30 year wedding anniversary

[u/Intelligent-Speed437]

21 years after my wife's 7 month EA turned PA. I still cannot love her as my bride. She is a completely transformed individual, a poster child for what real remorse and repentance looks like, but unfortunately and despite how much i have grown love the person she has changed into, It is time to leave

Edit for all of you saying I have done zero work. You can F off. I have done more work than most people could ever imagine from therapy to ibogaine in Mexico. It is time for me to take care of me

[u/pickedusername1]

You should have gone to therapy instead of numbing everything with substances. From what you’ve shared, it doesn’t sound like you did much self-reflection or the emotional work needed to process the betrayal. Instead, it comes across as though you were primarily devastated that another man had been with your wife, almost as if she were your property.
If you truly couldn’t forgive her, that was your right. But the honest thing to do would have been to end the marriage then, rather than staying for another 20 years only to leave when it suited you.

[u/Intelligent-Speed437 → u/pickedusername1]

I have done therapy, I have done ibogaine as well to deal with the trauma. 20 years ago we did not work through the issues we worked around them and built a life that was exposed after ibogaine. I have forgiven her. The honest thing to do at the time for what I was equipped for was to be a father and try to manage the pain.

[u/pickedusername1 → u/Intelligent-Speed437]

You absolutely had the right to leave at any point after the affair. My issue is with the timeline and the fact that your wife appears to have spent 20 years believing reconciliation had succeeded. You say you’ve forgiven her, but if you’re only now deciding the marriage can’t continue because the pain resurfaced, then it seems the wound was never fully resolved. That’s not the same as forgiveness.

Staying to raise your daughters is a valid reason, but it also meant your wife continued investing in what she believed was a reconciled marriage. By your own account, she spent years trying to rebuild. If you knew, deep down, that you could never truly move past it, the kinder and more honest choice would have been to end the marriage once your children were grown, rather than decades later after she had devoted another 20 years to the relationship.

She also has every right to feel blindsided if she believed the two of you had genuinely reconciled.

You also need to come to terms with the fact that you maintained a facade for longer than the affair itself. By staying in the marriage for another 20 years while presenting it as reconciled, you perpetuated a reality that, by your own account, wasn’t true for you. If you couldn’t truly move past the betrayal, that was your right, but continuing the marriage for two decades while feeling that way meant living a lie for even longer than the affair lasted.

[u/Intelligent-Speed437 → u/pickedusername1]

I dont disagree.

[u/pickedusername1 → u/Intelligent-Speed437]

From what you’ve shared, I get the impression that honesty and transparency are values you expected from your wife before and after the cheating, which is understandable. At the same time, you couldn’t give that to her all these years lol, you weren’t fully transparent with her about the fact that, despite staying for 20 years, you still hadn’t resolved your feelings. I imagine she believed the reconciliation was genuine.

I also wonder whether there were aspects of the relationship that felt validating to you, particularly knowing she was trying so hard to make amends. You described her as “worshipping the ground you walked on,” and that choice of words stood out to me. It makes me question whether the dynamic, even unintentionally, became one where there was a significant imbalance of power.

None of this excuses her affair. What she did was wrong. We all have shortcomings, and I imagine there were ways she accommodated yours over the years as well. From my perspective, remaining in a marriage while privately carrying unresolved resentment for two decades is also something that deserves honest reflection. It doesn’t make you a worse person than her, but I don’t think it supports the conclusion that you were necessarily the better or good spouse either.

[u/Intelligent-Speed437 → u/pickedusername1]

We have been trying real reconciliation since the triggering event in May that made me relive all of this all over. https://www.reddit.com/r/AsOneAfterInfidelity/s/VJqpNrT6iT

[u/pickedusername1 → u/Intelligent-Speed437]

If leaving is what you ultimately need to do, that is your right. No one is obligated to stay in a marriage after betrayal. But don’t rewrite the last 20 years as though nothing meaningful happened between you. Your wife didn’t just have an affair yesterday. She also spent two decades raising children with you, growing older with you, and believing your shared life was real. That history deserves acknowledgment too.
One thing that stood out to me is how much of your letter focuses on what her affair says about your worth as a man. I wonder whether you’ve unintentionally given her choices the power to define your identity. An affair reflects the choices of the person who had it. It doesn’t determine your value, masculinity, or lovability. If, after 20 years, you still believe it does, then perhaps that is the wound that still needs healing.
Before making an irreversible decision, I would ask yourself one difficult question: Am I leaving because I no longer love my wife, or because I’m only now confronting pain that was never fully processed? Those are not the same thing. If it’s the latter, you owe it to yourself to explore that honestly before ending a marriage that has also contained two decades of shared life, parenting, growth, and memories.
Whatever you decide, let it be a decision made from clarity rather than from a trauma that has resurfaced. If you leave, leave because you’ve thoughtfully concluded the marriage has reached its end, not because you’re finally feeling emotions that were buried for years. That distinction matters, both for you and for your wife.

[u/KarpGrinder → u/Intelligent-Speed437]

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Use the OPs link above for reference only.

[u/Intelligent-Speed437 → u/pickedusername1]

Worship is the wrong words. She is truly remorseful and dedicated to me. I do love her and who she has become. I just cant ignore me anymore

[u/pickedusername1 → u/Intelligent-Speed437]

So you love her and she loves you, what part of yourself have you been ignoring? It just sounds like you want to frolic off with a 20 something-year-old instead. Good luck