My [35M] wife [32F] had an affair - and on some level I get it and am confused

I’m probably writing this post for my own sanity and ability to think things through, so I’m not sure what advice if any to expect. As some background, my wife and I met 5 years ago and fell head over heels for each other. I would say those good times lasted for 3-4 years, over which time we became married and had a baby who is 1 now. I will say, she has always worshipped me and been trustworthy, until we began having problems within the last year.

After having the baby some of the issues that seemed minor before escalated. I’ve usually have always done the majority of chores around the house and keep up with everything, as I work from home and am able to. With the baby things became much more difficult. Very often I have been overwhelmed and have begged for more help. I would say the division of labor has been 80-20wand I expressed my frustration early and often. She may have had postpartum we realized too late which made things worse. Both of us were sleep deprived and that made things worse. When I would get very overwhelmed, or just done with everything, I would snap at her in different ways. Sometimes it was begging for more help, sometimes it was yelling, or threatening divorce. I know that she always wanted to be with me and that threatening divorce would break her a bit each time. But in my anger I would use that as a way to try to get her to understand my frustrations.

After a year of this she stopped communicating with me. Really shut down. I didn’t want that, I wanted to fix things and get to communicating again, go to counseling. She wanted counseling also. This year I have tried to work with her, be patient, and gently work back in to talking and getting us help. It didn’t seem to have much effect so far, but I took the small wins and kept pushing forward, not getting frustrated at her not communicating but just trying to work towards being happy in time. She says that she’s afraid to talk to me given the way I’ve handled things, and broken her down. We’ve both known that we needed to get in counseling soon to get back to talking.

While she has been shut down on me, she has been talking to people on different apps (not dating apps). She has told me about friends she’s made and that seemed good. Unfortunately one of them lived near us and she decided to meet up with them. She claims it was to talk to a friend, but also has admitted that she knew it might go further. She did not tell me where she was going, just that she was meeting a work friend. That was a few weeks ago, she ended up going to his house and not just talking but screwing also. A week later she went back, same story of meeting friends and going out with them, but I started to suspect. When I confronted her she was angry that I accused her of anything, but I managed to see the messages and found out the truth. She spent that day and night at his house, and then came back home to me the next morning very distant. That was when I really suspected that she wasn’t out with friends. Of course I was very hurt and confused on why she would do that and lie to me, but the messages made it worse. She talked about how she really liked him, and liked pleasing him in bed. How it was better than our sex, because she’s tired of me and doesn’t like me asking for sex. How he makes her more wet and she’s done with me.

We’ve talked a lot about all of this over the last few days, and she’s insisted that he was more of a friend, and they just ended up sleeping together. That she never really cared for him, just liked having someone to talk to. That the only reason she said we’ve been having bad sex lately I because of our issues. That she was venting, and has always wanted me over anything. It’s hard to make sense of anything at this point. I do know that she used to worship me and that at some point I pushed her away to where she shut down on me. But what she did was obviously extremely wrong.

She’s cut all communication with him and with everyone on her friend apps. She’s insisted that we can go to counseling and try to make things work, because she loves me over anything. That I’ve played a part in all of this too with things getting so bad between us. On some level I do get it, and have regretted how things have gone so much. I’ve tentatively agreed to try counseling just to get my mind around everything. Is there anything here to salvage or am I a fool to think there might be? I go back and forth between saying I’m completely done, and that maybe there’s some chance to work things out. I do know that the best thing in my life has become a ruined mess, and that we both have blame for that. I don’t know where to go from here.