Quote: omething fascinating -- W ultimately said that she didn't want to do that 5-week plan I offered because she was afraid that she would choose OM and the divorce at the end of it.
Well, funny you say that. The rant I have on my thread now was originally going to be posted here but I decided to use my own thread for my rant...and then I forgot to respond at all to this idea.
I too thought it sounded like a bad idea. Why place artificial time frames on things? Even if SHE went for it, who's to say these two people who are engaged in totally untrustworthy behavior to this point, would keep their word? Sure, it sounds nice but if she were willing to do 5 weeks, or COULD do 5 weeks, she sure could have gotten past 2 days. Telling her she "gets a D" at the end of your boot camp hardly seems like a carrot to me. If she wanted the D that badly I suspect she would have been saying so more often and thus it may have made more of an impact on her when you offered that. It seems to me that these kinds of agreements are being made between one highly emotional but relativly rational (you) person and someone who is at least perceptively insane and at best not at all committed to working towards the same goal as you RIGHT NOW.
Sure she's not going to accept those terms. Why would she? What does it do for her? At the end of the 5 weeks, she may end up with neither of you. Tough love? Yep, but does it create the conditions best for her to return to your marriage because SHE wants to? I doubt it.
I think you have been really good at setting boundaries and sticking to them, much more so than most here, including me. Yea, you've not done the DB thing all the time but for the most part the spirit is alive in what you do. I think if you keep it up, as you have posted before, time will cause this affair to fizzle and then you will get the time you want to work on your marriage assuming your W sees that as an option, and isn't that really the idea of DBing? Work on you, set boundaries so you're safe, and make sure that there is a loving place for them to come back to if they choose to do so?
You're doing great and no, you're not the #1 backup, you're #1, she's just settling for the easy way right now.
GH, I guess I didn't make myself clear. My W demanded a divorce back in January and I flatly refused and said with firm conviction that she would have to wait the full two years of separation under law before she could file -- that I absolutely would not.
The fact that I am "holding her hostage" has come up a couple of times, but she has known better than to try to talk me into giving her a D. There have been a couple of points (we know how WAS's swing back and forth) where she has been afraid that I was going to file for D and expressed that fear to me and I've reassured her, as I did with the card I sent last week.
The plan I offered my wife did NOT mean that I would force an ultimatum on her at the end of the 5 weeks. It only meant that D would then become an option for her (the same way it is for just about every other WAS on this board). I have great confidence that my W would not choose to get a D now even if that option were available to her.
Yesterday, however, she was making it clear that she didn't want the option of a D available, because she was somewhat afraid that she would take it and she knows at some level that it won't work out with OM. She didn't want that temptation in front of her.
Quote: who's to say these two people who are engaged in totally untrustworthy behavior to this point, would keep their word?
That's the weird thing about my R with my W, GH -- I still trust her to tell me the truth. My W has always been a bad liar and an extremely honest person. As a child, she used to tell on herself when she had done something wrong, and she originally confessed her A to me about a week after it had become a PA, because she absolutely couldn't stand lying to me.
I know it's a moot point now, but I would've regularly asked her if she had talked to him and she would have told me the truth. If she talked to him, the deal would be off. I would have gotten her another cell phone to use so that OM couldn't call her. Anyway, if OM agreed not to call her and then tried to, she would see that as disrespecting her wishes and wouldn't be happy about it anyway.
The whole point of the offer was to try to stop contact between OM and my W by offering OM an incentive to stop calling and give my W a reason to immediately stop taking his calls. He would have agreed and tried to stick to the plan, because he wants to marry her ASAP (because he's a dumb 20 year old kid). The fact that he will now still have to wait over 21 months before she can get a D is killing him.
Quote: at best not at all committed to working towards the same goal as you RIGHT NOW.
She was indeed committed toward working toward that goal when I proposed the plan -- she just changed her mind.
As I said earlier, it's all moot now anyway. Maybe it was a dumb idea, but I actually am very confident that the A would be completely over after about 3 weeks of no contact. He's got so many problems and my W and I still have so much love between us, that I think our R could be repaired quickly if she could focus on it and not on OM.
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth." (Psalm 145:18)
