Where does one start with something like this? I'm not sure how to tell the whole thing without it being a novel.

I knew something was wrong with my wife about three years ago when she became withdrawn and resentful of my trying to find the reason. I turned out that she had been seeing another man. They had met several times and even gone to a motel. According to her though they never actually had sex but did everything around the edges. This was a very heart wrenching thing for me but, not unexpected. She'd done something similar many years ago while she was in collage. Her answer to 'why?' was that she'd always felt like we got married to young (19 her & 21 me) and she wondered what it would be like with someone else. She's always had a suppressed wild adventuress side to her as well. And sex seems to her release for this wild side. After much discussion and talk of us 'taking a break', and each of doing whatever we wanted independently of each other. This was totally unacctiable to me. I knew that could be nothing but bad for both of us. I we decided to try some adventuress things together so, we visited some local topless bars just to get our feet wet. I had been to topless bars before but never cared for them because I just felt like I was being hustled for money. But she’d never been and wanted to see what they were like. We met a man there who told us about a swingers club. We went to the club, it wasn’t much different than any other club except a little more racy. I felt like this could be the answer to the “let’s take a break” dilemma.

I found a website for swingers and signed up for a trial period. She still wasn’t satisfied that this would cure her curiosity but went along (suppressed wild side). Before long we’d made a dinner date with a couple from the web site. We’d agreed that if we liked them and they wanted to we’d ‘play’. That was nearly two years ago now. Well they liked us and everything went as you would expect something of the sort to go. We ‘played’ with them several times. The other lady and I never cared much for each other, it’s more like hate the sight each other now. But, my wife and the other gentleman hit it off famously. We’ve continued in the swinging lifestyle every since. I’ve felt like she’s much happier with a release for her wild tendencies and we meet and have social interaction with a much broader circle of friends.

The problem though is this. She never broke off the relationship with that first guy. He started calling her and e-mailing her at work. I found out about this a confronted her to stop. But she reasoned that it was okay because I’d watched her have sex with him already, so what was wrong with her continuing it? The problem is that the other man’s wife has no clue this going on, and the fact that my wife is very much in love with this man. I tried unsuccessfully to end it last summer my wife’s a school teacher; because of all the free time she was able to meet him several times. I threatened to leave her over this, but she’s always sworn that she’d never leave me and that I would be ruining our kids’ lives and our marriage. So, I’ve allowed the relationship to continue, not that I could’ve stopped it. Now that it’s summer again and she’s continuing the same pattern. Right now she’s on a three day trip that she says is ‘school related’ when actually she’s off with him.

Now the panic that’s hit me is that I’ve never a day in my life lived by myself (I’m 45) and the thought of it scares the hell out me. But I’m certain that if things don’t change and soon I will be.

Mark