Sorry things seemed to have turned for the worse for you. When people get into affairs, it's a very stark mixed bag of feelings. For one, getting loads of positive attention from a member of the opposite sex is intoxicating, it's really like a drug. Then, there's the accompanying feeling of guilt knowing that they are doing something wrong.
Rather than get angry at themselves, they think "why am I feeling guilty? It's because of HIM, HE'S making me feel guilty"
Then, you become the bad guy, and they look to reinforce their argument that "you are making them do this" by searching for any negative things that you do, re-writing your history so it was always bad, etc. etc. etc.
It's a very predictable and repeatable pattern unfortunately, and the things your wife is saying and how she is acting are no different.
She feels guilty about her A is yet another reason she resents you, so anything you do to guilt her, shame her, or make her responsible for your sadness is going to increase her guilt and therefore increase her resentment.
Your best bet is to go the opposite direction and give her more space than she wants. The DB prescription is (1) 180: whatever she assumes she knows about you, demonstrate that it's not true. If you used to get angry and honk in traffic, don't do that even in the worst scenario, etc. (2) Get a Life: go out and do things with other people and enjoy your life, establish new relationships, (3) Act as If: Act as if everything is 100% awesome in your life.
There is NOTHING you can do about her affair partner or what she's going to do next. You can only control what you're going to do next.
People often fear that if they go in the other direction, are they telling their partner they don't care, or giving their tacit approval for the affair to continue, or how will they demonstrate that they're different if the other person doesn't see them, etc. etc.
The answer to all of that is "NO" -- the answer is to give space, not pursue, and all it means is that you're giving space. There's nothing else to read into it.
Often we get caught up on what we should and shouldn't be doing, but the important thing is not the what, but the how, or what your demeanor is like.
You need to "open the cage door" as it were, and what that means is that you need to completely let her off the hook in terms of influencing your feelings.
If she knows that you are "okay" no matter what she does, then she is free to deal with her own feelings and work things out for herself.
If she's constantly aware that her actions and her decisions are making you sad/angsty/mad/etc. then she will wear that feeling like a yoke of oppression and her main focus will be getting away from it.
Talking about the affair is a bad idea. The thing is you don't *have* to do any of that. In fact you shouldn't. That's the key.
Prepare yourself for the fact that you're unlikely to ever get any remorse or any type of apology.
You are right that it [censored], and I'm glad you're angry about it, that's part of processing all of this. Allow yourself to feel all of it and don't worry about it for a minute.
Realistically someone having an affair like this is usually a "last straw" versus a spur of the moment decision. In most relationships needs don't get met, resentments build up, and just pile up over time. When you're living in the same space there's a lot of motivation to compromise and keep the peace, but usually under the surface there's stuff brewing that isn't getting discussed, usually because both people convince themselves that it's just a temporary issue and will go away on its own.
I read somewhere that for people in a relationship to characterize it as "happy", positive interactions need to outweigh negative ones by a ratio of 7:1. For every one time you come away from an exchange annoyed, you have to come away from seven others feeling good. That's a pretty difficult thing to achieve for most people. If you're shy of that, the resentment snowball is growing.
An affair is escapism for sure, and its usually the result of a chance opportunity, or a thousand micro-escalations that happened without any forethought. What it's really a symptom of, however, is conflict avoidance.
For a relationship to be successful both people need to be willing to blow it up on occasion, argue it out and be prepared to walk if a compromise can't be reached. That takes a lot of strength and self-confidence. For more often people stuff it down and pave over it and eventually you're sitting on a volcano that's ready to blow.
Point is, regardless of the affair one or both of you weren't happy. Usually its just a matter of timing in terms of who pulls the rip cord first.
That's why it's now important to separate the desire for the person, from the desire for resumption of control, stability, and positive validation. Your brain is telling you that getting W back will restore these things, but it won't.
So ask yourself, what do you want and why do you want it?
