Save my marriage

This is my very first time posting on Reddit. I have lurked around for years, but I finally decided to ask for help from the Reddit community. I’m hoping someone can provide me with some perspective and clarity.

My wife and I have been married 7 years, together for 10. We have two young children. We have had a great marriage, or so I thought, until recently. My wife has always struggled with the work/family life balance. She has always wanted to work more but she gets extreme “mom guilt.”

My wife has bounced around from a few different jobs. She has been unemployed for short times in between the jobs. She has also worked varying hours. All of her career changes have been because she wanted to be home with the family. My wife appeared to be leaving the career path and fully embracing the “domesticated house wife” life. I hate that term, because my wife played a crucial role in the success of our family during these years. They house was always cared for and the kids were more than loved. I obviously helped out around the house and with the kids. We seemed to have a good thing going. Neither of us ever complained and we never had any fights.

About two years ago my wife approached me and stated she wanted to start back to work full time now that the kids were older. I again supported her in this. I though she would return to work as an RN as this is the field she always worked in and it paid well. She instead came to me with this “corporate medical field” job. This job was INTENSE. Just from the description on the application I was already skeptical. Sure, the salary was way more than she had ever made. Showed the possibility of big bonuses too! The job also provides a free vehicle, phone, laptop, and other sweet toys. I could tell that this job was going to require a lot of time and energy. I was concerned that my wife had struggled working before with just simple “clock-in and clock-out” shifts as an RN. I worried about our family schedule, and to be blatantly honest, I worried about her job co flirting with mine. I also have a high demand job that pays well enough to have been supporting the family the last 7 years.

Despite me not being fully supportive, my wife applied for the job and she accepted their offer of employment. Right from the start she had to travel across the country to California for training. She also traveled to Texas and florida. When she finishes her classroom training she went into a “field training” for about 8 months. During these 8 months she was expected to travel all over to get “exposure and experience.” She traveled a lot. She had more overnight work days. She left the home at 5am most days and come home at 6 or 7pm. Sometimes even later! I could already feel the strain this was putting on me. She was traveling a lot and working a lot. I was forced to pick up the slack at home and also work my own job.

Fast forward another year and she is doing the job off training. She still works long days. I would say most days she leaves the house at 7am and gets home around 5-5:30pm. Then she takes multiple conference calls and zoom meetings throughout the week and some weekends. About once a week she attends training seminars in the evenings. These seminars seem to be more like social events than anything..

Over the last few months I have gotten very burned out with her new job. I feel that she is always gone. I started voicing my opinions and frustrations. My wife told me she loves her job and she feels a fulfillment from it and she is NOT quitting or changing. I began resenting her job. Anytime she had extra hours or had to travel I absolutely hated it. I stopped asking her about her day. I stopped caring about her job altogether! I just wanted her to be home!

My wife began to feel my resentment and it made her feel guilty. But she still loved her job. So she decided to stop caring what I thought and she continued on her way.

I will admit that neither of us have communicated our feelings properly. Truthfully, we didn’t communicate much at all about these problems. We are now at a crossroad where my wife says she is emotional detached from me and she has stonewalled me. She does not care what I think and she does not care what I want. She also says that I have not provided her with the emotional support she requires and so she has moved on. She says she is happy and she is not changing. She has now mentioned divorce.

Obviously, I can see where I have handled this wrong. I was not a supportive husband. I did not treat her fairly. But things have been going on with this new job that I can’t support. She gets home from the social seminar events later and later. She smells of alcohol when she gets home. She started sleeping over at friends houses when she never did this before. She has become much more social and attends numerous events and concerts with the new work friends. I feel that my wife completely changed and gave me no heads up to adjust.

I came across “walk away wife syndrome” and this seems to be exactly what we have going on. I do not like the name “walk away wife” as I know that I was the one pushing her away and she did not just suddenly walk away on her own.

Has anyone been through anything similar? Does anyone have any advice on moving forward? I have already begun reading marriage books and I signed us up for couples therapy. I am afraid my wife may already be too far gone…

UPDATE: today my wife told me the last week was nice. She is still struggling emotionally and she is torn and shattered just as I am. But she said this week she felt heard and she felt my attempts to be closer and supportive of her. She questioned why I couldn’t have been like this all along. She said that having me in the house is clouding her judgement. She informed me we are separating. She is leaving tomorrow with the kids.

UPDATE#2: I put a camera in our bedroom and I left for my night shift. About 1.5 hours into my shift I turned on the camera. My wife was laying in our bed on the phone. She was speaking with another man. I listened for about 20-30 minutes. The conversation was very flirtatious. Within seconds of hearing it I knew this was the man she has been cheating on me with this entire time. I did not recognize his voice. He sounded older. I left work and started racing home to confront my wife. When I was about 5 min away she called me. She saw my GPS location and knew I was heading home. She immediately started asking me questioned of what I was doing and where I was going. I played it off like I was just working. She then called me out on the lie and asked why I was on my way home. I then asked her what she had been doing.

As we were on the phone she found the camera. I went home and confronted her. I have never met the man. He is a doctor she works with. She may have struck gold. She can leave me and take the kids and go live with this extremely wealthy odder doctor. She claims she only recently started talking with him and it’s only been emotional. She claims there has been no physical cheating. Where do I go next?

She claims that she has NOT been seeing/talking to him this entire time. She says she just started talking to him this last week. She swears nothing physical has happened. From what I could hear over the camera, the conversation did appear to be in the “puppy love” phase. Lots of giggling and shyness. Lots of talk about why he never approached her and how she had no idea he was interested. I heard her say something about not think she was his type. Then she woke about other people in the lab at the hospital starting to notice and ask her questions if something was going on. So by all this, it does appear to be very new. I’m or at least new enough that other coworkers are noticing.

The strange part about this is that my wife answered any question I asked. She was very truthful (at least convincingly enough for me). However, she refused to let me see her phone. She said it would not help any. I told her I needed closure to make sure there was nothing beyond what she was telling me. She again refused. She had actually turned her phone off and I’m guessing she set a passcode. I then asked her to call the doctor in front of me and politely and professionally advise him she was married and that she was not interested in any advances. She again refused.

I told her we could not work on our marriage with this guy in the corner. She agreed. I didn’t understand? She was still saying she wanted to work on us. But it seemed like she wanted to keep him around just in case we didn’t work. I told her I was nobody’s backup plan.

I went to our bedroom. I was very emotional. It felt like my heart was stabbed with a hot knife. My chest was tightening. My face went numb. My wife approached me and tried to crawl into my lap. I pushed her away. She began begging me to hold her. So I did. We held each other for about 5 min. Next thing I know, we are having sex. I don’t know how that happened.

My wife then apologized to me over and over after we finished sex. We talked some more and went to bed. She cuddled me all night long. What have I done? Am I a smuck?