Still struggling with whether/how we can continue to live in the same house and if it's better for the kids or not. If we can be peaceful, I think it won't be damaging to the kids.
This, and your comments wondering if people make it back together after a partner has an affair, make me think that you haven't really digested what is happening right now. That is often what happens when our lives become so enmeshed with someone who isn't emotionally healthy.
In loving them, we make excuses for them and rationalize, and downplay the truth of what they've done.
She's an addict/alcoholic who cannot control her behavior. She has had an affair that, similarly, she is not really giving up. In some ways, that can be like another addiction; she has made deep commitments to you emotionally and legally, and yet, she cannot keep her promise to honor them.
As for kids, as the child of an abusive alcoholic father and a dysfunctional co-dependent mother, it would have been much much better for me to have lived with one stable, rational, reasonable parent than the life I had.
Children - especially as young as yours are - perceive far more of the dysfunction in the household and in their parents' behavior than we think they do. The problem is that, being children, they are still centered around themselves, and that often makes them believe they are the cause of the dysfunction and they are responsible.
Better that the truth be out and you reinforce a healthy home for them, no matter what your spouse does. And Lexie is very wise; to give your spouse parental custody is not in the best interest of your children, no matter how much you would like it to be. If, when, she gets into real and sustained recovery, then you can work out a visitation schedule that is fair and reasonable for all. Until then, she is a loose cannon, and is best out of your home and on her own.
I think many of us look at the future with the rose colored glasses we had on when we met and fell in love with our partners. Yet the truth is that we are not seeing the reality of what is going on right now. When we use nostalgia for the past good times as the lens for what we'd like our future to be, we can do damage.
Keep posting, keep reading. One saying of Alanon is that "more will be revealed".
ShootingStar1