I, 26 male, think my wife, 25 female, is or was cheating on me with her cousin.

All right, it’s a long one, so bear with me. This situation happened about two weeks ago, and I’ve gone from fully trusting her to deeply doubting her.

My wife and I met when I was 19, and we fell in love quite quickly. She had a four-month-old child from a previous relationship. That father hasn’t been in the picture since I’ve known her. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a father, but I have a genetic disorder I don’t wish to pass on, so adoption was just great with me.

Anyhow, we’ve been just like a normal family every day since then. We got married last year. She was never super close with her family, but she did have a pair of cousins she was always kind of close to, and I had lots of fun getting to know them. They seemed like these in people.

She did mention that one of them, Max, we’ll call him, had, when they were like 12 and 13, tried to kiss her, but she ran off. I asked her if she ever told anyone, and she said she chalked it up to him being a stupid kid.

We see him on Christmas every year, and he seems like a normal dude. I actually liked him, as her family has a bunch of stuffed shirts, and he’s down to earth. Recently, they’ve reconnected and gone to a few family functions. We own one car, and since I needed it for work, he picked her up and drove her to these things. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary about this. They are cousins, after all.

Her behavior really didn’t make any obvious changes. However, randomly, as I was watching TV one night, she came in and mentioned that I had friended a girl from my place of work. I accepted a friend request. We are a pretty open couple, and things don’t usually offend us. For instance, she’ll remark on an attractive guy and make some sort of lewd remark, and I think nothing of telling her this woman was new at the office.

She didn’t accuse me of cheating, but it felt like she was about to, which has never happened before. The reason I mention this is because I’ve read cheaters accuse their partners as a projection or something.

Anyway, these family outings were legit. The whole family posts pics of them on Facebook, and the wife sends pics from the outings. There were two of these events, and each time, my wife came home and was like a robot. Sex seemed normal, if not quieter than usual, but as she suffers from depression, she often gets cold every so often. When I asked her if she was doing all right, she chalked it up to that.

Well, two weeks ago, she left for work, and as it was my day off, I puttered around the house, dropped the boy off at school, and came home to check my email on Facebook. I saw that I had a message from her cousin. He and I had recently discussed going out to see a farm team baseball game, and I thought he was getting back to me.

The message read, “I’d like to see you on your knees.”

I was confused as hell until I realized that my wife was still signed in, and it was her he was talking to. I wanted to kill him. I instantly rushed and read through their chat log, and it was filled with him creeping on her. While she was saying things like, “But I’m married,” and, “Now I’m married,” these read like very thin no’s, like she was saying no because she had to, not because she wanted to.

I’m disgusted and absolutely floored about it, but since none of them mentioned anything happening yet, and she was denying him, albeit kindly, I can’t exactly say she’s cheating.

Well, when she got home and our son was put to bed, I confronted her over the situation. She instantly broke down into hysterics and tears, saying things like, “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t know how to tell you. I was just hoping he stopped.”

Now, she and I both suffered childhood sexual abuse from family friends. We both went to years of therapy for it, and for that reason, we have very good communication skills when it comes to comfort and boundaries and how to express ourselves about unwanted advances. I love her, and I wanted to believe her and that he was just being a creep. But the way she didn’t tell me and acted seemingly normal leads me to believe something else was going on.

I told her that I believed her and asked her if I could message him to tell him to back off and how disgusted I am that they are cousins, or if she would prefer to tell him and handle it herself. She first expressed that she would tell him that I knew and not to call her, but her resolve cracked as she was confident this would just stop.

I was furious about that but didn’t express it, and told her that knowing she was going to, I was going to give him a piece of my mind. This is my wife. If she’s being harassed, I will end it. And if she’s not being harassed, she’s cheating on me. So I messaged him. He saw it but made no reply.

The wife said I should have let her handle the situation, and I told her there was no way I was going to keep quiet in the face of this. She seemed to understand and expressed in the end that I was probably right to confront him because she didn’t know how.

All seemed to return to normal, but three days later, I came home, and she was crying. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “It’s Max. You should have let me handle it. I messaged him yesterday, and he won’t talk to me.”

We had the conversation again about me not sitting idly by when somebody is harassing my wife. She gave me a look. It wasn’t much, and it was only for a second, but it gave me the impression that she didn’t consider it harassment. We ended the discussion in agreement that I handled it how any man would handle it.

Two days later, I’m coming to bed late, like 2 a.m., as I was finishing up some work. I hear her on the phone with somebody, kind of chuckling. This is not normal. She told me it was her mom and had something to do with our kid’s birthday, which I didn’t buy. But at this point, I’d begun playing stupid so I could observe the situation from a place where she feels comfortable.

The next day, she was crying again, and at this point, I’d really had it. She’d been unstable for two weeks now. When I asked her if this was about Max again, she said she tried to call and apologize for not handling the situation herself and that he still wasn’t talking to her.

I admit it. I snapped. I told her that either he was abusing her, or she was cheating on me, and I caught them on the couch tonight, obviously. I wanted to believe her, but I’m not a fool. I’m essentially laying here with my finger on the button, waiting for some solid truth, because if this is what it’s feeling more and more like, I’m about to go 95,000 megaton nuclear on the both of them.

I just don’t know what I can do from here on out.

Update One.

So I didn’t sleep at all last night, and when she woke up, I made breakfast. I told her I shouldn’t have blown up and that we should probably sit down tonight and talk about things. She agreed like she wasn’t even upset to begin with, and she said she knew she had probably been acting badly. I told her that the sort of harassment she was dealing with was infinitely more difficult because he is a member of the family. She just seemed to agree with me.

I wasn’t going to snoop, but so many people told me I ought to, and not wanting to be accused of not taking the advice I asked for, I decided to go through with it and check her emails. With the way she was acting this morning, I had fewer reasons to be suspicious, but at this point, what the heck? I did just that.

The level of disgust, hatred, and anger I feel cannot be expressed right, and there will be a divorce. There was one email entitled “Yummy,” and upon opening it, I found a picture of her cousin with semen on his face. The back and forths are him describing to her his encounters with random gay men.

They make a reference to past sexual encounters they’ve had together, complete with one picture of a strap-on sex toy captioned, “I still have our old friend.” Then I read some absolutely disgusting filth talk between them, where she is behaving in a very dominating way and insulting his penis size. Looking at the dates, I realized that this was from a year ago.

As I continued to read, I was able to figure out, at least from how it reads, that they used to hook up frequently but stopped after we got married. We were together for several years before we got married. Later, she starts using the “I’m married” excuse, but it’s reading like that’s just a kink of his, to be told he can’t touch her anymore, which he probably does.

I’m raising her freaking kid, and she does this to me. I’ve wasted the last six years changing my work schedule and not taking better-paying jobs because I needed hours when I was able to watch him.

I went outside and sat on the front porch, called my brother over, and after explaining to him the entire situation, asked him to take my gun from me for the time being. I’m not a violent person. I never have been. But in the state I’m in now, I’m fluctuating between wanting to do crazy stuff. I’m not going to, but I feel like I’m headed for a breakdown, and I can’t trust I’ll behave rationally.

After this, I’m packing up my clothes and checking into a hotel. These conversations have all been printed. I’ve sent copies to myself, and when I have time, I’m digging for more dirt.

I bought a pack of cigarettes. I stopped smoking four years ago. I have to make an appointment at some STD clinic because, according to these freaking vile back and forths, a part of this thing is having unprotected sex with these men. My soon-to-be ex-wife has a device, and as such, I’ve never once in all these years worn protection with her, so now I apparently have months of biting my freaking nails to look forward to, as I understand AIDS tests take months.

I know his work schedule roughly enough because I used to work for the same company he does, so maybe before checking in and composing myself, I’m just going to drive down to see his wife, evidence in hand.

There’s no fixing this. There’s no therapy, no hope, nothing positive, and I don’t care to even entertain an apology. I’m divorcing her, and she will get nothing.

I hate life right now. I don’t feel depressed or sad. I haven’t cried. I just have this hot ball of rage in my chest that the cigarettes only briefly cool. I can’t be near her or him. I know I said I’m not violent, but man, I really want to beat the piss out of both of them.

Update Two.

My stepson is not a product of incest. He and his bio father look exactly alike, and he had to take a paternity test to establish child support. When it was established he was the father, he vanished and has only been heard from once in the last four years.

The last couple of days have been a regular roller coaster for me. To recap, I essentially discovered that my wife is and has been cheating on me with her own cousin, Max, for years. Actually, by the length of time this seems to have been going on, it might as well have been her cheating on him with me.

Okay, I went to a lawyer initially, and after, I went straight to Max’s home, where I spoke to his wife. She was brokenhearted, as one might expect, and disgusted over the incest. We sat down for a bit, and I told her also that he was bragging to my wife about how he was having unprotected sex with random internet men and that there were pictures of him with semen on his face that he was sending my wife.

She insisted on seeing them despite my advice not to, and she was broken. He was bisexual and was always found to be chatting up random guys. She said she allowed him to go out every so often and see a man if he felt he had to get it out of his system, as she put it. She was under the impression that he hadn’t done this in well over a year.

When this was over, I stayed the night in a hotel, where I still am, and talked with my mother, brother, and father. My mother-in-law called me, begging me to come home and talk about this, that I must have made some mistake. It’s all voicemail. I never picked it up. Wife tried calling me a dozen or so times. I didn’t answer. She sent no texts. I assume she knows I’ve been documenting things and doesn’t want to give me any more ammo. It’s what I would do in her place.

At the end of the day, I called her and kept it brief, saying I would talk to her the next day. When I eventually came home, she was a warbling mess. She tried to hug me, and I told her that’s over. She insisted she never cheated on me, that I must have taken something the wrong way, and that Max’s wife must be spreading these rumors because they hate each other.

It was at this point that I realized that my wife thinks I heard about this from someone else. She doesn’t know I discovered their affair myself. It’s then that I showed her the papers I had. The pics of him with semen on his face titled “Yummy,” the picture of a huge strap-on sex toy titled “Our Old Friend,” her speaking to him as if she is some dominatrix type, saying how he has a small dick and real power-play type stuff.

At points, she was telling him to send her pics of himself after these men were done with him. Real stomach-turning crap. I’m not a prude either. I engage in a lot of really kinky crap, so it’s not like she’s dealing with an uptight hubby who isn’t open sexually and went out for those reasons.

But anyway, as soon as she realizes that it was me who discovered this and told Max’s wife, she goes from being weepy and sad to explosively angry, complete hysterics.

“You should have talked to me first. She’s all over everything, telling everyone. This is going to ruin me. You knew she would do this. I told him to stop texting me like that.”

At that last statement, I absolutely exploded. I told her that I just got done reading a year’s worth of texts and emails, and not once did she ever tell him to stop. I called her a freaking degenerate, said that we both probably have AIDS now, and she crumbled in on herself. She couldn’t respond, just crying hard. Even still, I told her that we were getting divorced. I then called her father and told him to come to my house because she really shouldn’t be alone in that state.

I returned to my hotel room and saw that Max’s wife had been texting me. She had done some intense digging on her own and found discussions about sexual encounters they had from 2010 on freaking MySpace.

She told me early on in our relationship that he once tried to kiss her at 13. Well, they actually started screwing at 16 or 15, or during a time where MySpace was still widely being used. I’ll admit it, just seeing it went on that far back was finally what broke me. I’m not big on emotional displays, but I broke down crying in front of his wife. She cried too.

When that was over, I took her to the lawyer I’m seeing, and now one of his partners will be handling her divorce. Through all of this, Max has been panicking and crying, trying to find out where his wife is, trying to talk to me still after all this evidence, trying to ensure this is all some big misunderstanding.

It turns out that Max and his ex-wife live in a house owned by Max’s parents, and they have come down hard against their son, telling him he cannot stay there anymore and apologizing to their daughter-in-law and saying she’s welcome to stay with their grandchild in that house for as long as she wants. He’s basically disowned.

Max’s father even got it in his own head somehow that Max was molesting my wife as a child and that is why she is doing what she is doing today. She is his favorite niece, basically a second daughter, so Max, in effect, is on the lam because his old man wants him dead.

My father, unprompted and wanting to help me, assured me he’d pay for my hotel for the week. Today, I told my boss point blank, no filter, exactly what’s happened and that I am taking two weeks to sort my life out. He remarked about how crappy his divorce was and told me to take whatever time I needed, and that he’ll just tell everyone on the floor I’ve got a sick parent or something, which was sweet of him.

I’m lying down in my hotel room now, missing a stepson I’ll probably never see again. I raised him for six years. Changed his diapers, bottle-fed him at 3 a.m., took time out of work when he was sick, waited on him hand and foot after a nasty fall that broke his arm so his mother could sleep because she was working in the morning.

The rest of this world could burn away to freaking ash, and I wouldn’t blink or care. But the thought of never seeing him again rips away at me like nothing else. I need therapy. It’s going to take a hell of a lot of talking to get through this. I’m not a suicide risk, so no worries there. I’m an atheist, so this is the only life I’ve got. If I end it, that’s it.

I’m talking to my lawyer on the phone later, and we’ll be meeting up with Max’s significant other again because apparently there’s more I don’t know. I’ve got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow and then six dang months of waiting for results.

Update Three.

This one is exceedingly long. I’m getting out all of my thoughts, and well, there are a ton.

I will get weekend custody. My marriage is a sham cover for an incest affair. HIV test is negative. I’m working together with my ex-wife for a quick divorce. Neither of us are wealthy, so all we have to divide is two checking accounts and utility bills. We’re in agreement on what belongs to who and who should pay for what. I’m falling for the other survivor, but not acting because apparently I’m stupid enough to catch feelings in a time like this, but not stupid enough to ruin myself any further by pursuing her.

A few weeks back, I found texts of a sexual nature on my wife’s Facebook from her cousin. She claimed this just happened and she wished he would stop. I messaged him never to speak to her again under the pretense that this had been an unwanted advance. Turns out it wasn’t. Turns out they’ve been sexually involved since 14 or 15. Divorce happening.

Okay, well, a bunch has happened since the day or two days since my last update. First, the good news. I got my HIV rapid test, and it came back negative. Thought it would take days or months, but literally learned in the same visit. I’m going to get tested again, obviously, in the next few months, and for now, I’m going to live my life as if I do have it just to be extra careful.

Max’s wife, who I’ll be calling Sherry from now on, accompanied me for support. Her own appointment is in two days.

Well, I had the first long sit-down with the soon-to-be ex-wife. We had an understandably explosive sit-down earlier in the week, and we’ve talked sparsely in between. I left this out, but I’ve been calling her at my son’s bedtime to say good night to him. At the moment, he is under the impression that I’m just working a lot. I’m planning on telling him the truth in the following days, or truth good enough for a six-year-old.

Reconciliation was never on the table. She knew this and didn’t try to push it, which I was thankful for. Her reasons shouldn’t concern me. They can’t benefit me in any way, but giving myself two emotions for the moment, I asked her to be truthful and tell me how long it’s been going on and why, or if I did something that would push her to this.

She looks like she’s been crying on and off, but she was fairly calm talking with me about it, and by how candid she was, I can tell it’s probably the truth, and she’s somewhat relieved to be talking about it in a weird and messed-up way.

Long story short, she’s the instigator. She didn’t say as much, but she’s in love with him, and they aren’t together because, obviously, I’m learning now that I’m basically the equivalent of one of those sham wives the gay men would marry so they could seem normal. That’s pretty crushing.

She insists she loved and loves me, but I don’t believe it, nor does it matter anymore. My life for the past six years was a lie, probably just a cover for this. I don’t know if I even know what real love, romantic love, looks like, and that’s got me more than a little messed up. She looked hurt seeing me hurt, but I don’t know if it was real. Not that it matters anyway.

The important thing we discussed was my stepson and what we will be doing moving forward. Before I could say anything, she told me she wouldn’t oppose something like weekend custody and would sign that in the divorce. I honestly think she is extremely remorseful about how this affects him. A lot of telling me I am his father, his only dad, and taking me away from him would be so damaging. We’re going to tell him the bad news in a few days.

Tomorrow, or today whenever I post this, I’ll be taking him to the zoo. I was thinking of telling him after that, but he loves this zoo, and I really don’t want him thinking of his parents’ divorce every time he sees it. It’s tearing me up having to think of a way best to scar my child for life. I’m thinking about how to make it positive, like telling him how in my new apartment he’ll have a new room, and he can paint it how he wants and help me get stuff for it, make him feel like he and I are a team, like a way to make this terrible crap fun.

We aren’t wealthy, so basically, we’re just going to keep what we have in our already separate accounts, divide up the remainder of our utility bills in a fair way, and just get the divorce. We discussed meeting at the courthouse and having me file a divorce right in front of her so she can be served that minute. I want it over as fast as possible, and seeing as she’s giving me the only thing I want, refusing the idea of child support. You didn’t make him, and you didn’t do this to him. As much as I hate her right now, I’m impressed that she seems to at least want to make amends for this. Maybe she just wants weekends off to screw her cousin, but honestly, as long as I get to remain a dad, I might as well have one today.

In other related news, yesterday or two days ago whenever I post this, I went to visit Sherry, Max’s soon-to-be ex, to see how she’s holding up. When I arrived, Max’s parents were there and were surprised to see me. I got a hug from my wife’s aunt, and she was crying and apologizing so much it almost made me cry. She was under the impression that I was never going to see my son again, which really upset her because, and I didn’t know this, but she used to love watching me play with my son at family gatherings.

Basically, they’re going to continue to allow Sherry and the baby to stay in their second home for as long as they like. Under the circumstances, Max will not be allowed there anymore and is basically disowned at this point. I’m not sure this was mentioned before, but the family seems to have gotten the idea that Max molested my wife and that this is some kind of abuse or Stockholm syndrome. Call me an a-hole, but for the sake of my son’s stability, I will do nothing to correct them. If letting them believe this allows my wife to live at home with her folks and not have them fight over this in front of my boy, then I will admit this.

Sherry is a mess, as one would expect. She has moments of being okay, followed by tears, followed by anger. The more she talks about subjects not related to this, the calmer she gets. Her family is going to be paying for her to see a therapist, and her brother is coming to the state for a week to be with her, and her mom is basically moving in with her for a month after that to try and help her cope.

I got to feed her daughter today. Such a cute kid, and it melted away my anxiety for a little while.

Last night, my friends and I went to the movies, and I asked her if she’d like to come along. I’m glad she came along, but I’ve also realized that I either need to put some distance between Sherry and I, or I need to talk to her about what I think is happening.

Nothing has been said really, but she’s casually touching me, which is something we never did prior to this. I had a tension headache and mentioned a knot in my neck, and unprompted, she started rubbing my shoulders. Also unprompted, during my test, when the doctor left the room, she held my hand.

It’s probably all just me overthinking things due to my rejection, loneliness, and wanting to feel accepted, but I am infatuated with her. Whenever I’m not obsessing over all the terrible things going on in my life, I find myself thinking of her in a romantic light, and while it’s probably not healthy, feeling anything positive is preferable to feeling nothing but misery and doubt.

Again, maybe I’m reading too much into this, and I’m mistaking her emotional support as something more than it is because my mind is messed up, but she’s acting toward me now how past girlfriends and even the ex-wife did before I officially started seeing them.

I mentioned in the comments that I was trying to lighten the mood with my dark humor and said something like, “I can’t even go out and get a revenge fling without the possibility of killing someone,” referencing my HIV fears. Her response was to bring up the fact that if I am infected, by default, she is most likely infected too, and that since our partners were sleeping together in a gross way, it’s like she and I were already having sex.

There were a few moments after that and a look which I took to be an invitation, but I changed the subject. I should be thinking about more important things, but I’m getting distracted by this. Part of me, the smarter part, knows that a foundation like this is horrible, and acting on it might spell disaster for our upcoming divorces. On the other hand, I do have a real mental and physical attraction to this woman. One I’m 75% sure is mutual, and I fear that not acting will make her think I’m not open to this at any point, and she’ll move on, and I’ll lose another person who makes me happy.

But huge digression aside, I still feel like I’m on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but the divorce seems to be going in a favorable way for me. I will still be a dad.

Oh, and where is Max in all of this? Nobody really knows, but he was couchsurfing their first two nights with friends out of state. He’s called Sherry like three times since she went nuclear, but that’s it.

Update Four.

Well, today’s the day we decided to tell my son about what’s happening moving forward. This is not a talk that either of us is looking forward to, but it was inevitable. I spent a little time on the phone with my soon-to-be ex last night, and her tone changed, something I wasn’t expecting.

At first, she seemed resigned to divorce and didn’t fight me on it. On the phone, she was in tears at points, trying to explain away this relationship with her cousin. She’s trying to say now that nothing physical has gone on between them during the years she and I were together, only random dirty texts.

The storm is coming, I think, because now she says she ought to have my car because I work twenty minutes from where we currently live, and she works an hour away, saying it’s needed because if she has our son all the time, she’s going to need something to get to work. Honestly, this old rust bucket doesn’t have but two good years left in it, so I’m contemplating just forking it over and getting a new car, as I’m going to need a new one anyway. But I also fear that if I start bowing to stuff like this now, it’s going to be my entire life.

I’ve also, through this, come to realize that I really don’t feel like leaving my apartment. She announced that she was moving in with her folks, so I think I might just wait until she’s gone, which I saw on Facebook will be in a week or so, and then just talk to my landlord. Due to COVID, he’s had trouble filling some of his units, so he might welcome me sticking around.

I had breakfast with my dad. He approached the topic lightly, but he’s essentially telling me I ought to hold off on writing anything out that would obligate me to stay in my stepson’s life. He’s not dismissing my stepson. He always makes time to see him and spoils the hell out of him on Christmas and birthdays, even stops by with random toys. My point being, he’s a proud grandpa.

His reasoning was that I should wait to see how my soon-to-be ex behaves and if that seems conducive to what I want in life. He told me that I passed on my chance to go to school and become a family man, and nobody in the family would hold it against me if I decided I didn’t want to be a father anymore. While they all love my son, they don’t want to watch me fall on my sword because I feel they’ll judge me and I’ll tie myself to that crazy family for life. More or less, they’ll support me no matter what I do.

Maybe after I consult my therapist, who I start seeing in three weeks, I’ll feel differently, but at the moment, I’m adamant about remaining a father.

After that, I took Sherry out to meet with Max. I didn’t go along with her. Had I, he might have a few less teeth, and I’d have charges. So I basically just hung out in the Sonic drive-through, listening to music, buying a new drink a couple of times to justify my being there, and waiting for her to text me to be picked up.

When that was over, she was a bit worse off for the experience. He’s blaming my soon-to-be ex for the fact that things didn’t end years ago and claimed that the guys he claimed to be having crazy hookups with were made up and part of some dirty story that he and my soon-to-be ex did. Assuming he’s being truthful, it was just the one guy who is his boyfriend, I guess, and he made up the rest as part of this dirty story thing. Sounds like BS, but honestly, for some reason, it seems true to me.

Sherry was quite devastated, mostly by the fact that he looked like he hadn’t slept in days but didn’t acknowledge his daughter and hadn’t said anything about her until she forced the subject. She was really upset, obviously, and I brought her home, but she did a fine job keeping it together for the baby.

I really didn’t want to leave her in that state, so I hung around and helped throw a dinner together. I showed her how to make ghetto garlic bread and made pasta. I found out she sings a French-language song to her daughter, and I was a little smitten with that. However, I also noticed, when looking in on this, that Sherry actually has some of my son’s hand-me-down baby furniture, which really brought home just how absolutely messed up this situation really is.

When I went to leave, we gave a parting hug that went on for a few minutes. No words. I got a kiss on the cheek, and I kind of rode that high for the rest of the night. The enormity of my life right now, I can’t even fully grasp. I didn’t think it was possible to be filled with such hate and anger while also feeling that fluffy.

Update Five.

I’ve sort of entered the fleeing stage. Personally, I don’t know whether it’s the selfish brain talking or the rational one, but I’m beginning to have doubts about remaining a father. I want to be a good man. I want to believe I have the strength and resolve to raise another man’s child. I mean, I did have that resolve before this betrayal, though it’s warped parts of me and changed me a lot in such a short time. I’m becoming unable to wear a positive face about this.

I’ve said it before. I’m well aware of my own genetic problems, and because of this, I’ve always, even from my hormonal rampage teenage years, made it a point to do all I could to not have a child. I was responsible, careful, and thoughtful. I was never reckless.

My soon-to-be ex, on the other hand, was apparently wild, took no precautions, and as a result had a child. So at times, it feels like I’m going to spend my life tied down, tied to one spot because of someone else’s reckless behavior. I had no problems signing on to be a dad. As you’ve heard, I’m quite proud and happy with the time I’ve been in my stepson’s life. Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute. We all know what’s coming next.

The soon-to-be ex is probably going to use him and my love of him to twist my arm and bend me to whatever she wants me to do. I’ll never be able to move where I want to live. I’ll never be able to live my life as I want to live it. This horrible woman will have me on strings, and I will be dancing to whatever tune she wants me to.

If he had been my biological son, I would fight for sole custody of him and throw my entire weight into ruining her character, but as he is not my son, there’s no way in hell I will have these rights. Perhaps this is a passing feeling. Perhaps I’ll feel differently tomorrow, but I’m just venting raw at the moment. Honestly, if there was a chance I could get full custody, I’d probably take it.

This is the worst conversation I’ve ever had playing out in my head over and over again. In the process of writing this, I’ve gone back and forth between wanting to run and hating myself over the thought.

In this complete hell, Sherry has been my constant partner. We have decided, against the will of some of the commenters and even against our own logic, that we are now a couple. We will not be acting outwardly. We are going to keep everything quiet until we’re sure it’s working. We’re both adults, and we both live alone, so it shouldn’t be some crazy jumble to keep it secret. Ironically, we’re behaving as though we’re committing an affair ourselves.

I’ve discussed the troubles over being a divorced stepdad, and she’s offered me her take on it. She told me that were she in my position, she would do all she could to get as far away from that crazy family as possible because I have the option to. She lamented the fact that no matter what happens, because of Max, she’ll be stuck around both he and my soon-to-be ex probably for the rest of her life.

Her suggestion to me is pretty much the conclusion I’ve come to: not to make any more rash decisions until after I talk with my therapist two weeks from now.

I went back to my apartment today and was surprised to find just how much stuff my ex has already moved out of there. A little depressing seeing it looking that empty, but it was also kind of a relief to know that she is leaving without a fight.

My son is with his grandparents now, so the ex and I were alone and decided to have a cup of coffee and chat before talking about how we’re going to divide up some of the more mutually owned things. Things were pretty polite, all things considered.

For Sherry’s sake, I figured I’d ask if Max had been in contact with her because he’s been a ghost for the last three days, and he really didn’t leave Sherry anything for diapers or food. Max’s folks are helping her, and I will where I can anyway. She shows me her phone, and she’s got four missed calls from him and texts wanting to talk. She says that she tried to talk him into chilling out and facing the family because he’ll have to eventually anyway, and from the sounds of it, he’s probably going to run.

Listening to my ex then ask how Sherry is holding up and that she hears from her aunt I’ve been around a lot. Not that I need to, but I explain how we’re trying to support each other since we’re going through it together and that Sherry is obviously pretty beat up about all this.

In the middle of this, she point blank says, “Whatever you’re doing with her is none of my business, but I’m not stupid.”

The weirdness of being indirectly accused of an affair by the woman who cheated on me is pretty rich. I wanted to tell her off, but at the risk of this causing issues with the divorce, my only response to it was to redirect the conversation back to dividing up our stuff.

I’m down to a TV, but she also took these ugly couches. Thank God. I didn’t want to be the one dragging them to the curb.

That’s pretty much all that’s going on with me. A lot of internal arguments, doubt, and division, but at the end of the day, for now, I’ve got a sweetheart keeping me propped up while I’m propping her up.

Update Six.

It’s been nearly three weeks since my D-day and more than a month since my life began to radically change. I never really discussed what sort of order my marriage was in in any of the previous posts, but as it is relevant to today’s therapeutic typing lesson, I’ll get into that just a little as I go on.

If this is the first of my posts you’re reading, the recap is as follows. I accidentally discovered via Facebook that my soon-to-be ex-wife was engaged in sexual affairs with her cousin, Max. I informed Max’s wife of the trouble, and she went nuclear, exposing our partners. Through all of this, Max’s wife and I have begun casually dating, as it turns out we’re quite attracted to each other.

I filed for divorce yesterday, went down to the courthouse and spoke with the bailiff, sheriff, the person on the other side of the counter, and filled out the needed paperwork. My soon-to-be ex-wife and I, in an effort to end this quickly, have decided against lawyers and have agreed on who gets what. There was no mediation needed.

Well, we tried to go to the courthouse today and have her served immediately after I turned in the paperwork. We were trying to avoid the cop coming to her home or place of work to serve her. I’m usually pretty level-headed about things. Soon-to-be ex is also calm and collected, which is not at all how she normally is. She seems almost as eager as me to get it done.

Turns out she can’t be served in the way we wanted to save time, and so I had to drive her home to her folks. I asked her how things were going. Despite all this, her facade breaks a little, and through some tears, she tells me she’s doing fine with me gone and only really feels bad when my stepson starts asking for me or gets sad that I’m not around.

She comes clean that she’s actually been unhappy being married to me since before we even got married. She didn’t resent me or hate me. She just wasn’t in love with me anymore. Our sex life wasn’t the best. We’re both very attractive and sexual people, but we stopped being on the same page a while ago, and we both knew that.

I like to pursue. I hate to be chased. She loves to pursue and hates to be chased. Something was bound to break, and we had several talks in our marriage about this. For a while, we switched up our roles so we could both get what we wanted, but after a while, it just turned into me sacrificing my sexual desires to only have sex in the way she wanted to. Some of the things she wanted me to do I never really liked and never got better at, and seemingly out of spite, the things I was good at, she spurned. Meanwhile, she would seldom, if ever, take my requests.

In the middle of our relationship, we had a female live-in roommate that we had a mutual attraction for, and under a strict set of guidelines and rules, she became someone we frequently had encounters with for a time. That put a Band-Aid on things.



But soon-to-be ex and I were a good team. We were good at communicating our finances, and we were good at parenting, as we made sure to never undermine each other and always present a united front. We enjoy the same movies. We’re both artistically inclined, I a writer and she an illustrator. We had a million things in common that made us best friends, a good team, but the sexual problems were always there. While this third woman was in the relationship, that tension was gone, and we worked perfectly together, as those frustrations and needs were met by a third party.

Eventually, this third woman moved out and ended things with us on good terms, mostly because she wanted a boyfriend, and no guy would go in for a setup like that. It was around this time that Max and Sherry moved into Max’s parents’ second home. For a few years, they had been living in her home state until he lost his job.

The soon-to-be ex says it was then that Max reestablished contact with her. They began meeting up just as normal cousins at first, but one day, she decided to vent her frustration, probably an invitation, about her sex life, and they started having an affair. They would only meet up around family gatherings and use excuses to vanish. A few of these I’m remembering, not being able to find her. We got married at this time, so I can only assume it happened at my own wedding.

At this point, I really don’t feel like listening to this, and the soon-to-be ex mentions that she is now seeing a therapist and wants to treat me like her priest in confession. Everything concerning their affair, I was hearing for the first time. I guess it’s good that I know the truth, but seeing as it impacts my life in no way, there’s really no point for me to be hearing it.

She also tells me that the out-of-state aunt that died, that she cried for a week over, was actually her crying after Sherry called her to happily inform her she was pregnant. That means at one point, I was actively holding my wife and comforting her as she cried over another man. I feel more betrayed now than I did when I discovered the texts.

This was a week after where I got to spend two whole days alone with my stepson. I had such a good time, and he did too, as it’s the longest time we’ve been together since D-day. He’s six and likes Minecraft, and so I got a console version so we can play split-screen. He told me he misses me but loves seeing his grandparents every day. They spoil the heck out of him.

So after this great weekend of video games and playing catch, typical dad stuff, I’m really positive about staying a dad until she drops all this new info on me. I’ve got to be real. I’m finding this whole idea of having to be around this woman for the rest of my life voluntarily something I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do.

As a parent, I should be able to get over my own bull and keep a level head for the sake of the child, but circumstances being what they are, throwing in the towel becomes a more and more attractive idea. That, more than losing my wife, more than the betrayal, breaks my heart. I’m going to see him again Friday night and going to see if I can still fight through this.

On the Sherry front, I’ll keep it fairly brief, as this is already way too long. Max stopped calling or taking calls from her four days ago, and it turns out he’s moved in with his boyfriend. He has a boyfriend. She’s going to file for divorce before the week is over and consider her next move. Her brother arrives in two days to talk with her and stay for the week.

With Max’s parents’ permission, we’ve changed the locks on the house because, as rumor has it, Max has been using. Using what, I don’t know, but all the same, better to be safe. I installed a new chain and a deadbolt. He’s never been known to be violent, but he’s never been known to vanish for days on end with the rumor being he’s into drugs now.

When it comes to my relationship with Sherry, we are quietly pursuing a romantic relationship. We’re both equally aware that we would just be dealing with our trauma and these feelings might not be 100% real or lasting, but if I can be allowed to be vain for a moment, it’s the best sex I’ve had in my life. I’ve never been more physically attracted to any of my previous partners, and I find myself at work daydreaming about her toward the end of the workday.

I don’t think I’ve ever had such a strong want for someone before, and all told, she tells me it’s mutual. I’ve been back to work this week, and both days, she stopped by to bring me dinner she made, and that’s damn near the cutest thing anyone’s ever done for me. Once again, I feel like life is beating the crap out of me at the same time everything is going right.

Final Update.

A year ago today was the day I made the most life-changing discovery I’d ever made in my life, but I didn’t know it at the time. I had just sat down to check Facebook, saw I had a message, and realized after I clicked it that it was my then wife’s account that was active.

Inside, there were messages of a sexual nature from her cousin, Max, that got the ball rolling. Within three weeks of this message, Max’s then wife, Sherry, and I collected evidence of their incest affair stretching back to the days of MySpace. Through the trauma, she and I began supporting each other and then dating. A year later, she is the mother of my firstborn child.

This affair has changed the lives of so many people involved in and surrounding it. Max, my ex’s cousin and affair partner, ingested a lethal amount of antifreeze. Though it is highly probable that this was a suicide, we were told by the doctors that treated him that he had ingested just enough to kill himself, sort of suggesting that he was trying to self-harm as a cry for help.

Sherry had been living on a property owned by Max’s parents, so they had taken her side when the affair was made public, but took back their support when he died. Fearing they’d evict her or worse, she and her daughter moved into my apartment. Max’s death also saw my ex openly hated and despised by her family for her role in the affair. They’d been blaming him for it and acting as though Max was a predator that had been molesting her or abusing her until he died, and then the blame got shifted to her. She’s no longer welcome at family gatherings, and the only people she speaks to are her own parents. I think the only reason they haven’t disowned her is because of my former stepson.

My ex-wife had been letting me continue to see my stepson after we split. My relationship with Sherry was outed around the time of Max’s death, and this ultimately led to her fighting me over it. It still baffles my mind that even after I caught her in a ten-year-long affair, she had the audacity to act as though me seeing another woman was some sort of crime worth taking away the son I had raised since he was only a few months old.

Ultimately, though, I decided on my own to walk away from the entire situation, as I felt like our constant fighting and my lack of legal authority over him would lead him to be even more unhappy and traumatized than if I just left.

Those of you following me or reading the comments of other posts will know that Sherry and I have relocated to her home state, where I’ve started a new job, and we’re currently renting a home. We are also both in therapy, individual, and we’re being counseled together.

We both understand that a lot can go wrong with relationships that form the way ours did, and we both want to work on communication and growing with one another so we can better navigate the tough times when they come. We’re both survivors of infidelity. The story of how we fell in love can never be a cute story to tell the kids.

One thing that I learned about my marriage through therapy is just how much my own parents’ terrible marriage has affected me. My dad is a good guy, a loving father, and my mother is a wonderful woman, but their relationship is a mess. My ex-wife and I never really fought or got into huge fights. As a kid living in a home with a loveless marriage, I always knew when things were bad: the loud arguments and the yelling and what have you. When things were quiet, things were good. It wasn’t happy. It wasn’t healthy. But it wasn’t outright conflict, so I associated it with good and healthy.

My ex-wife, in all likelihood, never loved me, and I’ve come to realize that just because we didn’t fight and there was no outward conflict, this by no means meant things were happy. It’s just my only point of reference for goodness in a marriage was quiet, and I had quiet.

I’ll speak for Sherry a little, as she’s given me permission to share, but she had been made to feel completely dependent upon Max for everything. They met online, dated long distance, and he convinced her to move in with him, even if doing so meant she’d be dropping out of school. He also wanted to be one of those man-of-the-house types, so he didn’t allow her to work. No work, no school pretty much meant no friends outside of Max and my ex’s family.

Even worse, a year into it, he revealed to her that he was bisexual, informed her he’d see men every so often, and not knowing how to handle it, she just accepted that situation. She is now working on a means to get her GED so she can find a job should she choose to. I’m more than happy to provide for the mother of my child, but after not having a say in her own life for so long, she needs to be free to decide what she wants to do with it.

Last I heard about my ex is that she got into an altercation at a parking meter with a traffic cop or meter maid, and the incident led to her arrest and discovered a whole host of prescription medication. At first, I was told that she stole it from someone, but it turns out she’s been doctor shopping. She ended up doing some token three weeks of jail time, and her parents are currently fighting to have custody of my stepson. Life got difficult for her real quick.

I could write all day about this, but I’m going to end it here.

Three Months Later.

Three months since my D-day, and my life is almost unrecognizable. Back in early July, I came across some disgusting Facebook messages between my soon-to-be ex and her cousin, Max. With some further snooping, I discovered that they’d been sexually involved for at least ten years, which predates my relationship with her. The first person I told was Sherry, Max’s wife. She outed them on social media pretty heavily. My ex took my stepson and moved back in with her parents, and I remained in my current apartment.

During the first few weeks after the discovery, Sherry and I met up for emotional support and to exchange evidence of the affair to help each other’s divorce cases. It escalated to a physical relationship, and currently, she is my girlfriend.

Sherry’s husband vanished from the picture after being outed, and though it was ultimately ruled as accidental, Max ingested a lethal amount of antifreeze and, as of the day after my last update, passed away.

Things for Sherry turned ugly almost instantly. Max’s parents, up until that point, had sided with her on everything, even allowing her to remain in their second home with her daughter. Max’s death turned the situation around, and they began blaming her for it, mainly because of how she outed him so publicly.

Secondly, the week before this happened, my soon-to-be ex’s parents spotted Sherry and me on a date, looking cozy together. We wanted to keep it all on the down low until the divorce, but we were outed, and nobody on any side of this, my folks or hers, was thrilled with this.

In my last update, I said that I would be unable to remain a stepfather to my ex’s son, but in practice, for a few weeks, I resolved to be a weekend father against my own misgivings. I love him too much, as it turns out, to walk away. I would have been able to continue seeing him regularly, but the ex decided to end that once she found out Sherry and I were an item. I still see him. In fact, I took him apple picking last weekend, but it’s clear she’s not going to allow me to have regular weekly visits.

Our divorce hearing is scheduled for mid-November, and aside from the occasional call to check in on my stepson, she and I have gone no contact. I’ve since learned that she had two more affairs, one before we were married and one during the marriage. When our mutual friends heard about the impending divorce, they came forward and mentioned times where they were suspicious of her behavior with these two. Really glad they stayed silent about these concerns for years. Now, I don’t trust a single one of them.

Nothing like finding out that everybody thinks you’re an oblivious fool when you already think you’re an oblivious fool. None of that really matters, and at this point, it’s kind of like falling down and scraping my knee after getting shot. Like, yeah, it sucks, but comparatively not so much.

I mentioned how Sherry’s former in-laws turned on her, and because of their constant harassing phone calls and threats of eviction, I offered to let her move in with me for the time being. Her original goal was to move back to her home state to be with her family, but we’re just trying to figure out the best way to do this.

I know some people are going to call us stupid, but after living together for a week, we decided we are not going our separate ways and that we’ll make a go of it in a real relationship. Absolutely nobody in our families is cheering this on, as they both rightly think we went too fast, and maybe we did, but we’re both very happy together.

I’ve also learned in this time that Sherry never finished high school, as she moved to be with Max before she graduated. He also wanted to have that traditional family outside of cousins, growing, and infidelity roles, so she doesn’t have much experience working. She’s currently working on getting her GED, and her family offered to pay for her to attend some form of higher education, provided she moves closer to home.

As it turns out, there happens to be plenty of work in my field around where her family lives, and with the current political BS, it’s probably better to move out of the city anyway. Houses are also cheaper there, and the idea of owning my own home is pretty tempting, so I’ll most likely head out that way myself when she does.

Sherry and I are very close and have really taken well to living together. We’ve both been in therapy over this, and there have been a few times we’ve even gone with each other to the other’s appointment. We were both learning together what a relationship ought to be.

I’ve only had two long-term relationships in my life, and from my ex-wife, I had just accepted it as normal that we were pretty distant from each other. There was no lack of sexual intimacy between us, but I’ve realized just how much the ex and I were living in two separate worlds under the same roof. Sherry experienced similar feelings with Max.

She texts and calls me frequently for no reason. We talk about our days and sit down to dinner together. She also cooks a lot, which has sparked an interest for me, so over the last few weeks, we’ve been finding interesting things to make together, and it’s fun. A shared interest and activity. Six years with my ex, and I can’t remember what our thing was or if we really had anything.

I’ve kept it together pretty reasonably, all things considered, but when I had a moment alone, I shed some tears over the fact that the last six years of my life were completely meaningless and I’ve got nothing to show for it. The feeling passed pretty quickly.

Sherry has her bad days. The therapy has really kept her afloat because in the week following Max’s death, I was very afraid she might do something to hurt herself. I’m making sure to make time for myself to heal, but helping her keep it together was really instrumental in keeping me moving forward.

Whenever she isn’t feeling down, we’re connected at the hip. We go to bed at the same time together and get up together, share the shower sometimes, a lot of things I didn’t know I needed in my life. Plus, I get to do some parenting stuff, such as feeding and putting her daughter down for sleep, which has made it so my dad instincts are still fed.

The ex has, of course, learned of the relationship, and that’s gone about as well as you might expect. She too blames Sherry for what Max did to himself. She seems to think everything would have been better if we kept things between ourselves and the breakup, rather than Sherry blowing up Facebook with the news. She says she would have never left our apartment if she knew that Sherry was going to move in before going on a tirade of how sexually inadequate I apparently am, before I had to hang up on her.

November and my divorce can’t come fast enough.

I started writing this a couple of days ago, and as of this morning, Sherry took two pregnancy tests, and both came back positive, so this is a curveball I hadn’t been expecting. As everyone who’s read my other post knows, I’m terrified of passing on my bone disorder.

We spent the day talking about it. She has gotten her period after she separated from Max, so that’s not a possibility. So it must have been me getting careless. Still need a doctor’s appointment to confirm, which is set up, and we’ve been googling about my condition all day. The good news is we can find out as early as the fourteenth week if the child has a severe or moderate case.

This year keeps piling on. If the child is healthy, I’ll be happy no matter what. Neither she nor I are big on the idea of terminating a pregnancy unless, of course, they see a severe case, which in many cases means death at birth. So many worries. We’ve chosen to be happy with this until we see what’s up at week fourteen.

I’m in love with her. She’s in love with me, and we’re spiraling headlong into I don’t freaking know what. But I’m afraid, hopeful, but so afraid. I’ve been praying on it, and to who, I don’t know. I’m an atheist.

One Year Update.

A year ago today was the day I made the most life-changing discovery I’d ever made in my life, but I didn’t know it at the time. I had just sat down to check Facebook, saw I had a message, and realized after I clicked it that it was my then wife’s account that was active.

Inside, there were messages of a sexual nature from her cousin, Max, that got the ball rolling. Within three weeks of this message, Max’s then wife, Sherry, and I collected evidence of their incest affair stretching back to the days of MySpace. Through the trauma, she and I began supporting each other and then dating. A year later, she is the mother of my firstborn child.

This affair has changed the lives of so many people involved in and surrounding it. Max, my ex’s cousin and affair partner, ingested a lethal amount of antifreeze. Though it is highly probable that this was a suicide, we were told by the doctors that treated him that he had ingested just enough to kill himself, sort of suggesting that he was trying to self-harm as a cry for help.

Sherry had been living on a property owned by Max’s parents, so they had taken her side when the affair was made public but took back their support when he died. Fearing they’d evict her or worse, she and her daughter moved into my apartment.

Max’s death also saw my ex openly hated and despised by her family for her role in the affair. They’d been blaming him for it and acting as though Max was a predator that had been molesting her or abusing her until he died, and then the blame got shifted to her. She’s no longer welcome at family gatherings, and the only people she speaks to are her own parents. I think the only reason they haven’t disowned her is because of my former stepson.

My ex-wife had been letting me continue to see my stepson after we split. My relationship with Sherry was outed around the time of Max’s death, and this ultimately led to her fighting me over it. It still baffles my mind that even after I caught her in a ten-year-long affair, she had the audacity to act as though me seeing another woman was some sort of crime worth taking away the son I had raised since he was only a few months old.

Ultimately, though, I decided on my own to walk away from the entire situation, as I felt like our constant fighting and my lack of legal authority over him would lead him to be even more unhappy and traumatized than if I just left.

Sherry and I have relocated to her home state, where I’ve started a new job, and we’re currently renting a home. We are also both in individual therapy, and we’re being counseled together. We both understand that a lot can go wrong with relationships that form the way ours did, and we both want to work on communication and growing with one another so we can better navigate the tough times when they come. We’re both survivors of infidelity. The story of how we fell in love can never be a cute story to tell the kids.

One thing that I learned about my marriage through therapy is just how much my own parents’ terrible marriage has affected me. My dad is a good guy, a loving father, and my mother is a wonderful woman, but their relationship is a mess. My ex-wife and I never really fought or got into huge fights.

As a kid living in a home with a loveless marriage, I always knew when things were bad: the loud arguments and the yelling and what have you. When things were quiet, things were good. It wasn’t happy. It wasn’t healthy. But it wasn’t outright conflict, so I associated it with good and healthy. My ex-wife, in all likelihood, never loved me, and I’ve come to realize that just because we didn’t fight and there was no outward conflict, this by no means meant things were happy. It’s just my only point of reference for goodness in a marriage was quiet, and I had quiet.

I’ll speak for Sherry a little, as she’s given me permission to share, but she had been made to feel completely dependent upon Max for everything. They met online, dated long distance, and he convinced her to move in with him, even if doing so meant she’d be dropping out of school. He also wanted to be one of those man-of-the-house types, so he didn’t allow her to work. No work, no school pretty much meant no friends outside of Max and my ex’s family.

Even worse, a year into it, he revealed to her that he was bisexual, informed her he’d see men every so often, and not knowing how to handle it, she just accepted that situation. She is now working on a means to get her GED so she can find a job should she choose to. I’m more than happy to provide for the mother of my child, but after not having a say in her own life for so long, she needs to be free to decide what she wants to do with it.

Last I heard about my ex is that she got into an altercation at a parking meter with a traffic cop or meter maid, and the incident led to her arrest and discovered a whole host of prescription medication. At first, I was told that she stole it from someone, but it turns out she’s been doctor shopping. She ended up doing some token three weeks of jail time, and her parents are currently fighting to have custody of my stepson. Life got difficult for her real quick.

My son is happy and healthy. We had tests done during the pregnancy to check for the condition, and everything checked out.

I don’t think I have trust issues, and she seems to trust me as much as a person can trust someone. We are very open and honest about our feelings, me much more open than I’ve been with anyone else. Trust and openness is something we discuss at the therapist’s office. We were both betrayed by the same people and stuck to each other like glue throughout. We built the kind of trust you find in a foxhole.

I did have a talk with my stepson the last time I saw him. He’s young, but I think he understood what I was saying.

The discovery of this affair really screwed with me. If any random man had been spending that much time with her, I would have instantly seen this for what it was and confronted her over it. Knowing they were cousins, I never gave a second thought to anything they did, because a rational person would not assume two cousins are doing this. It depresses me whenever I think of all the times I probably smiled and shook that man’s hand ten minutes before he was with my wife.

Not really. It’s one of the things we discussed in our joint therapy sessions. A big fear I had was that she was simply exchanging one ruler for another, and I wanted to make it clear that I love her, and I’d like to help be a part of making her life what she wants it to be. She’s always wanted to be a mother, and the idea of being a stay-at-home mom wasn’t totally out of line with the sort of life she saw herself living, but she never felt like she had a choice in it with how Max was, and she always hated leaving school.

Another big reason for her going and getting the GED was because all this obviously scared her, that she’d be a single mom, high school dropout, and would like to at least not be so helpless should something happen to us in our relationship or if I up and die.