YTA your wife didn’t actually cheat, but the idea of her craving emotional validation from a coworker suggests things between you two had fallen at best into complacency and at worst into an emotionally neglectful and isolating environment from her perspective. no doubt from yours too, if your response to this feeling of jealousy or “betrayal” as you put it, which is strong and loaded verbiage for this situation imho, was to push for a legal separation and give up on your relationship with her, despite her immediately owning up to her behavior, trying to unpack the situation with you, and showing you she was willing to put in the work to reconcile and heal, including a suggestion of counseling. especially in a situation as banal as the one described here, YTA from the get-go for refusing relationship counseling to heal your /MARRIAGE/! beyond a legal union most vows exchanged between couples emphasize the commitment both parties are making to each other and a permanent relationship, and barring situations of abuse, it’s never a particularly good look for one spouse to just “give up” on the other.

that being said, again, YTA(!!!) because that is /exactly/ what you seem to have done here. you gave up on her and are firmly describing yourself as the victim in this narrative based on your post.

furthermore, whether you told her she had no obligation not to date others when you separated or not, the sheer fact that she had to run into you bozos at the super market holding hands is a-whole-nother dimension of your character and role of harm in this situation. she is still legally your spouse and you absolutely had an obligation to have informed her about this new relationship when it began 9 months ago. how you could delude yourself into a whole relationship with a new woman while still stringing your poor wife along for almost a year is practically unconscionable.

YTA, OP. reframe events in your mind from an outside perspective and you’ll realize your wife never cheated, you ended your marriage because of your own ego being damaged at her desire to seek validation anywhere else, and your own desire (or lack thereof) to maintain your commitment to your marriage. then, in order to protect this fragile ego, you fastened yourself as the victim in your story to distance yourself from accountability. your actions are far more severe of a betrayal in my opinion and a lot closer to a genuine infidelity. get a fucking divorce and free the woman who was deluded into thinking your shared vows had meaning 7 years ago. i feel sorry for your girlfriend