I wrote the last post very late and I was tired, so I hope you understand what I was trying to tell you. People who get married and agree to vows the way you have stated don't always understand that just because a person does take a vow, doesn't mean they actually give in the relationship where the relationship maintains a "healthy" connection.

Often a couple can get into a way of interacting with each other where as you have described, they become nothing more but room mates. That is where you got bored and got involved with texting. What you have to really look at, which I think you have been trying to do, is how selfish you were in the relationship and for how many YEARS. You have said that you "love" your wife, but you have to really look at the years that went by where you failed to show it and instead began to just take things for gran tit. You have to come clean with the fact that you did not really give your relationship that 100%. Often that happens because of how a person actually doesn't know HOW to contribute to the relationship where their partner feels "appreciated" and doesn't end up feeling "controlled, absorbing their partners moods when things don't go their way, and just EXPECTS all the things right down to the dinners that are prepared, without stopping and actually thinking about "she really made a nice dinner for me".

What often happens in marriages is how they become just routine, and "expected". And what begins to take place is "loneliness" and a desire to be "seen and appreciated".

You have focused a lot on "if" your wife was sexually active with this other guy, or even if she was flirting with other guys in what you feel is wrong and inappropriate. What you really missed is that what she did get from some other guy is "he recognized her and appreciated her where she FELT she actually had "value".

Ok, so she gets a text from a friend of this other guy in "question". That turned into an argument right? What was she really "protecting"? It could have been that she was actually protecting how someone was interacting with her in a way that respected her "value" as a person and it really could have been about a better job opportunity.

I thought about you yesterday because I had my farrier come out to trim the feet on a few ponies. In our conversations I had learned that he left his wife and got a divorce and he ended up finding a woman that he was much happier with and this other woman gave him the kind of "appreciation" he was not getting from his wife, and for many years. The life he was living was that what he did became "expected" and he never really felt loved and appreciated as a person. He was an unhappy man and he got to a point where he decided to do something about it.

The messages I am hearing from what you have shared is how your wife got to a point where she was lonely and felt unappreciated. When you went away she spent time with other people that showed her something she was missing in her life, "people who actually talked to her and appreciated her". That made a light go off in her and what you have described of her behavior that pushed you away, even the angry looks you got, were all about her realization of how much you did take her for grant it. It did not mean she did not love you, but what she was not loving is the life she had lived with you.

Unfortunately, couples can get into a routine where they lose site of the true value of each other, they begin to operate on auto pilot to a point where they don't really see each other and appreciate each other but instead function in roles where they just role play instead of actually "growing" as a couple.

I think in your case, while you were away your wife began to make friends and reach out because she was "lonely" and that became REAL to her when she caught you texting. I think that when you came back the one thing she did not want to do was to go back to the "role" she had played that was lonely and unfulfilling for her personally.

What the two of you need to figure out "now" is if you can "learn" how to change the way you are with each other to the point where you learn how to appreciate each other and engage in a relationship where you can both grow as individuals and at the same time share and appreciate each other. Neither of you "knew" how to do that and mistakes were made by both of you. If this becomes some kind of "who did more bad" then you won't do what is more important when it comes to repair and change and grow, instead you will end up going down a path of failing to communicate and end up with more situations where you attack each other for "hurts" you caused each other instead and that ends up breaking down the relationship where it becomes irreconcilable.