Hello everyone! 

I want to start by saying this is all a new experience for me, and I want to preemptively apologize if this comes across as rambling! I'm a heterosexual male, and I have been with my wife for 8 years and we have been happily married for 3 years. Ever since we moved in together 5 years ago, we've had sex about once a week on average, and we've communicated our needs and occasional complaints and made adjustments all along the way.

She came out to me as bisexual 4 years ago, and one week ago she disclosed that she was still questioning her sexuality, but she was more than likely a lesbian. She asked if she could explore her sexuality outside of our relationship, and I encouraged her to do so. She had been chatting online with a genderfluid lesbian for about a month, and since I gave my permission they have become romantically involved and sexting. This was wrong of me to do, but I read through their private chat logs and found that my wife is madly in love with her. My wife told her about how she never liked kissing me, how she was no longer attracted to me, and how badly she wanted to fly to her country and spend the rest of her life with her.

I was honest with my wife and admitted I had invaded her privacy, but we needed to have a long discussion about our future. She forgave me for my breach of her privacy, and she reassured me that I was the priority in her life and that her sexting partner was a short-term relationship just for fun that probably won't last longer than a month. I made it clear that, personally, romance needs a physical connection as a foundation, and that I could not imagine keeping a romantic relationship with her alive without a mutual physical attraction. She again reassured me that her loss of attraction for me was just due to my weight gain last year (I had been up to almost 300 pounds compared to the 180 when we first met) but she has found it again for me (I have recently lost 60 pounds) and she has always enjoyed our sex. She encouraged me to seek out other women if it would help the situation feel more fair to me, but she has since changed her mind on this, telling me she is not comfortable with it. We both still love each other so deeply and neither of us want our marriage to end. 

We've reached out to the support staff at OurPath, we've been reading through the resources provided, and we are making an appointment with a marriage counselor. I have reached out to my friends and family, and they have offered their ears to me. My wife has reached out to her friends and her own mother, however her mother did not listen, and just told her that it was a phase and she was a fool for ruining her marriage.

My wife has told me how guilty she feels for changing our relationship dynamic, and how she wishes she could turn back time and never talk to this person. She says she wants nothing more than to go back to how things were a week ago. I've reassured her that it's not her fault, and that I'm happy and excited for her to be true to herself. I am hoping my wife is not lying about her attraction for me to spare our marriage, as I have repeatedly told her if this was the case it would only wound us both more deeply in the long run. I am doing my best to be there for her through this, and keep my mental health up at the same time. I don't want to tell her to block her sexting partner, as I have seen how passionate and happy and in love she is, but at the same time I'm starting to feel really paranoid that this is not a fling, but rather the first time she's ever felt genuine romantic love for somebody. I don't want to take that away from her, but I don't see how we could go back to the way things were for as long as she continues sexting someone she is not married to. I don't think I want to be married to someone who does not feel the same way I do about them, even if we do love each other very much and appreciate the life we've built together.

What do you all think?