Hi all, looking for some help, advice and guidance on my current predicament, I'll try and keep it as short as I can so if you make it to the end, I would appreciate anything you'd like to say.
So I have been in a relationship with my wife for over 10 years, we married nearly 4 years ago and we have 2 beautiful daughters together. Things have been hard these last few years and our relationship has suffered as a consequence. We have both been getting stressed with raising the girls, health, finances and family relations so we have been growing apart and have been arguing more and more. We don't seem to be working as a team anymore and I think we've lost sight of who we used to be, in many ways we haven't felt like man and wife but roommates. The relations we have with each other's in laws has always been strained and this is where recent developments started.
I work from home a lot and do shift work so 1 week in 4 I work lates and 1 night after I'd finished work late, I'd gone upstairs to see my wife and hang out a little before we went to bed. Her phone was on the side and flashed so I picked it up and handed it to her but when I did this I noticed a message from her mum (60s) saying "he's controlling everything". This really aggravated me and when I questioned my wife about what she meant, she gave me no solid answer and mentioned my shift work which I knew was false. From seeing this message I knew that they had been talking about me and criticising me, I already hear this when I'm working from home when my MIL is over at the house. Weeks go by and nothing is said, I've been thinking about it none stop and couldn't see why I was being attacked so much. To give a bit of perspective, after our first daughter was born, my wife really struggled with her health, having to cope with a baby and the constant crying, she had a big falling out with my family so relations really deteriorated at this point. I was working away so couldn't help her in the day until I got home and at this point she'd had enough and she was really stressed. With the birth of our second daughter, I was keen for things to be different, I wanted to help out as much as I could so that the burden mothers have with newborns would be lessened and it would be easier on her. I got a new job working from home, I told my wife to sleep in the spare room and rest for 6 months and I'd have the baby in the room with me so I did all the nighttime feeds until she went into her own room. I would take and pickup our eldest to nursery, I would get baby up in the morning, get her ready, give her a bottle, help out in the daytime, do other chores around the house like washing clothes doing the dishes etc. All of this whilst I was supposed to be working and I would end up doing less than half the work that was expected of me just so I could help as much as I could. Whenever I am off work, I'm always the one who gets the girls up, dressed, fed etc so I haven't had 1 lie in whilst my wife has them regularly. And up until recently I have been the one to get them in bed too. I was constantly running around either doing my actual work or helping out with baby. So upon hearing my MIL bitch and moan about me, it really pissed me off and I needed to know what was being said so I could put the record straight.
So one morning when my wife had left her phone open, I went onto her messages and exported them to my phone, covering it up so she didn't know I'd done that. This is something I'm ashamed of and it's something I would never do, but I felt the need to retaliate as this is something my wife does. She has done it on many occasions in the past, gone onto my phone without me knowing and taken screenshots which she has then sent on to other people. What I found in the messages with my MIL just confirmed everything I had suspected but one thing I didn't expect was the vitriol and abuse that my family were getting and how I was being blamed for so much in our relationship. After a couple of weeks, stewing things over, I knew I had to set the record straight with my MIL and tell her how much I was doing for the girls, for my wife, for our household and I told her how all of these stresses have led to me going to mental health discussions as the stresses of everyday life were getting too much. I told her the truth with a lot of things so I'm hoping that she may have seen the light and that situation may have been resolved.
But when I had gone on my wife's phone, I had seen recent messages from her best friend who I have had fallings out with in the past, so when the next opportunity came about, I went onto my wife's phone and exported that chat too. I read through messages when we first started dating and it was lovely to read, she expressed how much she liked me and how different and kind I was compared to all the other men she had been with. Until I saw a message from my wife, saying that she had had sex with someone else after a works party. At this point we had been dating around 6 weeks and had been gf & bf for a month, we had had sex quite regularly and the sex was great, everything between us was great. After reading through these messages we went out with the kids and my wife could tell something was up with me so I told her that I'd seen the messages. She was shocked I'd found out and she said she never wanted to tell me as she was ashamed of it, she was a different person back then and that she stopped it when she realised what was happening. She ended up having unprotected sex in a park that lasted for about a minute as confirmed with what was in the messages and she expressed instant regret, she stopped it as she felt guilty.
Through the past week we've been talking about it, I've been able to say how it's hurt me so much, how betrayed I feel and I've come to the realisation that I'm falling into a depression. I came to this conclusion when I was walking home from the office and "I'M NOT OK" was going on repeat in my head. On top of everything that's been building up and the stresses I've been under, this news has truly sucker punched me and I can't remember how long it's been since I felt this low. I've been crying randomly, something I hardly ever do, whenever I have a moment to myself, I can't help but think about it and I can't stop picturing it in my head. In a strange way all I've wanted to do is hug and embrace my wife even though I'm so angry and upset with her. To give a bit of context my wife was struggling at the time with a depression of her own and she was on anti depressants which I know can mess with people's minds and their decisions and she was also drunk.
How do I move on from this? I know it's 10 years ago and we've been through so much together since then, we weren't in love at the time but we were infatuated with each other and spent loads of time together. I feel like it's tainted my memories of a truly magical time for me. My trust of my wife has been eroded and I'm getting paranoid that there are other things I don't know about. She has reassured me that it's never happened again, I think I believe her but it's still very raw for me, it's like it happened yesterday whereas for her she's had 10 years to deal with it. I also feel that this is something that she has over me, don't know if this is right but my thoughts and feelings are all over the place. I want to forgive her but I can't ever forget the hurt this has caused and I've told her this much. I've always been faithful to her and have never even considered being with someone else.
If you've got to the end of this, thank you for reading and I'd be really appreciative if anyone has any advice or kind words.