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The original was posted on /r/bestofredditorupdates by /u/Sw33tSkitty on 2025-08-18 01:24:56+00:00.

I am not the OP. Originally posted by u/throwRA_badhusband in r/trueoffmychest (and relationshipadvice and longdistance)

Trigger warning: emotional cheating, war and death mentioned, gun violence mentioned, child neglect, mental illness, pregnancy loss mentioned, religious trauma, racism and islamophobia

Mood spoiler: very bleak

First BORU post: link

First post: July 13 2024

My wife and I are long-distance. She works abroad. I take care of our sons (4 and 3) and do odd jobs. Originally we lived with her but our kids ended up put in a dangerous situation and I didn’t want that to happen again. Quitting her job wasn’t an option in her eyes so I moved to our home country with the kids while she stayed. She visits us a few times a year. I moved in with close family friends.

It was a hard and painful decision. I had a lot of resentment over my wife prioritizing her job over our family. But I love her. I couldn’t imagine not being with her. I thought about divorce but we decided to try to work things out.

The other woman was my friend when we were little kids. After my mother died I left my hometown and moved in with my dad and didn’t see that friend. But I stayed connected with some other people from that town throughout my life and when I moved back home with the kids I started visiting my hometown more. To see my mom’s grave and visit my old neighbors. When I met my old friend again I was excited to see her, but I’m nostalgic for everything from my childhood, it started out innocent. I was just happy to have another connection to that part of my life. Anyway she has a son too who is 6, and so we ended up taking our kids to the park together while we had a coffee and caught up. It was innocent and I told my wife I’d reconnected with her and my wife was fine with it. She jokingly asked if she should be jealous but she didn’t mean it. She trusted me. So I feel so terrible.

We met up a couple times a month from then on. I don’t really know when it lost its innocence. But I realized I started becoming infatuated with her. We’d hug every time we met up and before we left and I would feel so wistful when she would hug me. She would start talking about how her ex mistreated her and her son and I felt so protective. She started making comments like, “(My son) is so good with (your sons), it’s like they are brothers!” And I talked to her about some of the stuff that bothered me about my relationship with my wife and she sympathized.

I realized that I enjoyed the attention and I found myself entertaining fantasies that I was with her instead. I kept thinking about if I had never met my wife and had instead moved back home and reconnected with my old friend, and we’d somehow had our same kids only with each other, we both could have been happy and been spared so much pain. If I’m trying to be objective, she’s a better match for me than my wife. She puts her kids first. She appreciates me for who I am. My wife does too but I feel like me and the kids are always an afterthought for her. Even when she’s home and spending time with us she is always, always thinking about her job. My wife is a good person and she does good work. But her job traumatizes her and she was already tramautized before she started it. She started doing her job to cope with her past but she’s also retraumatizing herself over and over. And my kids and I pay the price. I’m not trying to justify my actions I’m just trying to explain. My childhood friend was always complimenting me on my looks, how good of a dad I am, my physical strength. It’s like she appreciated the unique things about me. And I feel like my wife loved me just because I was there for her. Like she would have loved anyone who loved her and I was just the only one who did. It wasn’t always like that but that’s how it started to eventually feel with my wife being so distracted by her job all the time. I didn’t really notice it until I reconnected with my friend and noticed the contrast.

I should not have let things get that far I know. But at first it was just an occasional thought and I just brushed it off as intrusive thoughts and telling myself, yeah, everyone has inappropriate thoughts, but what matters is your actions. But I just let it go too far. In hindsight some of our “friendly banter” was really more like flirting and it was not appropriate. That’s an action, not a thought.

Anyway today was a reality check. She said she wanted to talk to me about something serious without the kids there so I let my other friend who I live with baby-sit and met up with her. And she basically confronted me with the fact that we obviously have feelings for each other and said I should leave my wife for her.

But it was like immediately I realized the amount of bullshit I was feeding myself and her. I instantly felt so bad, I didn’t deny having feelings but maybe I should have. She kept insisting I think it over and when she saw how upset I was she said she’d let me think it over then left. I should have told her, no, there is nothing to think over, I love my wife and I’m not leaving her. But I didn’t say anything. That in itself is weighing on me.

I need to tell my wife. I know. I just don’t even know where to begin. Next time she’s coming home is October. I feel like this is the kind of thing to say face-to-face but I don’t want to wait that long. And I don’t want her to come all this way to have a nice time and ruin it. I could leave the kids with my friends and go visit her. But on top of the money issues and logistical issues even that thought makes me sick. I keep imagining her smiling and being delighted to see me and then how devastated she’s going to be when I tell her. I can’t stop thinking about her face. I feel sick. I don’t want to tell her at all and just never see my childhood friend again (I’m also mad at myself for letting my stupid fantasies ruin a friendship and a precious memory but I know it would be wrong to keep seeing her and impossible to just be normal friends now) but I know honesty is the best policy. I owe it to her to be honest.

I just don’t know what to do. I feel so wrong and stupid. I don’t want to tell my friends. I think one

Edits on the original post:

EDIT: Okay these comments are overwhelming and I need to sleep. Tomorrow I’m going to talk to my friends about what’s going on and (after being yelled at probably) see if they’ll be able to watch my kids while I visit my wife and tell her what’s going on. If not I can probably ask a few other people. If not then I’ll just tell her over Zoom. I’m also going to text my childhood friend that I don’t want to see her again and then block her. I’m not going to leave my wife. If she leaves me I’m going to stay single. I’m not going to date my ex-friend. I will always love my wife and I don’t think it would be fair to anyone for me to date anyone else while I still love her.

To stop from having to answer the same questions over and over, my wife is an aid worker. She doesn’t do it for the money. She does it because she believes God called her to do it. I do gig jobs and sometimes construction. I choose to work more flexibly and spend more time with my kids. I put my wife through college, I’m not freeloading off her (I am kind of freeloading off the friend I live with, I’ll admit that. But we’re all happy with this arrangement.) The reason I left with the kids is because we got carjacked at gunpoint. My wife changes location a lot so living somewhere safe but still closer to her isn’t really an option. It’s either travel with her officially through her organization, or stay put somewhere. I don’t think my childhood friend originally intended to cheat with me, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.

EDIT 2: Everyone telling me to get a stable job so my wife can come home, you misunderstand. You think my wife and I haven’t spoken about this? She is never going to quit her job. She made that very clear. Her job is her priority. I promise you she’s not doing it for the money. I’m not forcing her to do it by refusing to work more. If she said she would even consider quitting if I found a more stable job I’d do that in a heartbeat.

Anyway I talked stuff over with my friends. They were understanding. The plan is to fly over and see my wife next week ish, but we still have to make arrangements. I thought about contacting my wife’s boss to see if we could do a surprise visit, but it seems like it would be so cruel to show up and surprise her and make her happy to see me only to break her heart. So instead I called my wife saying everyone is OK but I have something bad to tell her that she should hear in person and I’m going to fly out to see her. She said I should just tell her because otherwise she’s going to worry about it the whole time. So I almost did. But then she said “No, don’t tell me. I want to see you.” So I didn’t.of them would be really angry at me for almost cheating and the other might actually encourage me to leave my wife. I feel like I need someone to tell me what to do because I can’t process.

[Second Post](https…

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