The wife of an army sergeant who tried to kill her by tampering with her parachute so he could begin a new life with his lover has said she struggles to believe he is guilty.

Victoria Cilliers sustained near-fatal injuries after both her main and reserve parachutes failed. Her husband, Emile Cilliers, is awaiting sentencing after being convicted of her attempted murder. But she said she was finding it difficult to accept her husband would do such a thing.

“Yes I’m hurt and angry, but can I see him as capable of murder? No. I am going to grieve for the marriage I had and the end of the life that I had,” she said. “I’ll always care for the father of my children, and I loved him, I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with him.”

She added: “I have to go with, I suppose, the verdict. It’s too big to get my head around. It’s hard to comprehend that someone you get married to and have children with would be capable of that.”

Emile Cilliers, 38, of the Royal Army Physical Training Corps, arranged the skydive as a treat for his wife after she had given birth to their second child. He had secretly removed vital parts of her parachute rig. She fell 4,000 ft (1,200 metres), but survived after landing in a soft field.

Her husband was also found guilty of attempting to murder her a week before the skydive, when he tampered with a gas fitting at their home in Amesbury, Wiltshire, with the plan to cause an explosion while he was at work.

Victoria Cilliers, an experienced parachuting instructor, said she told her children their father had “done a bad thing”, but had not yet felt able to tell them he could face life in prison.

“One of the hardest things to deal with has been our daughter’s questions and her hurt. She still asks regularly, ‘Where’s Daddy? When am I going to see him? Why can’t I speak to him on FaceTime?’” she told the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Mirror.

Detectives found that Emile Cilliers was having affairs with two women, one of whom he had discussed starting a new life with, and that he had also been in contact with sex workers. He had “out of control” debts and had upped his insurance policy so he would benefit if his wife died.

Victoria Cilliers said she knew her husband was being unfaithful, but did not know the extent of his behaviour.

“I never had the sense family life was not enough for him, or that he was chafing against it,” she said of the early days of their marriage.

But she said things started to go wrong in 2015, after she became pregnant with their second child.

“I knew there was stuff – other women on chat sites he contacted and I had seen messages on his laptop.

“I also knew he had met up with women and I was planning on confronting him. But you have to fight your battles at the right time and, being heavily pregnant, it wasn’t the right time.

“He was very affectionate but he’d stopped saying he loved me as often. It felt like he was physically distancing himself – but we still shared a bed and had a sex life. It seems like he was a sex addict.”

Emile Cilliers suggested to Winchester crown court that a “random killer” may have meddled with his wife’s rig at the Army Parachute Association at Netheravon, Wiltshire, on 5 April 2015. He also raised the possibility that she could have tampered with her own equipment in order to kill herself.

Talking about his conviction, his wife said: “I just don’t really want to cope with it. I love the husband I used to have and not the one he became.

“I don’t know the man today. I have seen him in court but not spoken to him in three years. I never considered he could be responsible.”