Dear Therapist: I’m Shattered by My Husband’s Sexts

Editor’s Note: Every Monday, Lori Gottlieb answers questions from readers about their problems, big and small. Have a question? Email her at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com.

Dear Therapist,

I found out last month that my husband had a “sexting” affair with a woman 35 years his junior back in 2009. I initially discovered this through an email he had saved from 2011, and then I found more. She left our town in June 2009 and he retired in December 2010.

He swears it never went beyond sexting, but he will not give me a specific time frame in which this occurred, so everything I know, I have pieced together myself. I have reached out to this woman for information. I wrote to the email address she had used to correspond with my husband, but in her response she denied knowing him. She