This is going to make be sound like am asshole, but this I how I dealt with this situation. I wish I could have dealt with it in a different way.

I want to tell you a story. When this happened to me 2 1/2 years ago it rocked my entire world to the core. He didnt tell me, the online girl he'd been carrying on a 6-month-long online affair with found out he was married and ratted him out. I was completely fucking blind-sided, I mean, I felt like I was in the twilight zone for quite awhile. I was SOOOOOO ashamed, I'd been duped, tricked, manipulated (while all the cheating was going while he was deployed to Iraq in 2016, he was sending us both the same texts, same pics same videos. We both sent him Valentine's boxes, he'd used our money to pay postage to send HER things, he never sent anything to me). I felt so stupid, embarrassed, I felt like a fool even though my brain was telling me that was irrational, my heart was still totally raging. My teenaged daughter caught onto what was going on and told my ex-husband, my son's girlfriend told her mother who works with my husband's ex-wife... and so on) I was profoundly embarrassed. Every time I thought about it, which was hundreds of times a day, I'd fall back down the rabbit hole again. He begged me to go to counseling, I agreed, and I went every single week, he never missed one, and I yelled and screamed and cursed and cried and said every vicious thing I could to him. My words were strictly weapons for a long time. I wanted him to bleed inside like I did. Every chance I got outside of therapy to take an shot at him, I took it. I ripped up every wedding picture and even put up collages in frames all over the house of his texts and pictures that he sent to her (in color, I had them made into photographs so they would look nicer). The girl had sent them to me. While he was cheating during those six months, I was at home with three kids and I was unexpectedly pregnant at age 42 (found out right before he deployed). My oldest was involved in a roll-over accident in our car, I found out we were being sued by a credit card company, and a pipe burst on our house. I found out about the cheating on our 10th anniversary, the day after finding out my son's girlfriend was pregnant and her parents were extremely pissed, and a month after giving birth a month early to our son, who was was born with a heart condition called Ebstein's anomaly (spent a week in NICU with him, my husband skyped HER the night I had him after talking to me). I told him he was a vile, pathetic excuse for a soldier, that I was disgusted. I saw that that one cut him, so I followed it through with more daggers to wound him; and I'd be gleeful for a second, then shame would fill me, because I LOVE him, I didn't want to hurt him... but he'd hurt me. I had this vision, in my head of two TV screens and one had my life during those six months playing on it, and the other one had his life, what HE was doing while I was going through all that. God, I was so fucking completely off-the-hook furious/hurt/crushed/ashamed that'd that I'd FALLEN for it! So my insanity continued, i threw things, I cried and begged him once, on my knees, to tell me WHY he did it. He cried and said he didnt know why. But he took it. I'm a recovering alcoholic (been sober since 1/2011) and I YEARNED to drink. My husband had weathered that storm back then with me, but I rationalized that THAT was different. Slowly, probably a year in, I'd have moments of happiness around him, then I'd immediately remind myself, "Nope, can't be vulnerable, can't let that ever happen again," One time he said to me, while crying, "I know! I know what you're trying to do, and I get it! You don't want me to ever again feel like I've got you in the palm of my hand! I GET IT, but we have to get past this! Stop pushing me away!" He'd used a perfect analogy. I downloaded a program onto his phone while I was "fixing" it for him once, so I could retrieve all the stuff I'd suspected he'd tried to delete after I found out. Once I found it, I used it, in every way possible. For a very long time, he didn't have an inch to wiggle. Even the marriage counselor pulled me aside after a session to tell me, "I really thinks he GETS it, it's time to move on to forgiveness." I figured she was just tired of my vitriol. I still sometimes feel like I want to take a shot at him, remind him I haven't forgotten. I still sometimes think that he's just waiting for my guard to go down. I never go to bed with him, because the intimacy, the inevitable feeling of his arms going around me, makes me feel calm and assured, and that makes me feel weak. We still have sex, though not as often, but I never stay there. I leave the room afterwards. I drag myself up to bed again at 330 in the morning, after falling asleep on the couch, and I snuggle up next to his sleeping form, because if he's asleep he doesn't know that I LOVE him. He still takes it. Something magical has happened, though. He cooks dinner every night, does 90% of the cleaning, let's me sleep in on Sundays while he watches the kids, cooks my next day lunch for me every night, makes sure I have enough diet coke, kisses me on my forehead every morning and calls me every day at lunch and after work, he brings me home energy drinks and cigarettes (started after this happened, apparently I'm the type of person that needs a vice, not an excuse, just the way it is) every Saturday after he gets off work, because I've been alone with the kids all day and he does all the laundry. Of course, I've never ASKED him to do these things. He just does them. He's NEVER faltered, this whole 2 1/2 years. I feel shameful, but there's still this other me, deep down inside, that won't let go of this need for revenge for this total betrayal. I never want to be with anyone else, so I can't cheat.. something, I have to find something... it's incessant, but it's not as loud as it was. I see a psychiatrist every three months, because when I kept asking my primary care doctor to up my antidepressant dosage he told me I needed to go to a psychiatrist, who put me on an antipsychotic, yep, as I said, I fucking lost it during this time. I wish I could totally get over this, but through the process I've learned that I don't know how to forgive, and that apparently, if you push me hard enough I'll lose it. Betrayal does that to me, I guess. I'm working on that. I've learned a lot about myself, and a lot about my husband, who I thought I'd lost. He's a good, good man, who made a mistake. He couldn't explain why it happened, although I'm sure it was something like he thought he'd get away with it, he was lonely, probably didnt get much of me on the phone because of all the drama, and it felt exciting to be the center of someone's attention. He didn't expect me to find out, and had he known I would he probably wouldn't have done it, because I doubt he set out to hurt me. I GET it... in my head, it's my heart that won't let it go. I STILL feel all that anger, just at a much softer level. I know in my heart he won't do it again, it's that he wanted to in the first place that hurts, and it hurts because I know I wouldn't have done it to him. I sometimes ask myself when I'll be done, when I'll let it go. I'm clearly not going anywhere, because I LOVE him. I had a very immature idea of love before all this. I thought he was my soulmate, and with our kind of love this stuff didnt happen, which I told myself OBVIOUSLY meant he didn't love me the way I love him. I'm not sure that's true anymore. I NEED to let it go. I have to keep reminding myself that it's not all about me. He has his own mind, his own worries, his own demons and sorrows and joys and I think he's ALMOST paid the pound of flesh I apparently require. Not to mention that I CLEARLY have some issues to deal with. I still always feel very guarded and that makes me sad. I'd love to just have him be my "safe place" again, instead of the one I need to protect myself from, but I'm still working on that, too. I can't wait to be free of this burden and just BE with my husband. I'll never, EVER tell him this, but we may be better than we were before it all happened. However, as it stands, I still, every now and then, fantasize that while he's on his deathbed, 40 years from now (if we're lucky), I'll lean down and whisper, "I never forgave you", but I'm working on that too, because I LOVE him.