My [39M] wife [38F] did something kind of bad a long time ago and I'm not sure if I should just let sleeping dogs lie

My wife and I have been going through a rough patch lately and we've been doing counseling separately and together. An incident from about a decade ago came up when I was talking to my therapist this week and although I don't feel like I reacted that strongly at the time, now I'm lying awake on a Friday night having anxiety about it and feeling like I'm on the verge of tears. I still have unanswered questions about this incident, but I also don't know if I should let sleeping dogs lie since it was so long ago. We had been together a couple of years and we were having some problems back then, too, although we managed to work through them. I think that's why this incident has me so shaken today - there's this weird resonance.

Essentially, I found an email to her (I wasn't snooping, this was truly dumb luck) about me from a man she had gone on a date with before me. We had been together a couple of years at this point. Since birth I've had a disability that wouldn't be immediately obvious to you unless I disclosed it. Enclosed in the email to her was a picture of me that had been Photoshopped to mock this disability in a really grotesque way. Again, I don't think I reacted that strongly at the time, but actually having to describe this image to my therapist made me physically sick to my stomach. My wife's reply to him was basically along the lines of, "haha, you must be in love with me" or something like that.

I'm not even worried that she was unfaithful, but two things have always really bothered me about this incident and she's never been able to give an adequate explanation. First, how did he get my picture? It was from an online dating profile that I had deactivated. The most generous explanation is that she showed him my profile at some point, the worst that she sent him the picture herself. Second, why did she tell him about my disability? How did that possibly come up? There is absolutely no way he could have known about that without her telling him. She claims she was doing the thing where guys troll/harass women and she was giving him the vague "haha yeah" type of replies to blow him off and wait until he lost interest in talking to her. But that can't possibly be true. How long were they talking before that topic came up? It couldn't have been the second or third message.

On the other hand, it's like a decade later. Maybe I should just forget about this and never bring it up again? It almost feels unfair, given the issues we're having today, to bring things up from so long ago. At the same time, I kind of feel like I need a better answer to these questions than she's given me before? Am I opening a Pandora's box, shooting myself in the foot, making a monkey's paw wish?

tl;dr: wife was kind of a jerk a long time ago and I have some lingering questions, but also it might be too late to ask?

Submitted January 07, 2022 at 08:22PM by Affectionate-Bus1583 https://ift.tt/3qZBSQz