Alright here we go

first a little background on me. I'm 35 and I'm a father of 3 girls - 16, 10, 8 - and I have been married for 11 years now (together longer). My marriage is not entirely satisfying to me though. My wife has an explosive temper and she is constantly blowing up at the smallest things (mostly between her and our teenage daughter) and it creates stress that I don't believe needs to be there. We really don't share any interests and we can't have any deep conversations because if we disagree she ends up getting angry with me because "I just can't see things from her point of view". One more thing is since we have gotten together she has put on nearly 100lbs. I know this should not matter but I believe that I need to take care of myself so she has something to proud of and I wish she felt the same. I realize that having children takes its toll but its been almost 9 years. She just doesn't seem to have any want for self improvement and that bleeds into our marriage in that she doesn't think it needs improving.

Despite all of this we remain together. I was a child of divorce and always told myself that I wouldn't do that to my children so I have just waited things out with the hope that our situation would improve. I have talked to her repeatedly about the issues in our relationship to no avail until almost 2 years ago. That is when I had an affair. Long story short I cheated with another woman and carried on a pseudo relationship for a few months. The other woman was aware I was married and had kids. We had very strong feelings for each other and were convinced we were going to be together.

My Wife found out and to keep it neat and tidy I broke it off with the other woman and my wife and I decided to work on the marriage. We went to counselling and got to the heart of the issues that I had been talking about and things got better. She was more sensitive to my feelings about her temper and even sought counselling for it. Things were looking up. For a while.

Recently things have begun to go downhill again and I find myself talking to that same other woman again. Now this other woman isn't a random person I met in a bar. It is someone I have known since she was 13. We were always close but she is 5 yrs my junior so we never got into a relationship. Other things happened but because of the age difference being together just wasn't an option at the time. I had no contact with her when I met my wife but sure enough, the morning of my wedding I was outside my moms house with my best man when she drove by and stopped. She asked why I was dressed up and I told her and the pain in her eyes was obvious. We have since talked about that and she told me that she always thought we would be together. To be honest I had those same thoughts but dismissed them. Since re-connecting we have re-discovered those feelings and found they burn hotter than we even knew.

To sum everything up here I am at a crossroads. I don't want to end up as that man who stayed for the kids but when the kids finally left ended up being miserable. I am not old by any means but I feel that if I keep working on my marriage I could wake up an old unhappy man but I am afraid that if I leave I could end up alone anyways. I am usually very strong and am the person people seem to trust when they need advice but right now I am scared and I don't know what to do.