I have just realised I have chosen the wrong path in my life

A mid life crisis should be the point where you realise it's time to grow up and stop dreaming about things that cannot be and accept what is.

Unless your wife is horrible and selfish (you have barely mentioned her so I doubt it) there is a good relationship to be made there if you are prepared to put in the effort. Most people don't get what they imagine they want and the acceptance of that is where they start to build a great here and now. It's time to stop playing at been a grown up and actually be one.

It's very selfish to do what you are doing to your wife and children, a lack of commitment is what is making your life unforfilling.

Get some councilling about your own commitment issues and heal yourself.

You are in a dreamland so you won't see it, but all the signs are there that your dream woman is using you as a bit of an escape herself. She is loving the attention and the idea of some lad pining over her, she loves being told that she is special, its an ego boost and the best part for her is that she doesn't need to do much to get it.

Its not real though, she will take the ego boost when she is home but push come to shove it will go absolutely nowhere. She dumped you before because it was right for her career and desires, now you think this smart and attractive woman is going to throw it all away just to come back to a middle aged man?

I don't think you should stay with your wife, it is cowardly to pretend to love somebody and she is a human being as well, she deserves better than a sham marriage of convenience.

But your dream of wonderful dates with your first love is just a cliche, and a boring cliche at that. If you want to change your life then leave your wife and go find somebody real, not some fantasy from your youth.

First, it's not just the financial consequences of divorce. If you refuse to give your wife everything she wants you should fully expect to have her level false allegations at you to take everything and tie you up in courts for many years. This does not just happen "other men", and you need to have impeccable clarity about how much Irish family law judges, protected by the secrecy of family law courts, are on the side of women. You've been warned.

Second, things were not fine until this happened. If they were, you wouldn't be even thinking about this so stop telling yourself a false narrative. You don't have to have roaring fights to be in trouble. Stonewalling and the silent treatment - "the catastrophe of indifference" - signal the deathknell of so many relationships where loneliness is the lived death sentence long before somebody finds the courage to go through the savage legislated inhumanity that is the divorce process in Ireland.

If your wife is a cold, unloving person indifferent to you, then she has left the relationship already and you deserve credit for having the courage to face that. If she is loving and all the rest appreciate your lottery win, work on your relationship, cop on, and don't be acting the amadán for the love of Jesus.

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Warning applied for Breach of Charter: Generalisations

I think your first mistake was staying in contact with this woman all these years. It gave you far too much bandwidth for the "what if/if only" daydreams that have led you to this point.

I also find it extremely interesting that throughout your post you refer to not acting on your physical urges out of respect for *her* marriage and *her* situation - what about your own wife and marriage???

I'm very glad to hear you've booked in with a counsellor, it seems you've gone too far down this "the one that got away" rabbithole to find your way back out without help. I also think you need to explore why you essentially jumped from relationship to relationship in the past without ever pausing to do some reflection and work on yourself. I think some time spent figuring out who you were single would have been hugely beneficial to you, but that ship has unfortunately sailed.

If, after therapy, you realise you are genuinely, deeply unhappy in your marriage, then separate. Believe me, it will be best for the kids in the long run. But to me it sounds like you've just turned your own head with this fantasy of what your life might have been. If that's the case, then do the work required to fix it.

You didn’t choose the wrong path. You blindly stumbled along, heartbroken until you found someone tolerable & who fitted in with your friends & your idea of happiness. You made a happy enough life with her, perhaps lied to yourself & to her, presumably allowing her to feel safe in the relationship with someone she loves. Selfless or selfish? Maybe a bit of both but ultimately you were happy enough.

The other lady is also happy enough or maybe she too is pining from the other side of the world. Pining enough to blow up multiple lives & possibly a few careers?

First, I think you need to acknowledge if your marriage is over & if it is, tell your wife & start divorce proceedings. Find your happiness in yourself & let her go.

Then you’ll have a clean slate to present to the other lady & it’s up to her whether or not to choose you.

I think a lot of your thoughts are quite normal for this stage of your life, and you’ve acknowledged this. I’m 45, two kids, wife, house , decent job etc. and my life to an awful lot of people would seem quite enviable. But we always want more, particularly if we are successful/ambitious people. I’ve also become acutely aware of my own mortality and how aging is quite unkind and difficult, so i like you fantasise from time to time on what could have been or what could be. I feel like pressing the f**k it button on lots of things but, and this is a massive but, the kids are everything so i tend to snap back out of whatever selfish or self pity bollocks I’ve wandered into. Don’t do it man, break all contact with the girl. It’s a massive gamble and not in the least bit worth the risk.

Ireland has no-fault divorce. Also, behaviour of the parties is not taken into account unless it would be unjust not to. Just clarifying for the OP

Make sure neither you or this other woman are consuming alcohol when you meet up to talk. Make sure you are both stone cold sober. Alcohol hides the truth.

Alcohol and even the after effects of it days later will make you think and do stupid things.

Make sure you are getting enough sleep. Make sure it's not something else that's pushing you away from your family.

Anxiety, depression, grief, .. can make you do stupid things.

Make sure you are absolutely wide awake and calm before you make any rash decisions. And weight up all the pros and cons. Far away fields are not greener. You could throw everything away and this woman could walk away from you next year or ... anything could happen.

Also, have you friends, pastimes etc etc. Make sure you are not burned out at home and/or work. Give yourself time off if you need it.

Cut to the chase at therapy. Get it all out asap. Then you'll be better value for your time and money. Don't let it drag on over several sessions. Also, maybe write it all down on paper before you goto therapy so you have all your thoughts on paper. But don't let anybody else see this. It can be your own shorthand.

Don't make a rash decisions.

Transport yourself back in time before this recent angst hit. Imagine a reversal of the situation. Your wife tells you that she wants to split up with you in order to take up with an old flame from her past, who she only meets occasionally, but whom she totally preoccupied with now.

What would your reaction be? Would you be incredulous that she would be prepared to tear your family apart on the basis of a whim?

OP, in my opinion you are lusting after the past, and/or your youth, not the woman.

Put on your Big Boy pants, grow a pair & get on with the life you seemed to be reasonably content with up until a short while ago.

Reserve a small corner of your mind for the other lady. Visit that corner once every few months, enjoy the imaginings, then lock the corner away for another three months & go back to being a good Dad &a mediocre husband.

You sound as if you're afraid of being alone. Constantly jumping from relationship to relationship, ending up married to a women you never loved, now being afraid to leave the wife you never loved, while trying to justify standing together with some fairly poor reasons tbh.

Also, you said you came from a happy home? Was it really a happy home or was it a simply a 'happy' home because your parents never split up? This will be things you'll explore during therapy, so worth getting a head start on them in your own head.