My wife and I will have been married for 5 years in October. We have been in a relationship for 15 years and have a 12 year old daughter. My wife and I are currently separated. This on the heels of another moment of infidelity on her part. In the past 12 years, this moment was just one of seven known emotional affairs. I am not sure if the relationships she developed with the other men were ever sexual in nature although I am aware of several instances where she kissed them. I do not believe that it went any further than that, but anyone who has ever dealt with infidelity can understand the damage it does to one’s trust. Many people would wonder, as I do myself sometimes, why stay? Once a cheater always a cheater. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me seven times, I must be insane.

In all honesty, I love my wife insanely. Love is a helluva drug. It makes you dependent on someone else. That isn’t always a bad thing. I would venture that in healthy relationships, a dependency works in equal ways. A partnership where no one is taking or receiving more than the other. That isn’t what I cam here to discuss, but wanted to point out that love will make you so some crazy shit.

I mentioned that we have a 12 year old daughter together. She is the best person I have ever met. I feel proud to just know her, much less be her father. I am obviously biased, but she really is to me. The birth of our daughter also when my wife and I began to experience serious problems.

For the first three years of our relationship, our lives were amazing. We were poor, but we had each other and were in love and clouds that rained golden glitter followed us where ever we went. I mean, the relationship was not without it’s ups and downs, but there was an unbroken confidence within us both that no matter what happened, we wanted to be with each other. We were all we needed.

Then our daughter was born. We hadn’t even had a baby shower, or finished painting the nursery. 28 weeks. She was born at 28 weeks. Look, having your first child is a journey in and of itself, and you are never fully prepared, but we were absolutely caught off guard and suddenly thrust into not just having a baby, but having to watch her fight for her life for more than two months in an incubator in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. My people in NICU, I love you so much! She spent 72 days there. Her mother and I spending any and all free time we had at the hospital. It was scary, but I will always cherish those moments.

At the time, I was not aware of just how traumatic it was all on my wife. Hell, I am still not even aware of how traumatic it was for me. But, it was much harder for her. She had a miscarriage two years prior to the birth of our daughter and so her doctor said the pregnancy would be high risk. We decided it was best that my wife quit her job. I picked up a second job to make ends meet and she could be safe at home. Twenty eight weeks and 72 days later, we finally brought our daughter home. Still before her original due date. She was healthy. She was beautiful. She was new and neither my wife or I were ready.

Two things happened. My wife was burdened with being a new parent, and by herself. I was never home. I went to work at 7:00AM and would get back home at 5:00PM. I’d have dinner, give my wife a small reprieve and then I was back out the door at 7:30PM and wouldn’t return until 1:00AM. She had to take care of a newborn by herself and while battling postpartum depression. I never really knew she was going through what she was going through until she revealed it to me years later. She told me she felt abandoned by me. And  she also told me something that I did not expect and am still having a problem processing.

My wife told me that she feels that I raped her. She first told me this about seven years ago, after I had found out about one of her affairs. She told me it was not a violent rape. I did not physically hold her down against her will and violate her, but I violated her all the same. She told me about one incident at the time. She said that I would get mad if I wanted to have sex and she didn’t want to. She said she would give in to make me happy, but that she didn’t want to have sex. She told me she would cry while we had sex and can’t understand how I didn’t know.

We talked about it and I felt disgusting knowing that the person I love the most believes that I would knowingly do that to her. I told her that when we had sex she always insisted that it was pitch black. She had self esteem issues and so I never saw her cry. She never cried out and told me to stop. Ever since, I always think, what if the lights were on? I know in my heart I am not a monster. If the lights were on, or if I ever got any indication from her that she didn’t want to have sex, I would have quit. The want and desire of my sexual partner is important to me. It turns me on to know I am wanted.

Here is the thing. She was right. I did get upset when she didn’t want to have sex with me. It was not because I didn’t get to stick my penis in her vagina. I felt absolutely rejected and unwanted by her. I did not come home and yell at her until she had sex with me.  I would text my wife throughout the day and night when I had the time. I missed her so much. I never had any quality tile with her anymore. We would talk and tell each other we loved and missed each other. I would initiate dirty talk sometimes, nothing too raunchy, but a lot of the times we would end with plans to act out our words after I got home. Sometimes she would initiate that conversation. And when I came home, I was excited. We would go months without any sex. And she would be asleep. Or, she would tell me she didn’t feel like it, or was feeling bad. It hurt me. It really did. I am not a sex addict. I am not a pervert. I think it is important to have a physical desire for your partner though. And I have a strong physical desire for my wife. At one time she did for me as well. She would see me getting upset and frustrated and she thought that I was only angry because she wouldn’t ‘put out’. I was distraught because I felt like she just didn’t want me. It wasn’t the lack of sex, it was the lack of intimacy itself.

I thought it was all behind us. We got married five years ago. I was to the point where my trust in her was restored and we were in a better and different place. A place with different problems to deal with. The past was in the past. We still had what I thought to be normal issues every marriage may encounter, but I felt that confidence I used to feel in the beginning of our relationship. There were some tough moments. Things got a little stagnate at times. We are both pretty bad at communicating when things bother us. I am a little better than she is, but it is something we definitely need to address. She will hold things in for a good time before letting it out. When she does it is usually a very emotional affair for both of us.

In the past year we seemed to have several of these talks and they were all sounding the same. She would tell me she thought I was not spending enough time with her and our daughter. I had quit the second job before we got married, so I had more time to be with them. I would tell her that I felt like she was not putting any effort into the relationship. She was a stay at home mom and wasn’t quite good at it. Not her thing. And in all honesty I was ok with that much. I do not demand anything from my wife. She just didn’t seem to be there for me. She would ask me to spend more time with her and our daughter and when I did, I felt ignored. She spends more time on her phone than anyone I have ever met. You probably know someone like her. It became a slight to me at some point. I would talk to her and she would just look at her phone like I didn’t exist. I would walk away from her and she wouldn’t even notice I left.

So it went back and forth like that for the past year. I would spend more time with them. I felt like I had to be obvious about it too, so she would remember the next time we had a talk and she told me I wasn’t spending enough time with her. About four months ago, she told me something that was sort of a precursor for what was to come, but she told me that there was something she needed to talk to me about, but she couldn’t talk to me about it yet. She was in tears. She said she wasn’t ready, but we would have to talk. I freaked out on the inside, but respected her wishes and didn’t press.

We had another talk a month after that and she broke down again and told me that I was not giving her what she needed in this relationship. It was a little shocking, but the talk ended up being productive in my eyes. I agreed that I was going to see a therapist. I felt I was suffering from depression. We also agreed we would go to couples therapy and really commit to trying to resolve these issues that keep coming up.

Four days later, the night before her birthday, she went out on a planned evening with her friend and was going to stay the night with her. I won’t go into all of the things she did in those four days to arouse my suspicion that something wasn’t right, but let’s just say red flags were flying and alarms were going off in my head. That night she met an ex flame that she had an affair with several years before we married. They drove around and talked all night and kissed. I saw the conversations they had about it the next day when I couldn’t stand the maddening sense of doom and went through her phone.

I confronted her about it and she confirmed that she had been talking to the guy for about a month. She told me she had feelings for him, but that she wanted to work on us still. Then she brought up the rape again. She will not talk to me about any of the specifics of hat happened other than she felt that I raped her for several years after our daughter was born.

I was taken aback, again. She told me that her feelings that I raped her were validated by two people. One of the, is her friend, who hates my guts, and the man she was having an affair with. She sees a therapist every week. I am not sure if they have even discussed it. She won’t say another word about it to me until we go to therapy. She told me she wants to wait a little while before we do go to therapy. She said she needs a cool down period.

So, I am living with my brother. I have access to my daughter whenever I want. We haven’t really even talked about how this separation is supposed to work. I do not know how long her cool down period is supposed to last. I haven’t changed any of the finances, since I was only one working and I will not let them go hungry. I do not know much of anything anymore.

I do know she really believes I did, and that there have been three people to validate the rape. I never once denied it. I hold myself accountable for what I did and never let it happen again. I cannot change the past, but I am not a rapist. I am ashamed for having unknowingly traumatized her, but I do not feel like a rapist. It isn’t up to me though. If one person believes you raped them, then that is what you are, right?