This is a bit long, thank you to those who take the time to read and reply
The last several months have been a lot of ups and downs, mostly due to my own actions. My then-fiance and I opened our relationship at possibly the worst time: three months before our wedding. My first fuckup was not speaking up about the feeling I had that it was bad timing. After three years of discussing it (we started the relationship with the understanding that it was not intended to be monogamous but the Pandemic hit about six months into our relationship and we fell into functional monogamy) I was just so excited that she was taking the first step to dip her toes into ENM. We didn't sit down and have One Big Conversation about how things should look because I thought we had covered everything in the many smaller talks we had over the years. I shouldn't have let my eagerness override my logic and I should have stopped and suggested we wait until after the wedding and have a serious sit down conversation before starting anything.
My second fuckup came when she started dating a man we will call Cedar. Initially the two of them were romantically involved and I was only in a sexual relationship with Cedar but I developed feelings fairly quickly and about a month after they started dating, I started dating Cedar as well. I knew I should have kept my distance and let the two of them have their relationship without my interference, yet I let myself fall for him anyway.
About two weeks before our wedding, I woke to Cedar inside my without a condom. The one boundary I knew for certain we had was that we would use condoms with other partners. I stopped it as soon as I woke up and realized what was happening but it still happened. Since then, there have also been a handful of times where Cedar has slipped inside me while grinding and heavy petting before pulling back to put on a condom or stop entirely and have had a condom break on us once. Outside of sex I have told Cedar several times I want condoms to be used, I just caved to the horny haze in the moment and both regret it and have lost trust in Cedar for pushing the boundary I placed while clear headed. I told him a few days ago that it absolutely cannot happen again and I WILL leave if it does.
I was so ashamed of my actions and afraid my wife would leave me over them that I stuffed everything down in a pit of denial for about three weeks before finally coming clean and telling her everything last night. I am extremely grateful that my wife has decided she wants to stay and work through all of this. She is beyond hurt and mad though, which I rightfully deserve. I have told her that I want to do and be better for her, she is tired of hearing that though bc we have been having issues for nearly the entire month and a half since our wedding. I genuinely want to be the wife she deserves and am willing to do anything to gain back her trust, we just are both at a loss for where to go from here.
I hate myself for being weak and not standing up for the boundary I agreed to and have lost trust in both myself and Cedar over this. I have been contemplating breaking up with Cedar but my wife is worried that I will grow to resent her if I do that and I have grown to love him and don't want to hurt him either. I just don't know what to do. My wife is willing to stick around and work everything out, I just need some ideas of actionable things I can do to start the mending process. I am committed to ensuring this never happens again.
So if you've made it this far, please help me! How do we start to move forward? What can I do to fix everything I have broken? I know it will take time but how to I show her she CAN trust me with boundaries? How do I trust myself? We have spent what was supposed to be our happy newlywed time in a haze of guilt and hurt and sadness, I just wish I could rewind the clock and do everything different.
ETA After reflecting on this post today, I have completely missed the point of why my wife is unhappy with me. She is pissed at Cedar for the condoms but the issues she has with me are not actually about Cedar but rather how I have been treating her. I got wrapped up in the NRE of a new relationship despite being vocal about not doing so at the beginning and have not been listening to her when she has told me why she was hurting. I appreciate y'all's support, please don't go after my wife though. This has highlighted that our issue is really to do with my poor communication skills and not respecting her boundaries either.
