Hi redditors, I’m hoping to get some advice about whether I am making the right decision in pursuing a divorce. I’m 26, have been with my wife since I was 20 (married at 24, 1.5 yrs ago). She’s a year younger. We found out we were having a baby just a couple weeks after I proposed, and he is now a year and a half old, a healthy, awesome kid.

We always had a close, trusting relationship. We have the same interests and over time have kind of turned into two of the same person. However once we had our son, she had to put her education on the back burner and started staying home to raise him. We’re both big gamers, and since she was now home all day, she took her TF2 playing to a new level, joined a clan, has now played around 1000 hours, etc.

She talks to a lot of different people online since she joined the clan maybe 8-10 months ago. One guy in particular she talked to a ton. I mean, wandering around the house on a wireless headset, cooking meals simultaneously, pocketing him in TF2 while on mumble, etc. I’ve always been very trusting and not jealous, so I let it fly but told her on a regular basis that it didn’t seem right for her to talk to one person that much. She told me she was pretty sure he was gay, I was making a big deal, etc. I wasn’t really suspicious of anything at this point though.

After last Christmas, we both got some cash and she decided she wanted to take a break from the monotony that is life raising a screaming child. I of course knew she was unhappy and I thought it would be a good idea for her to clear her head for several days and come back refreshed. She went out of state for about four days, came back, acted like everything was fine. This was at the end of January.

Things went on normally for about two months. Then one day she was gone and my son pulled a box down off her desk. Out falls two tickets to a museum she went to see while out of town. Hmm, why would she have two adult tickets to the same place at the same time? Not really any explanation other than that she went with someone. At this point I freaked out and started looking through her computer. I found four pictures of her in a place I didn’t recognize, looking very happy. EXIF data shows they were taken on the last day of her trip. Obviously not taken by her. I looked through the history on her computer and found things such as, romantic things to do in the city she went, how to impress a guy, etc, and more recently flights from Orlando to Phoenix and vice versa (where the guy lives). She was even looking at houses for sale in Phoenix. (Ever heard of private browsing?)

So I’m thoroughly freaked out at this point and I confront her when she gets home. She basically disarms me, tells me I’m being paranoid, nothing happened, and that she’s so sorry that I got myself worked up over nothing. The tickets were separate, one for the museum and one for the theater. The photos were taken with the timer on the camera. The romantic itinerary was because she likes those kind of restaurants. She was helping her friend look for a new house. And on and on. She feels so bad for me. She looked so sincere, and I guess I wanted to believe, so I did. She asks me if I’d like to put a keylogger on her computer so I can be sure everything is okay. No, I tell her, that won’t prove anything because she can just talk to him in other ways.

Fast forward about four days to April 1. I get some time to get back on her computer and check out the keylogger that I had already put on it the day I found the other stuff, before she offered (ha!). The logger (refog) captures text as well as screenshots so I can see the conversations in their entirety. She told him that she was going to tell him that she was pregnant for April Fools but that it’s one of those jokes that is too fucked up to tell someone.

What the fuck. There’s all the proof that I need. In one sentence. At this point I am not even mad, just feeling really dead inside and incredibly betrayed.

Confronted her again and after telling her that I know everything, she just kind of stares at me until I tell her what I know. Finally at this point she opens up about it. They spent the whole vacation together. Had sex (once, the last night, she says…).

Her reasoning for this happening is that for all the years we have been together I have never made her feel special and shown how much I appreciate her. I was raised as a Jehovah’s Witness (I’m now an atheist) and I struggle a bit with holidays, birthdays, etc. I no longer have moral qualms about them, they just aren’t as big a deal to me as they are to her. So I tend to, at best, make a minor showing for these things, and at worst not do anything. She of all people should understand this since I had my first birthday party, first Christmas, etc with her.

I’m also a small business owner, barely keeping my head above water now that we have a child and are both students on a single income. I’m often stressed and unhappy and I admit that I am often short with her, although never abusive in any way. Life is hard right now and it’s hard to pretend to be happy 24/7.

In exchange for those shortcomings, she took it upon herself to emotionally and ultimately physically cheat on me. She then continued the relationship with the guy for at least two more months while hiding what happened from me, sleeping in bed with me, having (terrible and infrequent) sex with me, etc. Then when I confronted her about it, rather than opening up, she dug herself into an even bigger hole by lying about it again and then having the audacity to tell me she felt bad for me getting myself worked up over nothing. She then continued her relationship with the guy as if nothing had happened. Between confrontations I also find chat logs of talking about taking more vacations together, keeping it off her credit card statements, how she is his girlfriend, etc. I confronted the guy (at first pretending to be her) and found out in about five minutes that she never even told him she had a son, which blew his mind, the fucking asshole. Fantasy world much?

I feel like her actions show zero remorse despite whatever she tells me. After finding out, and understanding what she says led her to this path, I tried for about a month to win her back by planning nice things for her birthday and mother’s day, acting happier, opening up with her about some problems of my own, etc. Our relationship has seemed better, and we actually had some passionate sex after which she cried like I’ve only seen her cry one other time. However, during this time she has refused to stop talking to the guy (it’s just small talk, we’re just playing TF2, etc) despite the fact that it makes me absolutely crazy. I think that she obviously has mixed feelings, and her actions speak louder than words.

As much as it hurts, the relationship now feels like a lost cause (extreme trust issues that she is not making efforts to rebuild) and we have discussed amicable divorce. I was on the fence about this but after she got unreasonably mad (for three days) about me lying for one minute about looking through her cell phone looking for signs of her talking to the guy, I agreed to the divorce yesterday. I can barely pay bills, have a lot of debt and no savings, and I may have to foreclose on our house (which is in my father and I’s name, not hers) if I have to pay alimony/child support. We live in FL which is a no-fault state so the adultery doesn’t factor in to potential payouts.

TL;DR – Medic wife cheats on heavy/pyro husband with sniper/demo douchebag from across the country. Hilarity does not ensue.

I am taking this as an opportunity to reinvent myself. I want to fix some things that I don’t like about myself, get in better shape, and basically make my life better than it’s ever been. At this point it’s extremely tough to think about doing that alone, and without the person that’s been such a huge part of my adult life. Anyone have any advice on whether or not I am making the right choice? Do some girls like single dads or will I now be forever alone?

As a side note, I can no longer play TF2. Every time I get sniped it feels like a personal assault. Fuck me.