SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

My wife and I are both 73 and have been married for 53 years. We have two children, 4 grandchildren and a great granddaughter on the way. Six months ago while cleaning out my mother and father-in-law’s house to sale. I discovered a box of letters. Maybe 30 or 40 letters with 4 of the letters open on top of the stack. I immediately recognized the handwriting as my wife’s. The letters were very deep very passionate and very sexual. I read one letter and picked up another trying to understand what I was reading and who they were written to. After I had read four of the letters I finally realized that they were love letters written by my wife to her apparent lover who was at the time her foster brother and second cousin. He has since become her adopted brother as a result of an adult adoption about 4 years ago.

He was 16 when the relationship started and she was 18. As best I can tell it lasted 2 to 3 years and ended (if it did end) about a year before we got married. I was 20 and she was 21. I know that the relationship is long past history. But it is by no means in our past. He is still part of the family therefore the physical relationship may have ended but the emotional relationship is very much alive. This is complicated by the fact that when I confronted her with the letters she vehemently denied that it ever happened. I asked her if we should get the letters and read them together and she replied that it wasn’t what I thought. I asked, "then tell me what it was". She said it wasn’t any of my bussiness. We had only three conversations about it and she stonewalled each conversation with "its ancient history, he’s my brother and it’s none of your business".

I am coming to grips with the fact that we sat at the family table for 53 years and I was not the only man at the table that had sex with my wife. I also saw comments in the letters that her parents knew about the relationship and were "unhappy". The thing I struggle with the most is her reaction to my discovery of the relationship. She has stonewalled, her body language, eye contact and voice tone told me that everything she told me was a lie or a half truth. Also she now act like nothing ever happened.

I feel betrayed. Not so much by the relationship that occurred before we were married but the fact that what ever the relationship was or is, trumps our 53 year marriage. I need her to tell me what the relationship was, how long it lasted and how it ended. I don care what kind of games they played in bed. I just need to know what their relationship was and is so I can know what our relationship really is.

At this point I done think their affair ever truly ended it may have only changed. They have always been close. I am slowly coming to the realization that she probably never loved me but saw me as a consolation prize or a Plan B of some kind.

I am trying to decide at 73 if I can stay in a relationship where I was never truly chosen. I need a new perspective. .

Most people agree to stay silent on their previous relationships. If you had not found the letters you would never have known. One of her parents evidently found them and kept them since they were in their possession.
How has she treated you throughout your marriage? If she has been a loving companion who never made you feel second place she probably loves you.
I am sure she planned on taking this secret to her grave. It makes me wonder why someone saved the letters.
You feel threatened by this info but as a social worker I can tell you this is not rare. Boundaries are often crossed by cousins and sometimes siblings. I don’t condone it, I just recognize it happens,
I think it’s time for the two of you to see a MC to help you wade through your shock and her shame. This happened a long time ago. Both of you are very different people from then. Before you throw out a good marriage see a specialist to help you sort it out.

She treated me like a partner. Subdued but present early on. Not particularly passionate. Avoided PDA. Has never been able to have conversations about intimacy. As time went on she became more distant and less communicative. She never talked about her feelings and never asked about mine. She avoided conflict at all costs. Her way of handling disagreement was to drop it. When we disagreed she would walk away. In a day or so it was like nothing ever happened. Sometimes I followed up sometimes I didn’t. That’s on me. About 25 years ago intimacy faded. And I became concerned. Tried to ask questions but got no answers. I chalked it up to the demands of raising grandkids. Ten years ago kindness was gone and alarm bells began to ring in my mind. I could not connect to her at all. She was still helpful with projects but I could do nothing to please her. No communication no kindness a lot of sarcasm lots of quiet days. Thats where we are today.

Here mother kept the letters. I know that because the box was labeled with the brother’s name in her in her handwriting. I suspect she read the letter because 4 of them were open on top of the others stacked in the box. Her mother passed away 2 years before I discovered the letters. I can’t imagine why her mother would keep something so potentially destructive. When I told my wife about the letters she commented that "I can’t believe mom kept the letters". Not "those letters" or "a bunch of old letters" but "the letters". I don’t know what that means.

I told her the next day that I was having trouble processing this and ask if she would attend counseling with me. She flatly refused. I saw a counselor for six sessions. He asked if she would attended, I asked her again and she again refused. She said she was not going to sit there and listen to two men talk about how terrible a person she was. I told her nobody thinks that. Not me and certainly not him. She still refused to go.

You are right we are both very different people. She said things to him in the letters that she never told me in our most passionate moments. In the first few minutes that I read those words I was jealous. But that quickly turned into the realization that she never felt for me what she felt for him that’s what made me wonder if she "settled" for me. The affair is history. It was before my time. I get it. There is nothing to forgive because she or he never wronged me that I know of. The problem is her reaction to it. She never once told me she loved me. I told her I just need to know that she loved me. She said that she will never give me any reassurance. She will never help me understand the relationship because it is none of my business. she then said she would never tell me how she feels. If I wanted that I should have married someone else. I still don’t care about that old relationship. I only care about why that secret is more important to her than helping me process that old history and moving on with our long marriage.

I am struggling not to throw our marriage away. I am trying to understand it. It is clearly not what I thought it was.