Stuck

My wife and I have been together 30 years. This is our 23rd year of marriage. Last summer, in late July/ early August she was diagnosed with stage IVb pancreatic cancer--highly deadly and caught so late it is terminal. In September, I discovered she has been having an affair for several years. It took months to get her to admit the length of the affair, and she has not stopped seeing the person. She claims she discovered she is polyamorous, but she had not slept with me for about the length of time she has been having the affair, and when we discussed after discovering the affair, she said it would take months for her to get there.

Had I not discovered the affair, I have every reason to believe she never would have shared it with me. This wasn't a trifling affair, they spent 5 nights in Vegas--me believing she was with a formerly mutual friend--and visited hotels 2x a month, again, me believing she was with friends. They covered the financial transactions up through a variety of means, but also know that she managed our finances throughout our marriage, and we have always been frugal. I trusted her, and never would have imagined she would spend OUR money in this way. It really makes me upset.

She doesn't want the marriage to end, but to be clear, in my view, its over. I have slept on the couch since finding out, and no longer believe we can function like husband and wife. Here is the most complicated part of this. She is dying. She has about a 1% chance of surviving 5 years. Her chemo is palliative, not curative. We have teenage kids. She has said on mulitple occasions that I should just pretend that the affair isn't happening until she gets better. She won't get better, and even if she was going to,

She also attempted suicide when I, after six months of me knowing about the affair, told the other man's wife about the affair. I had moved out on advice of my therapist--temporarily--to disentangle. I still came to care for her every day and to see the kids. I had held off for six months before telling her, because my wife threatened to stop chemotherapy if she couldn't see him--and I didn't want that to happen both for my kids and because, despite all of this, I love her. I realized that this threat was manipulative, and for my own piece of mind had to tell the other man's wife. The change effected was fleeting. Two days after the attempted suicide, my wife was in a stellar mood, and volunteered that nothing had really changed.

There is more, like the fact that she kept trying to get us to buy a house close to his--I had no idea where he lived until after I discovered the affair. We had the earnest money in a cashier's check ready to hand over the day she received the news she was sick. We had looked at about 50 homes prior to finding this one, and she rejected all of them. None of the rejected homes were near her lover's home.

I have decided to stuff it down, to put my feelings in a box for now. It is difficult, and it is taking a toll on my health. The alternative is not tenable. She is dying, or I would leave. The cancer may kill her next week or in 5 years. I won't stay for five years, I just can't. But for now I am stuck. She will soon run out of sick leave, and lose her job, so will need my insurance to cover the costs of treatment.

This all is really completely surreal and more terrible than I ever could have imagined the way this would have turned out. I am baffled by her ability to do this and not sure why I am putting it in writing here.