I've been lying to my wife for 15 years, and I feel it's eating me alive inside.

I met a friend in high school, and let's just call him Alex. Alex was a hypochondriac, and it was really hard to get him to talk about anything besides his health, so I basically tuned him out when I entered college. We met in high school, and I keep in touch with him because he's a great guy, and very positive person in life. <br><br>He isn't a bad kid, but he was always complaining about how he thought he was going to die young. He actually did and it was tragic. <br><br>I got a private message from him when I got in touch while in college. He said he was feeling really bad and he wanted to talk to me. Alex told me he was going to die young, and he offered me a lot of money to check in on his mom every couple of weeks. At first I was like, fuck no, but then I found out he would give me 120k to do this. I couldn't turn it down, and the only thing he asked was to check on his mom and my wife couldn't know. It was also a one time payment. <br><br>I did it, and I actually started dating my wife around the same time. I don't know if it was Alex, I don't know if it was when I found out I made a ton of money, but the relationship just didn't feel the same. I felt like I would never have a problem in my life financially, and my relationship started feeling very private and weird. My wife actually left me for a while, but it was because I was actually acting weird in general. <br><br>I got back together with my wife, and everything has been happy but something just doesn't feel right. I actually have a kid now, and I feel like I don't deserve this. All this happened 15 years ago, and actually telling this story scares me a little. <br><br>I don't know how to make it right, but I feel like I owe it to Alex to check on his mom. I don't know how to make it right with my wife, but I feel like I don't deserve any of this.