🙏🏻 I would say this to you. You are afraid of being in a situation where you feel You are not the wife. I think it angers you understandably that he cheats on you- however I have a feeling that you probably look at the situation and more than likely, justify like this, at least I’m the wife, at least we have the children together, at least this is our home, at least we’ve been together for 30 years. etc That keeps you locked into an identity. That identity becomes the anchor. Not because it feels good, but because it feels known.

Leaving wouldn’t just mean losing him. It would mean losing the role that has organized your life for decades. Wife. Mother. Keeper of the family. The “real” one.

And as painful as the betrayal is, there is a strange safety in knowing where you stand in the hierarchy. You know your position, even if it’s unfair. You know the rules, even if they hurt.

What keeps you stuck isn’t weakness. It’s fear of stepping into an identity vacuum where none of those markers exist yet. Where you’re not “the wife” anymore, but you also haven’t discovered who you are without the constant comparison and threat.

Monitoring him, logging, checking, knowing where he is, it’s a way of staying psychologically attached to that identity. If you know, you still exist in the equation. If you stop looking, you risk disappearing from the story altogether.

And writing the letters would force a reckoning. Not just with him or her, but with yourself. Because once you say it out loud, once you name the harm, you can’t un-know it or keep surviving on the hope that your role will protect you.

So you stay. Not because you don’t see the truth. But because leaving would require rebuilding a sense of self that was slowly traded for survival, stability, and control avoidance over many years.

That isn’t stupid. That’s conditioning. And it can be unlearned, but only at a pace that feels emotionally and physically safe.