Throwaway for obvious reasons.
I'll give you full context before I get into my current situation.
I am 44m, married to 43f. We were high school sweethearts who stayed together during university and married young. From the beginning I have known my wife is my soulmate and I have never desired any woman other than her.
Our oldest son is 16. After he was born my wife and I had some marital trouble. Our schedules were off and we struggled with finding time to be intimate and to actually act like husband and wife. During this period I discovered that she had an ongoing affair with a senior work colleague. We separated briefly, but reconciled. Shortly after we reconciled she told me that she was pregnant. I should note at this point that she at first didn't believe she was pregnant as she had "gotten her period" during the first 12 weeks of her pregnancy.
Our second baby arrived and as he began to grow I became suspicious of how different he looked to both me and my other son. My wife agreed to a paternity test and - as I thought - the baby was not mine.
I was broken, but decided that as I deeply loved both my wife and my 2 sons I would do my best to get past this revelation and I sincerely believed for a while that I had. We had a 3rd son a couple of years later and have since lived a happy life together.
My wife seemed sincerely sorry for her affair, committed to therapy and since then I have had absolutely no reason to doubt her fidelity. Her colleague moved away shortly after their affair ended and they have not been in contact since.
However, over the years the situation has started to eat away at me for a number of reasons and I'm not sure how much longer I can continue.
- It is incredibly clear that the 2nd child is not mine. He looks nothing like me or his brothers. It has never come up in conversation but I do worry that I am a laughing stock in our community
- I am a short and slim man, my wife's affair partner was very tall and athletic and the boy has his genes. At age 13 he is already almost as tall as I am. It is very clear that in a couple of years he will tower over me.
- Part of me believes that the boy is aware of this, deep-down. He is disobedient and disrespectful at times. Far more so than his brothers are. We had a heated row recently that resulted in him trying to get physical with me before I de-escalated the situation. This is no worry to me currently (he's only 13 after all) but as he grows could cause problems.
- He is already taller and stronger than my oldest son. They generally got on quite well growing up, but since starting high school he has started to occasionally bully my oldest son who is an introverted and shy boy.
- This may be the most unhinged one, so apologies in advance. The boy is good at everything. He is already among the quickest and strongest in his class, he plays for a few sports teams where he excels. He is a talented musician and regularly appears on Gifted and Talented lists at school. I am regularly told that I should be very proud of "my son" and the itch is becoming unbearable.
What do I do from here? Where do I go? I honestly feel like these aren't the thoughts of a sane man but at the same time they make sense. I feel tortured on a day-to-day basis by a constant reminder that my wife sought out an affair with a man who is physically superior and more successful than I am. A man who cast her aside and moved on, and now the likelihood is that I am raising his son as my own.
I feel like I am losing my mind. What can I do from here?
tl;dr - my wife cheated on me and my 2nd born son is not mine. I have known this for a long time but the fact is starting to eat away at my sanity.
