Hello,
We've been through a lot in our 15 years together. A lot of trust issues in the last ten alone. Within the last 5 years I've developed alcoholism, I am a functioning alcoholic. My wife in the last 5 months started attending rehab. I was as supportive as I could be considering nothing was planned. During our separation our talks started out normal and nightly. Then at some point during our conversations her phone would go off. She said it was emails coming in. That started my paranoia. Then I got switched to a different time, 1-2hrs earlier than I used to talk with her. Then came a point at her stay where she was depressed, she said her friends had left and all the inbound patients were horrible and annoying. I came down for Christmas to spend time with her, first chance I got I rifled through her phone looking for anything. I don't if what I found was the right thing or not. However she had one particular person who she was in constant contact with. She was literally making time for him to spend as much time with him as possible. She used, to what I felt, as meetings to spend time with him. Mind you, I do not know at all how the rehabilitation world works. I don't claim to understand the camaraderie or bonds that are made during the process.
The times we fought I was going through anxiety of our separation, what I felt was our connection to one another. Each time we had fought I found in her texts she ran to him for consolation and followed his advice without question. Then I found texts where she initiated a deeper want for connection by saying, "miss you". Another text went, "You are so good to me, I envy your relationship with <girlfriend's name>. Another instance was her telling him she was going to doctor for appointment. When he asked what for she told him, "for birth control". That same day I remember I asked the same question and she told me for a pap-smear since she hadn't done one in awhile. Mind you we had been separated for months and I am days away from her. He knows I'm days away from her and have no ability to just 'drive' and have intimacy. Finally a ticker for me was after a relapse she had she mentioned to me she was going to look for a better facility that was cheaper. She ended up going to a more expensive one. I kept asking her for the address and she wasn't giving it to me, she would only give me the name. So I google'd it...the address looked familiar so I looked over the pictures from her phone that I got when I first looked. It was the address he was staying at...it was a co-ed facility. She literally went from an all-womens to co-ed. I approached her directly about it. She proceeded to tell me that I didn't know anything about the recovery process and that it was all in my head. That they had no relationship on that level. That she didn't even know if he was there. I told her I found it hard to believe considering their past history of communication. Our fighting got to a point where she finally said she had enough and was leaving me. Then shortly after he was discharged she suddenly spent a day trying to get a hold of me to talk. She complained about how the facility was horrible and that she was days away from just walking out. I questioned her saying that during the first two weeks she was saying it was a great place. Her reply was that she was just trying to give it a chance. So during this talk she spent, as I said, a day calling me literally on the clock. once at 0648 then 0915, and finally at night before lights out. This was after her declaration of separation/divorce. I let her know what I did was wrong rifling through her text. That I had intruded on her life forcefully and that I was wrong for doing it. I apologized whole heartedley for disrespecting her. I told her that I would be there for her where she could not handle from where she was at. I told her I would manage life on my side. She has not talked to me since. So my question now is...what should I do or think about all of this. To me it felt she was just using to verify her financial/medical status. Which in our talks told her I would take care of. Am I just an idiot. Or am I really the villain in all of this who has used paranoid justification for my actions.