How do I find forgiveness for my wife and enough peace of mind for myself to continue as her primary caregiver?

My husband likes to ask this question: "How should you treat your spouse?"

Not like your wife treated you, certainly.

I like to ask the question, "What does love look like?"

Not like this, where a "professional therapist" carries on a multitude of affairs without a bit of remorse or guilt. Then, in the "throes of dementia" asks you to 'sort her letters' which happen to divulge her secret life of all those years??? What purpose did such a thing serve, one must wonder?

Your definition of love apparently does not include respect or fidelity or trust. You chose to accept the terms of the marriage that your wife dictated to you for all those years, for some odd reason, and you're now facing a new batch of information that deepens the pain and suffering that up till now were acceptable?

If it was okay to be unfaithful sometimes, why is it now not okay that she was unfaithful oftentimes? She was like a child with access to the cookie jar and nobody to tell her No.

It's either okay to be who she was or it wasn't. You accepted her as a remorseless unfaithful wife then, but you're struggling to accept her as a remorseless unfaithful wife now due to the number of lovers she'd taken on and the extent of the deceit, I suppose. What honestly bothers me most is that she chose to have you read all those letters now, which I find to be downright cruel.

If it were me, I'd place her in a nice Memory Care Assisted Living place and move on with a new life. With new rules in place including self respect and dignity at the forefront of it all. You owe that to YOURSELF, my friend.

Obsessed:
I am glad you are going to get someone in to help you so you can get out and have some time for yourself. For any caregiver that is important but I think in your case even more so.
When I first read you post I wanted to respond but I was at a loss for words.
My advice to you though is this.:
You say you are going to seek out a therapist or "I might tell the aspects of the story to someone just for personal relief" I think it is very important that you talk only with a therapist about this. The reason being is that they can not divulge any of the information to anyone else. If you pour out your thoughts, feelings to "someone" they are not bound by any standards to keep this information private. You never know when "someone" may inadvertently say something to someone else and before long more people know your business than have a right to know it.
I also think a proper therapist will help you sort out feelings and guide you through what is going to be a very difficult time.
((hugs, be well))

I think you should get hired help or place your wife in Memory Care. Resentment is building and as a carer for your wife it will become more difficult as she declines. You can still see her and make sure she receives the best of care but not hands on. I am so sorry.
I would not tell your children. It will only create disharmony among the family. I would seek therapy to sort out feelings, resentment.We all make mistakes and if we could turn the clock back I bet most of us would make better choices in our lives.
Forgiveness is essential for a happy and healthy life. I know it is difficult to read how your wife was unfaithful but you knew about her infidelity early on and should have nipped that in the bud right away. You must love her deeply. Bringing up the issue now is pointless for she has dementia. It must be so hard for you knowing she continued with this behavior for many years.
I hope you find in your heart to forgive her. My thoughts and prayers are with you and hope you find peace.

I have read a lot of differing viewpoints here, and pondered all sides. My opinion is you should *not* be your wife’s primary caregiver.

You said she “dissolves in pain” when you bring it up, and you are bringing it up, and are obsessed with it. That does not make for a healthy, comfortable situation for either of you. She is dependent on someone who is profoundly upset with her at a time she needs gentleness and love.

For you, burn the papers and letters. Don’t show them to your children or anyone else. Some things in the past should remain there, especially those which are private between a husband and a wife. If you can forgive, that will be freeing for you. If you can’t yet, which is understandable, try hard to refocus your attention to something you two had which was good and positive. Then try to be with her and love her as the person you have been married to these past years. Even at this late point in your lives it is not too late to start anew and refresh your love and your marriage, but - I believe - you need the distance of not taking primary care of her physical needs and having her totally dependent on your goodwill in that regard.

True, sex is not dependent on love, but trust is - and trust is premised on honesty which you feel has been denied. So it may not be the dalliances that disturb as much as you being kept in the dark.

Consider how you would have responded if presented with her confession 20 years ago - you do acknowledge her adventurous nature and found acceptance then, so how is this any different save for the explicit details contained in the correspondence?
What you would have done then could help you hone your thoughts - presently you will be overlaying the sacrifices you make now and/or in the future.
And what if it was you who acquired dementia instead of your wife? Would her care for you be compromised in such circumstances?

Have you considered that her request for you to 'help her organize her letters and papers' might have been an attempt to reveal the truth possibly troubling her conscience but finding incapacity to express with clarity? In the form of confession, does this alter your perception of the offences?

I guess your real frustration may be the denial of being heard with the empathy of the wife you once knew - all the questions that may never be answered because of her dementia is so difficult to reconcile alone, and swirling thoughts can become a tornado which may project unjustly onto your wife.
Regardless, she stayed with you throughout and, in that bizarre trait that love entails, protected you from the shame of indiscretion by carrying the guilt herself.

But as you would realise, love rises above failure even when at your expense. Love is selfless and only you can find the love you give in return.

Obsessed, you CAN’T change or deny what you’ve learned, but if you have read what she memorialized and feel certain that her last several years have been truthfully and decently and honorably lived, would it be possible to form a sense of caring based on that?

How are you actively addressing “separating past from present”?

Some partners consider one indiscretion the “deal breaker”. You have said that you knew that she had been occasionally unfaithful. Could she have known, or assumed that you knew, that total fidelity wasn’t part of her ethical makeup?

Did you and she together or separately ever confront in any way how she was living that aspect of her life? Could she somehow have assumed that you were offering her your consent?

You say “All this is in the past” but if she is presently, at 87, living with dementia, you know that her brain is deteriorating constantly, so her reactions of grief now are not really authentic. They are also reflective of a woman who is now simply not the person who betrayed you in the past.

If you tacitly accepted her conduct when you first learned of it, you must have continued your marriage for some reason that you felt you could benefit from. And if you were hoping for a faithful relationship, and you had it during your last 22 years (is my math correct?) then wasn’t that the reward for your constancy?

People can at times lead “interior lives” that are not congruent with even the intimate lives they share with others. Your situation is perhaps not as unique as you are thinking. Because this is so, my children would NEVER LEARN FROM ME of failed faith between their parents. There is NO BENEFIT TO ADULT CHILDREN to learn that there parents were anything more or less than they, as children, knew them.

FOR YOURSELF, is it possible to know what your wife did, AND know what you did IN THAT TIME as response (or no response) to HER actions, and then accept that the CHOICES available to you now need to be made based ONLY on what you are seeing as YOUR future?

She has NO lucid, authentic future. You DO. If you feel that your safety and comfort need to be based on being away from her, or living under the same roof with paid caregivers, or ANY OTHER PLAN that gives you safety and comfort and provides the same for her, let that be your peace.

Whatever happened for either of you in the past is tragic and uncomfortable to you, but also LOST to her. If you had “…for most part a deep, loving, and peaceful relationship….”, you had what many people NEVER HAVE AT ALL.

If you hadn't found the papers then you would not have given the long loving and peaceful relationship your marriage has been a second thought, you would have accepted it for what it has been.

What is has been has not changed in anyway through something you did not know about, it hasn't been less loving, it hasn't been any less successful. You knew your wife had casual infidelities that didn't impact the status quo.

OK - now you knew there were more, I suspect as a therapist these were almost experimental - she didn't want to upset the marriage, she loved you the same, she looked after the family the same way - for her they meant nothing but to satisfy curiosity. Now I am not going for one minute to reduce the hurt you feel or the anger, but I do advise you try and see someone just doing some research linked to their job, with their real life with you and the family. Maintaining that is the most important thing in a marriage. I don't support what your wife did but I do understand that things that don't impact a marriage are not as important as those that do, and the relationship that marriage is built on.

It sounds rather glib but I always told my husband he could do what he liked outside the house provided he was home by six and it didn't impact the family. Did I expect him to have affairs - no - but if it didn't impact on me and the children would it have mattered? In my case No - some people need to have more sex and feel excitement but it is in a compartmentalised area of their lives and personally I could live with that if it happened (his father did it all the time so maybe that is why I put down the marker).

Its very very difficult to find someone isn't fully what we expected but try to put this behaviour which stopped 20 years ago behind you and look at what you did build, and how you felt, and the family unit you were/are. What is done is done you are only hurting yourself by not forgiving and carrying on as before you sorted the papers. You love her, she loves you and you have had many happy years together.

Another poster has just posted about her husband’s uninhibited porn craving: “But I found out he had been seeing other women since before we married and the dementia/ alzheimers made it so much worse.” No-one is suggesting that her marriage has always been a sham and she should divorce him. She just destroyed the phone with the porn sites.

Why is a woman’s infidelity so totally offensive, when so many women can cope with it in men? Why can a woman not have a professional career if her morals aren’t 'pure'? Of course we all have personal reactions to our posters’ problems, but this is so extreme!

And Jesus said 'he who is without sin, let him cast the first stone'.

Your marriage was NOT a sham. You were married to someone who was more complex than you understood. Her relationship with you was what it was, “for the most part deep, loving and peaceful.” She must be an amazing woman to have kept her other relationships from destroying it.

Think about yourself. Were you always faithful? In thought as well as in deed? Are there hidden parts of your life history that would change the image that others have of you? Have you had a friend or colleague whose attitudes you sometimes disapproved of – but you tolerated? Do you agree with ‘judge not lest you be judged’?

You have had a difficult shock, and it’s hard to live with. You now have a choice. You can put it into the past, and know that you have lived a long good marriage in spite of what you now know. The alternative is to do what some other posters have suggested – divorce, abandonment, anger, rejection - and destroy your family and the rest of your life with bitterness.

I hope that you can find peace at the end of your lives. Love, Margaret

Your story is heartbreaking. In attempting to put myself in your shoes, I don’t know if I could forgive in all honesty.

Faithless people are greedy. Selfish. And now you’re giving more of yourself to someone who continuously takes. That’s a hard one to swallow…

But whether or not to forgive was not your question. Your question was, how.

Firstly, I would tell the kids. Not to “get back at your wife”, but so that you can grieve the deception together. Our family had a similar groundbreaking discovery last summer. The fact that we were all able to move on as a family was on that there were no more secrets between us as a family anymore. The secrets and lies had been tearing us apart of decades, and now it was all out in the open. Last summer, we were in agony. This summer, we’re much much better. You can’t suffer through this alone.

I think also for you to move forward and move past, you have to believe that she shows true contrition. She needs to understand how much she hurt you. That she didn’t feel any guilt at the time, how greedy and selfish that truly was. She SHOULD feel bad, regardless of how old she is. You’re never too old to become a better person and say (and truly mean) ‘I’m sorry’. And not just because you got caught, but because you lied and cheated and was a dirty dog.

My best advice, don’t suffer alone. You won’t heal that way.

How very heartbreaking for you to have discovered all this years after the fact, that your marriage was a sham. I'm not sure if it were me, if I could carry on with being her primary caregiver. Could I forgive her, yes, but continue on with her care, no.
I think it's now time that you place her in the appropriate facility, where you know she will receive the proper care, and where you can once again have peace in your life. You may even have to divorce her to get true peace, as you deserve so much better. May God bless you and keep you.

She lied to you for 35 years of your marriage and was leading a double life. Do her words about loving you really matter as much as her decades of betrayal and deceit?

You are in your late 80s. In my opinion, you deserve more than breaking yourself at your age to care for the woman who cuckolded you many times over. She seems remorseless and, as a professional therapist, knew exactly what to say to manipulate your feelings.

You can forgive your wife without being her primary caregiver. Her needs are only going to increase. Your feelings matter. I hope you find a good memory care for her and find peace and contentment for yourself.

I’m sorry for your very understandable pain. It will be a huge challenge to continue in a caregiver role and be able to let this go. Start by forgiving her, it will be a gift to you, not easy but important. See a counselor to help you in deciding how to handle this going forward, you need guidance to be able to even consider keeping your role in her ongoing care. I wish you healing and peace

If you have not already, get tested for STDs.

My heart goes out to you. I cannot imagine how hard it has been to process this knowledge.

It may be even harder for you to trust a therapist considering her past and her profession, but please find someone you can talk to about this betrayal.

Give yourself permission to grieve the relationship you thought you had and decide where you want to go now in the relationship.

Personally, I would find it impossible to be a caregiver to someone who had so little regard for me and our relationship. This is why I will never provide hands on care to either of my parents.

You do not have to remain her caregiver.

You are going to need time to decide how you want to move forward. I suggest arranging for respite care for her in a facility, while you decide if you have the capacity to provide ongoing hands on care.