I'm fairly new to this and you have received some great advice on your thread.
One piece of advice that was given to me that I am still struggling with is DO NOT OVERANALYZE. I have no idea what is going on inside my W's head. Although, I wish I did. She has even stated to me that I shouldn't try to read into things. It sucks because I want to question her, but I just have to let it be and not ask questions or try to figure out what she is thinking.
They are on a merry-go-round of confusion as we are. Let's just hope it starts slowing down.
M-35 going on 15 D-8 S- 3 yrs ex-CL(w)- 30
D over one year
I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be. Douglas Adams "Just Be"
The important thing for you is to figure out what YOU want, and start working for it. DO NOt waste any time wondering why W is involved with OP. There will be a time to delve into that, but not until well after you have established yourself, and started taking action to change some things about yourself that you know get a negative response from W.
You can not fix your M by analyzying her R with OP. Even though she is probably getting some emotional need filled by OP, you won't figure out what it is that way. You have to look at yourself and your W.
Figure out what her Primary LL is and what some of her secondary LL might be. Analyze what you do that meets her LLs, and what keeps you from meeting them.
I'm not sure I did a good job keeping my old sitch up to date, but I do know I got a lot of good advice and support. I think my W was seeing OM for more than a year - while still technically still living with me. It wasn't easy, but with God's help, I not only survived, but am much stronger and better for it. I'm still waiting for W to benefit from her experience, but I'm confident that's a chapter that has yet to be written in my story.
I've been away from this board for a while (though not away from these problems, not by a long shot), and that absence has given me a chance to think about the advice I've been given here, as well as that I received from reading the DB book and others.
It's been helpful. But even though I've seen so many warnings against impatience, I have to say that I'm frustrated by the continuation of the status quo in this fiasco that began so long ago as a marriage. I'm also confused about how to differentiate between dealing with my role in the misery and dealing with her infidelity.
I think that's why I'm writing here again. I'm sorry, but I still could use some more input on everything. Hopefully you can help.
For instance, your counsel, Timothy, about the 5 love languages was well-taken: I've read the book, done a test on myself (the result was not surprising), and tried to anticipate the region where my wife's own "LL" would have been concentrated. I wasn't unaware that we'd been talking past each other, but looking at it in such a manner made some of the reasons behind it more clear.
Yet trying to address that side of what my wife needs is a challenge in itself. You see, there is what appears to be a sort of "block" that doesn't exactly nullify what I do, but it nevertheless renders it somewhat inconsequential. My wife has decided that a marriage with me could not work for the reason that I've let her down in the past and caused her pain - thus implying that life with me would necessarily entail the continuation of that.
That's what I say that I'm locked into a cycle of frustration. When many of the people on the board speak of "getting your own life," of making yourself into the person you would be proud of being, and so on, I don't find myself slacking off in that regard. That's not to say that I'm altogether pleased with myself, but I haven't succumbed to self-pity, bitterness, or failure just yet. I've been practicing more introspection (actually, I've been wetting my heels in that cold ocean for some time now) and I might have gotten something out of it. I've given up pursuing behaviors, and I've tried to express undemanding love without making myself into a doormat. I recognize that my wife's course of actions, her mentality, and her values are her own responsibility - very much the matter of her own life, and not mine - and I resist "knowing better," as I had often done in the past.
(I also realize how formulaic that all sounds. I sincerely hope that I do not somehow reduce the conduct of my life to the execution of a menu.)
But when I look at things as they are, all of that doesn't add up into anything at all. My life would go on, more or less, without her. But my overwhelming preference is for things to work out between us.
And that's showing no signs of happening.
My wife brushes up against abject misery sometimes(I fear for her health and sanity then), but usually bounces back to a relative normality. I know that she is tempted to make a go of things with me when she is in the pits, but it never makes it past that. Given the fact that her decision in that case would be for all the wrong reasons, all the better. But it goes to show how deeply she feels a sense of hopelessness in our union.
So I think that I'm up against a dual blockage. One is the OP. The other is our past.
I'm not sure about it, but I suspect that my wife's inability to forgive me over hurts she experienced in our life together very much set the stage for her involvement with someone who "understands" her and "makes her happy."
(I'm abstracting from how I feel about an individual who would step into another couple's marriage, however troubled, by offering the wife a "rescue".)
When we met, we were relatively young, inexperienced in life, and pretty much confused about where we were going. Part of that contributed to the attraction and later to the attachment. (Birds of a feather...) But I didn't recognize until too late that a confident exterior (and a sometimes prickly, sarcastic, and tough one at that) was layered over a very insecure person.
What I mean by "too late" is that things that she did (lying about her accomplishments, putting on various pretenses, attempting to make me jealous in different ways, faking sicknesses) to apparently make herself "look better" or "more lovable" in my eyes only angered me when the truth came out. She also seemed unconsciously intent to "cut me down to size" when the occasion seemed to call for it.
And I was too callow to realize clearly enough where all this was coming from - I knew it a bit, and understood somewhat, but mostly couldn't see beyond my own angry and hurt feelings. I'm not proud of this, nor do I excuse myself because I was "young".
Let me say that somehow within all this, I thought I saw the person inside and loved her. My wife's genuine qualities are more than enough to make her very attractive - she just couldn't see that.
Anyway, my great "understanding" did not stop me from doing some unloving things. It's very clear to me today that I had a lot to learn about what it meant to love someone.
Apparently my best weapon in the expression of my anger was the word. Things I said very much hurt her. In truth, it felt like I couldn't say to her that these things she did hurt me, but I could be angry. I could tell her off. That felt more natural, less "artificial". I felt justifiably angry, I suppose. But I had some inkling of why she was acting this way, and I should have had the courage to admit that it hurt me instead of lashing out verbally. I didn't. Perhaps I thought I would have looked "weak". Maybe I wasn't trusting enough.
Over time, I found out that this was the worst thing I could have done. Hurtful language was maybe the one thing that tortured her the worst - it fed into all the fears and self-doubts that had been fostered in her since her childhood.
There is a lot more to this: my own family was less than helpful in making her feel accepted. The interactions between someone trying very hard to be accepted (far too hard) and a somewhat blunt and sometimes insensitive set of parents and siblings are predictably uneven.
Here again, I had a failure of understanding that was probably also a failure of courage: when I "stood up" for her, it was never seen as enough. Objectively, it might not have been enough. I don't know. I thought I could make sense of what was going on for her benefit, but I apparently just ended up seeming to rationalize everything to the detriment of her feelings.
Over the years, I tried to make good on these and other things. But it was never enough, and nothing else I did ever made up for it either. What has been done cannot be undone - I was made to feel this very strongly. It was as if there were a permanent stain on the whole relationship that no forgiveness could erase.
So now, the whole "walk-away-wife" thing makes sense to me. By her own admission, she's carried this like a germ for all these years.
I don't know how to "show" her that I understand these things and that I am not the hurtful person she fears. We've spoken at length about this to no avail. In some ways, our problems are not even about how we are now - rather about the after-effects of how we were before.
She cannot trust me because she is afraid of being hurt. She cannot forgive me because her hurt was too deep.
So now, as she carries on with her "friend," I am left to consider that a good bit of this has its source in what I've done in the past. I can't change that. What she makes of it is her own business (and obviously I think that she doesn't need to make it into grounds for an affair and divorce), but I was there when the seeds were planted.
I'd appreciate your advice. Since there are two sides to every story, I've tried to give you some idea of why things have happened as they have. It makes me very uncomfortable to think of my wife as a "typical" case - no matter how applicable the model might be. And I hope that knowing more about the background to this can help an outsider looking in to analyze it better.
I've noticed two embarassing things - one is that I always preface my posts with "I've been away from this board for a while..." and the second is that I have a nasty habit of writing a whole hell of a lot.
There is a lot of good, descriptive stuff in your last post. A lot of it really echos my own R with my W, hence my recommendation to start with her LL. That and serious 180s, and then a lot of time.
Share as much of your revelations about how to improve your R as you can with W. Don't force feed her, but as you continue DBing, W will notice a difference. Be proactively open with her about what you've learned about how to have a better R.
W needs to grow as much as you do. You can't make her grow, but if you share what you are learning whenever you can, some of it might help her too.
In the meantime, keep positive, and keep patience.
I read your post and the bottom line is: NO!!!!!! Do not meet the OM. Most people don't want their S to meet the OP.
I would say she wants this to validate her A and to compare each of you...do not do this. He really means nothing to you, so don't fall for this.
Try to cut off her talking about him, walk away. He seems to relate to her b/c they both have the same instability. You represent, the normal; thus you can't possibly know how she really feels. She can't compute that, as of yet.
Familiarity breeds contempt...it will take its course.
Don't allow her to tell you these things. Walk away from her. You don't need to be listening at all.
It dawned on me tonight, when I was driving from work; this could be the OM wanting to meet you, not her insisting on the meet. He may tell her to set it up, but he might want to asess you.
that is just insulting, he is trying to get something out of you, I agree w/121, you dont' have to listen to anything Op related, talk about manipulation.
...but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
piecing after separation
I'm not sure about the OP putting her up to this. Actually, it seems worse than that: It seems pretty clear that she would like me to somehow grant my approval, and that we should all be friends.
In other words, her contention is that the marriage is irreparably over and that this OP will be the new something-or-other in her life.
I should characterize how this happens a bit more sharply - My wife tells me all this in between spells of breaking down and crying. All the while, she's literally wracked with emotional agony, which is hellish to watch. I just have to wonder how deeply her feelings about the death of our marriage must go for her to go through this over and over again with me.
She says that she loves me and will love me forever, and that while this marriage is over, a new "marriage" will take shape out of the ashes, and that she can't think of me not being in her life forever. (this is it in sum.)
She says that she doesn't want to use the word "divorce" because she doesn't think we could ever be divorced - it's just a "legal term" for what we have to do.
Furthermore, the OP is "quite like me" except that the ways in which he's not like me are the things she needs.
(As I try to figure this out, I keep thinking that this must certainly to do with listening better and not making her feel "like she doesn't deserve me" - these are the things she has complained about. Now, I can (and DO) listen better and I can be very careful to be nurturing, full of praise, and accepting, (and I do), but I just can't change her self-esteem for her, and I certainly can't change how her feelings about herself was in the past. I just hope that when she expresses thanks for my new listening skills that she sees something changing.)
Naturally, this whole situation gets to me. I'm having trouble concentrating enough to write this even now. Before, it was a gargantuan struggle to hold it together, especially when I looked her in the eye.
I'm saying that although I very much keep my cool, continuing to listen to her, only interjecting to say that I will not meet the OP, this winds me up into an absolute knot.
For instance, the last time she related all this to me she went back to her place after a few hours. A little later, she called, asking if she could stay over with me. I really didn't know what to say. Of course I wanted her with me, regardless of how much this all hurts, but I wondered what was going on behind it. But I agreed.
It was at least something to share the misery. We are in somewhat of the same boat - both broken up over the failure of our marriage. We try to comfort each other.
But I did ask her if she was staying out of pity for me. (I've given no indication of needing it, causing her to comment more than once that I seemed to be taking things well.) No. She said that after such a painful talk we should be together for a while. OK, I thought, although in a certain way it was even more painful.
All night, she kept asking "what happened to us?" and the like. She would cry, want to be held, curl up close to me, etc.
This is a strange kind of torture - a painful hint of what you most desire: that intimacy that's been lost. I'm experiencing the suffering of things falling apart, but now it's more than doubled because not only do I feel her hurt, I feel my own reflected back through her. I'm guilty, despairing, burned out, and generally ground down to nothing.
And I can't let her see this.
Obviously, since I'm not the man of steel, some of my suffering comes out. For the sake of decency, at least, I can't keep all my feelings hidden away from her anyway. So I say that I'm sorry too - sick with it - and that I wish we would have paid attention to things that were going wrong earlier.
Of course, to her it is too late for that now. I don't do anything more than gently loft the most subtle hints about there being hope because I know what the reaction will be.
(This even though she has just recently suggested that we talk to someone together, ostensibly to ease the breakup process.)
So I'm really at something of a loss.
Oh, I forgot this: she said something to the effect that she might have languished in a sort of separation limbo if it hadn't had been for the OP. He's apparently the catalyst - in some way - for her moving forward. (Why do I think it's forward to him?) So even though I don't think that he put her up to setting up a meeting between us (which would be a patently ridiculous encounter, although maybe something this kind of character might dream up), I do think he is exerting some kind of malign influence over her - or at least reinforcing her belief that there can be no hope for a reconciliation between us.
