Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers WW in EA, NC w/OM(?), W's BFF interfering, part 7

If you don't monitor, will you wonder? And if you do wonder, will that nagging doubt be reflected in your behavior?

If so, how? Will you become suspicious and critical, short tempered, or more needy?


I'm asking

With benefit of hindsight? Yes, and yes. Or at least "yes" when things don't go according to plan or she is "late" or the like.

Not nearly as bad as before, but she was late getting back after "checking in" from deli where she stopped to pick us all up some sandwiches. And my mind did start spinning. S17 got antsy/hungry and started asking "where's mom" so I did call. I even considered driving over to deli at one point. Glad I didn't.

I'm way better than I was-- as I posted above, I no longer feel like I am constantly swimming in a sea of adrenaline. However, quite honestly I don't know if I will ever get completely past the situational doubt/suspicion in such unless/until we are either fully reconciled or fully separated/divorced.

I think she does, I really do. And I think that is one of the reasons there is some hope. The last time I had one of my "panic attacks" (not really panicky, but closest corollary I can think of), she told me the pain and hurt (and anger) in my face was obvious... she said it was really clear and really jarring to see. She related it to the pain and hurt she saw in me when we had our last true blow-up when I found her last burner phone way back at the end of July-- the episode which, I believe, put us on the track to where we are now. That night, and over that week, I think she truly recognized the hurt and damage she had caused... and she elected to "come back". She didn't do it as cleanly and as much by "my rules" as I would have preferred (as I am sure you recall), but... I think that that was her "wake up" moment. It finally hit her how much hurt she had caused and could end up causing, and that what she had done was actually going to cause the break up of our family. She was staring that in the face that night and all that week. The fact that she recognized that pain in me a few weeks later makes me believe that her "turn" is genuine. Not that we are "all the way back", and not that she is "completely over OM"-- I know darn well she is still struggling with that from the scattered setbacks and near setbacks over the past couple of months, but... those "dips" seem fewer and farther between, now.

Now, we are faced with the more difficult assignment of seeing if we can love each other intimately again. That's going to be a higher hill to climb than ending the Affair, IMHO, and I am not even 100% sure that we are completely out of the woods, yet, on that latter count. Maybe if her bff would just hurry the heck up with her divorce and move to Florida, already...

Hi Jim
your state of mind appears to reflect my own at the moment although my W is nowhere up to speed with your's! Since June I have not felt a need to check, not because the trust is back, but because, despite the A still existing (and I am of course powerless with this workplace sitch), I do seem to have "healed" somewhat. I so sometimes wonder if I still "care" in that respect? In recent days her cell provider has announced that their online facility for checking texts will be removed at the end of November and also my W has suddenly changed her phone password. Previous to the summer that would caused panic as I would not have been able to "keep tabs on the situation". But not now.

The way it sounds with your sitch I think these tentative steps may well reap rewards but like you intimated it will never be the same again (that might not matter of course!). In my sitch I just have to decide in the end whether I wish to go on for another potentially 40 years with a person who might stray again at some point in the future if we can't get all these things out in the open.

CW--

I have to admit that I am not fully up to speed on the details of your sitch, BUT... just looking at your post, your most recent thread, and what you post as your profile, I keep saying to myself: "Wow, you are not powerless at all... you have power in this sitch that i would almost have killed for". I mean, seriously? Your wife's supervisor? And he's married? Talk about leverage! I mean, I know opinions on "exposure" of affairs varies on this forum, but most of that variance has to do with not publicly outing the WW and making her road home more difficult. In this case, it seems to me, there is no need to even threaten your W. The OM seems to have everything to lose here. Why not use that?

I am well aware that ending the A with an OM does NOT in any way gaurantee that a LBS will be able to reconcile with a WW, BUT... such a reconciliation will DEFINITELY not happen as long as the A continues. In other words, bringing the A to and end is a necessary condition precedent to any reconcilliation.

If the OM in MY sitch had been married, I would have exposed him every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Now, ironically, I am coming to the realization that the path the good Lord has taken me down is, perhaps, the only one that might result in reconcilliation between me and my wife. Had I been able to "force" an end to the A way back in the days immediately following BD, I am not sure that my W would have wanted anything to do with me... we weren't even really "friends" at that point. The intervening months, while difficult and painful, especially the ones where she was actively engaged with OM, also gave her time to see my changes, my GALs, my 180s, and to start to believe in them, and, subsequently, for us to rebuild a closer, warmer relationship... without which I might not currently have any shot of reconciling.

Nonetheless, if I had it to do over again, and could take a stronger stand against the A, and hopefully end it right out of the box, would I do so? I have to say probably. And that is kind of weird answer to me because i really do love my wife and really do want to fully reconcile with her.

But i am a firm believer that the A has GOT TO end, and the sooner the better, and that men who pursue married women are some of the lowest form of scum on the earth. (Don't even ask me what I think about men who pursue their FRIENDs' wives-- which was my sitch...)

exposing the affair to 3rd parties (not talking about confronting your own spouse)

is not in alignment with MWD's approach. You can disagree of course, but it's not a DB policy.

Also, FTR, much as I understand it (and I DO) I've never seen it help with a recon at all. I have heard of it shaming a wife home, once.

I've seen it backfire in about a 10 to 1 ratio.


It looks (and usually is) vindictive, the desire to hurt the spouse or AP.

It's not aimed at helping to reconcile if the LBS thinks it out. And it Often pits the AP and WAS together in an "us against the world" posture and makes the LBS the perfect "vindictive bitter" target of derision. Even if the A fails, the WS usually blames the LBS for ruining their happiness.

And the WAS flees faster and farther. Shaming someone home does not lead to a restored m, imo. Just leads to more problems.

as for telling the AP's spouse, I can see why, of course. Sometimes the spouse does not want to know and sometimes they already know, and are struggling mightily to work through it

and don't need or want another person putting it in their face. And sometimes they would like to know. But don't. Maybe you can figure out discreetly, whether they know.

But man, I would think long & hard about what YOUR goal is...

And Ask yourself why MWD opposes it, read up on that, and then see how you feel.

saying "the affair has got to end" is fine.

At all costs? In any manner?

Then what?


Heres the thing - the one time I seriously considered & was sorely tempted to have an affair,

- I wobbled and teetered, and then I imagined h and the kids being hurt...So I sought IC with a chaplain, talked to my dad & sisters, and within a few months of avoiding the potential OM, I worked it out and did not end up in an A. But my gosh, I was so lonely in the m and so attracted to OM and

so in need of the attention HE gave me when my h was pretty much physically absent or home & exhausted by his unilateral work choices...

if H had found out I was tempted and seeking IC to resolve this on my own

and exposed me to anyone, I'd have deeply resented the he11 out of him.

And I would have felt cornered, as if he was punishing ME for reacting to the solitude of our marital bed, caused by HIS career choice. I was lonely for a reason. And it was HIS behavior creating that. My loneliness was a direct result of his choices.

I'm pretty sure I'd have filed for divorce.

I had justified the affair. So any attempt to shame me to "end the A - at all costs!!" would have failed miserably,

whereas effort from h to assuage my loneliness, would have touched me deeply.


just fyi

Jim

I am curious about a style choice in your writing, and want to make sure I'm not missing anything. (I'm not correcting you.)

When you put "quotations" around your words, are you intentionally undermining the real intent or being sarcastic?

I just want to be clear.

Thanks.

Jim
Believe me I've been round the houses mentally with this, esp in the early months and also because I have the other wife's name and address. I have decided to stick with Sandi's first option (from the other week and added to by 25), ie ride it out being the best person I can be for my W, GAL whilst detaching as best I can due to living together. If I detect no change in things down the road (gut reaction etc) well then that's a different story.....

CW

does your wife SAY it's over and she's recommitted now? Sorry I don't recall your sitch off the top of my head.

I'm not sure if you guys are trying to reconcile or piecing, etc

Jim, if your wife really does "get it" and if you really do get it as to how she felt before the A

(b/c as you said, you two sort of took turns doing the rejecting)

that's a big fat step. But in my experience, remorse can only be felt a certain length of time before it feels oppressive or like shame.

Not defending that^^^, just noting it.

I think Each party has to believe at some point the past will remain in the past and the couple can go "from this day forward."