person to spend time with. Being on an adventure with her is magic. She's the mother of my kid. When we click, sex is out of this world - even in our 50s. And I share my entire adult life with her - but she doesn't share all of hers with me, apparently.

But the emotional memories are really hard to live with some days. That's what I came here to write. The emotional memories, and the stupid thoughts I have about what I still don't know crush me some nights. Mr. California's questions ring in my head. "Did you get DP'd? What happened?" I don't think she'll ever tell either of us. I'll never know how badly she treated me and never trust she isn't doing it now, or going to do it on her upcoming trip to visit her sister.

It's not right.