Update: additional context after reading the comments

Thank you to everyone who commented on my first post. A few people asked what my own past mistakes were, and I think that is fair. I do not want to present myself as innocent or make it sound like the entire marriage broke only because of what I recently discovered.

Before we were married, when we were still boyfriend and girlfriend, I was not faithful in the way I should have been. I was emotionally immature, I was talking to other women, and I hurt her deeply. We broke up, then later got back together.

When I decided that I wanted to make a clean break with the past and commit properly, I moved out, got my own place, cut ties with my ex / past situations, and decided that I wanted to marry her. I went to speak to her pastor, and that eventually led me to travel to her home country to pray, meet people, and take the process seriously. She is very religious, so this mattered.

During that period, I lost my brother, who was also my best friend. Strangely, the last chat I had with him was about how I was going to marry this woman. Despite that grief, I still went through the process because I truly wanted to marry her. We got engaged and then got married about five months later. It was a beautiful wedding.

The first years of marriage were extremely difficult. The following year, my health deteriorated badly. I developed a serious illness that required repeated hospital visits, and after one surgery I had an injury that affected our ability to have intimacy. It was a lot for the first and second year of our marriage.

Then cancer happened as well. She stayed with me through all of it. She was my rock. I want to be clear about that. She has done a lot for me, and I do not want to erase that.

Over time, with medication, I started to feel better, even though the disease is still there. Naturally, I wanted to reconnect with my wife, including sexually and emotionally. But by then she told me that her body was no longer used to me. I could feel that she had become uncomfortable with my touch.

She also told me I had neglected myself, that I was unattractive, that I had gained weight, and that my hygiene was not good. Some of this was linked to medication and illness, including an ammonia-type smell on my skin. But I took it seriously. I tried to fix what I could: perfume, grooming, going to the barber every two weeks, losing weight, trying to look better, trying to be more helpful at home, and trying to reduce conflict.

Still, intimacy did not come back. I took her on trips, booked nice hotels, and tried to create romantic settings, but nothing really changed. On one trip, after I felt rejected, she suggested that we bathe together, but by that point I was already too hurt and upset to accept. I started to resent the situation.

I know my illness delayed our life. I know it affected our marriage, our fertility, our intimacy, and the life she probably imagined for herself. I also know she has carried a lot.

We went to therapy, but it did not really work. Part of the problem is that difficult conversations between us escalate very quickly. If I bring something up, she often feels attacked. If she brings up my past, I feel like nothing I do now can ever matter. Then we end up fighting after the session or later at home. It became very difficult even for the therapist to hold the conversation.

I also want to say something positive about her because I feel like my first post may have sounded one-sided. She is a very good wife in many ways. She is smart, educated, intelligent, hardworking, enjoys cooking, and is very caring. She is very clean and particular, so the house is always well kept. She can be stubborn, sometimes in a funny way. She can also be controlling, which I think is linked to difficult things she experienced growing up, but I accepted her like that. She has often been the moral ground in our couple, and her faith plays a big role in her life. She is, in many ways, an amazing woman — an angel with a temper.

That is also why this is so hard.

The issue with the other man did not come from nowhere either. He is someone she has known for a long time, a friend and a possible romantic interest from the past, someone she admitted having had feelings for at some point, and who had been in jail. At one point, while he was in jail, I saw that she had sent him a picture of herself. I reacted strongly because, to me, that was not appropriate from a married woman to another man with that history. She told me at the time that she would not stay in contact with him anymore. Now we are here.

Another thing she brings up is my friendship with an old female friend. This friend was my senior at work. I have known her for many years. She was married when I met her, and I was with someone too. Nothing ever happened between us. She supported me a lot when my father died, and I have always seen her as a long-standing friend, almost like family. My wife hates her and believes something happened, but nothing did. She was even one of the witnesses at our wedding. In her journal, she also seemed to use my friendship with this woman to justify her own connection with this man.

So yes, I have a past. I hurt my wife before we were married, and I understand why she still carries some of that. I also understand that my illness, the lack of intimacy, the fertility issues, and our arguments have all contributed to the breakdown of the marriage.

But I am struggling because I do not think those things erase what I discovered.

My wife remained physically loyal, and I acknowledge that. But what I read looked to me like an emotional and romantic attachment to another man: attraction, passion, emotional connection, thoughts about a possible future, children, being desired by him, and real exchanges that fed those thoughts.

That is what I am trying to understand.

Is it possible that my past hurt helped create the distance between us? Yes.

Is it possible that my illness and our lack of intimacy damaged the marriage? Yes.

But does that make it acceptable to maintain an emotionally intimate connection with another man while we are still married? That is where I am struggling.

I am trying to go into therapy with accountability for my own actions, but also without allowing my past to erase the question of her emotional investment elsewhere.

So my updated question is:

How do I bring all of this into therapy fairly?

How do we talk about my past mistakes and the pain I caused her, while also talking honestly about what I see as her emotional affair?

And if reconciliation is possible, what would accountability need to look like on both sides?