I’m tortured by thoughts my wife cheated with World of Warcraft buddy

DEAR DEIDRE: THE thought of my wife cheating with yet another bloke is eating me up.

He’s a World Of Warcraft online gaming buddy she lost contact with four years ago but who started following her on Instagram last month.

If I ask her now whether she had an affair back then, she says: “Maybe I did. I’ve forgotten all about that.”

We’ve been married for 18 years and have two teenage children. My wife is 37 and I’m 42.

Before the kids came along, she’d drink to excess. She became an ­alcoholic.

I worked away on the oil rigs initially so she would spend long periods alone.

She’s sober now but many people say I’m a saint for what I’ve put up with.

She admitted to a fling with an ex and I forgave her. Then she cheated with a neighbour, dismissing it as a drunken mistake, and I forgave her that time too.

Around the same time she got hooked on computer games. There was a whole community of people I knew nothing about.

She got to know a guy who was in his early 20s. She asked me to trust their friendship and said he was “helping her to develop the character in the game”.

I reluctantly told her it was up to her.

She doesn’t drive so this man started picking her up and she’d come in smelling of booze and cheap aftershave but insisted they were “just mates”.

She had huge “memory loss” due to alcohol back then. She hit me and once she broke my nose.

I’ve stayed for the sake of the children. She’s better now and things are calmer because she doesn’t drink.

I gave up the rigs and our family life improved but now the Warcraft guy has resurfaced it’s making me wonder what really happened.

Did she cheat on me? She says she can’t answer, insisting: “It’s all in the past, whatever I did”.

I’m not sure I love her any longer.

DEIDRE SAYS: You stayed together for years, despite her cheating and violence.

If she had cheated a third time, is this the last straw or is there something else going on?

You’ve no evidence she’s cheating now but this man returning into her life has been a trigger for you.

You would not be unreasonable if you asked her to block this man due to his association with such an unsettling time.

You didn’t deal properly with her infidelity back then because her alcohol abuse and violence got in the way. Your kids were your priority.

Tavistockrelationships.org (020 7380 1975) provides counselling which will help you see if you can move forward. My support pack on cheating will help too.