She told me three days ago. I am broken inside.
She is a stay at home Mom that babysits sometimes for extra money. I work 40 hours a week at a dead end job. I make enough to provide us with a decent place to live, get the best for my daughter, and basically buy whatever my wife and I want, within reason.
The current story is that she reconnected with him 2 months ago. They saw each other a few times and had been talking over Facebook. She sent her nudes for attention. She met up with him outside the house and kissed him. Then one week ago she went to his house and had sex with him. She said she cried after because she felt guilty when she did these things.
Her justification for this was essentially multiple delusions that I hated her and was doing the same thing. She confronted me with her "proof" I was cheating and I refuted them. She then brought up all these reasons she felt like I "hated" her and I explained why they were untrue and she started crying. She said she couldn't feel like she could talk to me about them because a year and a half ago I had a violent outburst and punched a door and that had broken her and made her feel unsafe.
She was puking and sick with anxiety for about 6 hours before she finally told me. First it was just that she emotionally connected with him and meeting up with him when she would go out for "walks" (I had been encouraging her to be independent, see her friends, get her license, etc). She promised it was just the emotional connection. Then she admitted after about an hour of me asking questions that she kissed him too. She promised the kiss was as far as it went. After about another hour of talking we had agreed to stay married for our daughters sake. We both come from broken homes and just want her life to be better. But she was still sick with anxiety and I could tell something else was wrong.
The next day we are in bed watching something trying to move past this and she gets up and sits across from me and starts crying again. She tells me that she had sex with him too. I knew it already, the way she looked at me since the first conversation. She admitted to sending her nudes for attention but that they didn't sext each other (I could tell this part is a lie but wasn't worth focusing on anymore). She admitted to thinking about him while we were having sex sometimes.
Last Sunday, she waited until I went to bed for work (I work nights), had her mom pick up our daughter, then went to his house. The watched something and they had sex. She said she didn't enjoy it but I know her. It wouldn't have been possible if she wasn't into it, without going into too much detail. She let him finish inside her. She said she cried after.
She sobbed uncontrollably the entire time she was telling me. She apologized again and again for cheating on me, knowing that I have been cheated on multiple times in the past. When we got together I warned her that any infidelity meant I would disappear and she would never speak to me again. She took full responsibility for everything (finally) and said she would do anything to stay with me. That I didn't do anything to cause this and it was her not communicating with me that made this happen.
Here's where things get more gray: I have been emotionally distant my entire life because of my childhood. I punched a door right in front of her and our daughter. I have been more absent mentally lately because of shit going on at work. Even when I am present I don't really talk much. I distract from everything with video games when I have free time. I haven't been doing the "little things" that hold a relationship together. I thought this whole time our relationship was becoming even closer because our sex life had dramatically improved over the last 6 months. It was 2-3 times a week instead of once a month, we were trying new things and she was consistently getting off, like it used to be before our daughter. But she admitted this was just her trying to put in the extra work to connect with me.
Everything in my heart is telling me to leave her. But I can't raise my daughter without her. My daughter loves both of us too much. She is devasted when my wife even leaves the house for an hour or two. First thing she does when she wakes up is check for my car in the driveway, then run out to cuddle with me. I can't break up our family for her sake. I don't even feel angry at my wife. I just feel broken, backstabbed, and dead inside. She did this, but the person that I am caused her to feel so unloved that she went to another man. I can't eat, and I can't sleep.
She knows how bad she fucked up, and it broke her when I explained that this guy just paid attention to her and pretended to connect so he could have sex with her. That she could now have a permanent STD. When she finally admitted everything she took fault and was genuinely remorseful. She thought about me and our daughter instead of herself. She promised that she wanted to be with me and that she only wanted her family. That this would never happen again.
tl;dr Wife cheated because I am emotionally unavailable, but regrets it and wants to stay together. I want to stay together for our daughter's sake.
The advice I need:
How can I learn to trust her again when trust is the foundation of a relationship? I gave her all the freedom to do anything she wanted and she used it to betray me.
How can I connect with her again without it being performative and thinking about it every time?
How can we ever be intimate again knowing she fantasized about him then let him cum inside her?
And the most important: How do I move past this without letting it impact my daughter's life?
I just want my family.