i think your wife wants out of the marriage and is making everything your fault because she doesn't want to take the responsibility for any part of its failure. i doubt your changing has much to do with anything. OR, she wants to have a marriage and child as a safe place and screw around but not feel guilty so she pretends to you and herself that her marriage is hopeless. she certainly isn't doing anything to improve it and the marriage counseling may just be a front to pretend she wants it to work. all of the above may even be unsconscious. in any event, it looks over to me. sorry.

and have the man be the one who's hanging out online engaging in 'affairs' or whatnot, allegedly transgressing the sacred bonds of commitment;

The reaction from the average feminist here would be swift and brutal, with solid support of immediate dissolution of the marriage.

I am interested in the lackadaisical response to not ONE but TWO secret relationships (the difference between the digital and physical affair are nil since MOST women will spill a similar-sized cow over either) occurring within the morally-fortified zone of marriage.

I wonder if Cary would also be as inclined to crab-walk around the issue of infidelity if the adultery centered on the man?

Frankly, I support minimizing affair-centered indiscretions but what I am seeing here is not the normal response from a feminist-based audience.

Is this because the person committing the adultery is a woman?

be wary of their problems.

I say these things come in threes. You are past step one, she is one step behind.

I also think "cutting back on the drinking" is, in all likelihood, a bit superficial. You need to take on something positive, besides work that really challenges and engages you. Coach or Reff your daughter in her favorite sport. Take up mountain biking. Hike the Appalachian Trail. Write a book. Plant a garden. In other words, get out there and build some positives in your life--things you take pleasure from and that expose you to other people in healthy ways. Support, love, whatever from your spouse may not be forthcoming for a while yet.

Don't do anything drastic. She is trying to work out her own issues. Respect that. Think of it as a journey where you have no idea what the destination is, but just enjoy getting there every day.

You're making a very faulty assumption. Of course we'd be saying the same thing to a man. Any attempt to follow the letters here on different days shows that.

Why do people always think that just because they got their stuff together "in their opinion" that everyone around them should fall on their knees in praise? In the first place the offense was yours, all the fouls where yours, all the bad behavior was yours, why are people supposed to think you so great for getting back with the program? Your going into your wife's email to read her personal correspondence is unforgivable for any reason. I have been treated in this way by my husband for our entire marriage, the resentment will never leave no matter what he does or how much he tries to make up for it. He stopped drinking 3 years ago, I will stay with him, but I will never really trust him ever. So you may have to just live with what you have created.

Imagine the LW was a woman. Her husband would have cheated her with two other women and deny the evidence when she found the emails. Not only that, her husband would have said "horrible, hateful things" to her and "attacked her viciously on a host of subjects going back 15 years".

There would be a chorus of Salonistas telling "Divorce the ass! Run for the hills!".

But we know that this is Salon and women are considered unable to do anything wrong. Any action, no matter how despicable is, is excused and rationalized if it is done by a woman. So no matter how much the logic and common sense must be twisted, we will always find a way to rationalize the behavior of a cheating wife. Some examples and my comments between square brackets.

"Don't do anything drastic. She is trying to work out her own issues." ["Working out her issues" is to have affairs with two men? So any husband who has issues is entitled to bang two women, deny it and attack the wife. When the wife protest, he can say "I'm working out my issues by banging the horizontal mambo"]

"LW not Mr. Perfect, yet" [So the infidelity is less important because it is done to a non-perfect person. You only have to be faithful to a perfect person]

Saying "I'm pretty sure she had affairs that she won't cop to" makes therapy an almost meaningless exercise [so starting from the truth is bad for therapy].

It takes time and experience to see if she can restore her trust in you. [As mynameisdan said "She is not trusting you so she is banging other guys. HA"]

Someone suggested that the wife was cheating because the husband might help more with household chores.

I'd see a good therapist by myself and work on yourself. [so the wife is cheating and the only one who has to go to a therapist is the husband]

Reach an agreement that both of you can have outside affairs if you wish, provided that it is discreet and that attention is paid to matters of hygiene.[Amerigo, this is the best. Every time a husband cheats he would love to hear this solution. Let's make this the standard procedure for cheating spouses, whatever their sex]

"Misogynists just love a good excuse to bash women, suggest that the courts are biased against them, and troll doom and gloom".

[The ones who you are labelling as "mysoginists" (in order to disqualify their arguments without discussing them) are not suggesting that the courts are biased against them. They are SAYING so (no suggesting it). And it is TRUE. Read, for example, "Taken into custody". If telling the objective truth is mysoginist, let everybody be a mysoginist. It is easy to dismiss truths by insulting the messenger]