What you're dealing with now is the reason I don't like the "my spouse has been taken over by aliens" line (though I used to ). An alien implies that she's somebody completely else from who she really is as a human. The reality is that she's very confused, she's occasionally/often under the influence of some very powerful brain chemicals, and she lost touch with or is mistrustful of her core values. She's not *all* different. She's not going to inhabit a consistent mindset; she'll vacillate, sometimes wildly. She doesn't have an easy life with her H gone, three young children to tend, the stress of the holidays and dealing with the anniversary of the untimely death of her father on top of it all. She deserves a lot of compassion and you're right to give it to her.
***HOWEVER!***
None of that justifies an affair and you can't give any indication that it does. She has appropriate people available to support her, including you. She doesn't get to have inappropriate support from inappropriate people because she's having a rough time. She's *creating* a rough time for others...I know you haven't enjoyed your recent lack of sleep and inability to focus (oh yes, I remember the bad old days).
While her thoughts and emotions are careening all over the place, yours need to be rock steady (in your interactions with her...of course your thoughts and emotions are going to be all over the place and that's why you have us as well as other parts of your support network). What's your cornerstone?
You love her. You want to remain married. You're willing to fight for your current marriage and you're willing to work to improve your future marriage.
You won't tolerate infidelity, physical or emotional. You won't remain in marriage with a third person involved. You have patience but your patience is not infinite. If she asks how much patience you have tell her, "I don't know but you don't want to push me that far." If she asks what that means you tell her, "I love you and I love our family. I want us all to be together. I won't tolerate infidelity. That's all I'm going to say about it."
I'd like input from the board on Mcol going dark. My feeling is that when he gets to the point where he can emotionally handle the mindset I've outlined and maintain it in the face of adversity from his W, there's no need to be dark. Going dark is to allow your wayward spouse to miss you and also to ensure you won't engage in needy, emotionally pushy conversations about the R. Since he's so far away, having the chance to miss him doesn't seem much of a factor and if he can be contained and confident, I think talking to her would mostly be beneficial. I'd also like to see him take advantage of any opportunity for her to see him as a warrior out in the field, even though she appears anti-Army at the moment. It may be emotionally disquieting to her, but it's also attractive and he's not going to be there forever.
Choc, what's a good plan for Mcol as far as handling the EA/PA? You've said before he probably needs more evidence before confronting her again, but confrontation seems like an important part of this process. Ideally he'd be in a position to observe her behavior himself and install a keylogger but that's not going to work where he's at. Does he need to again consider using a PI?
Mcol, let's see what we can do to get your head together. Remember when I mentioned your frame and detachment from outcome? Let's talk about frame for a bit.
Think about what your frame was like before this started going down. You probably saw you and your W raising a beautiful family, growing old together, retiring early, enjoying your grandchildren and reminiscing about the picture perfect, All American life the two of you had led. Or something like that. You had certain hopes, dreams and ambitions for yourself and your children. You had various plans festering in the back of your mind. Your frame consisted of all this stuff, much of it subconscious.
Then you got a couple of bombshells from your W and your frame was *severely* threatened. Your first reaction (like all of us, believe me) was to try and hold your frame together, whatever it took. It helps us to believe we have control so initially we love to take the blame. If the blame is ours and we fix our problem, then boom...our life is back on track and our frame remains intact. Some of us get stuck in that mode for a long time: "Yes, I was horrible! No wonder you're having an affair; I don't blame you at all! I'd be having an affair, too, if I was you and was married to me! But check this out...I'm working on myself, I'm fixing my issues, soon I'll be cured! Then you'll have no need for this wonderful OP who has shown me the error of my ways and we can be together forever with our children! Won't life be perfect again?!"
All that is rationalization to try and hold our precarious frame together. Of course, our frame never did reflect actual reality (don't make me get philosophical) and it sure as hell doesn't reflect the current reality. The sooner you can reframe your sitch and the more closely you can make it reflect reality, the more you'll be able to detach from outcome and the more you'll increase your chance of success. And the calmer you'll be. That's always nice.
So what should your new frame look like? Well, what are the facts on the ground and what can we reasonably or usefully assume from them? Your W has asked for a divorce and wanted the separation backdated (if I get a fact wrong, feel free to straighten me out). You can safely assume that there's a possibility you'll be divorced in a year. Put that in your frame. There are a lot of downsides to being divorced, especially when you have children. But it's survivable. Lesser men than you have survived and thrived after a divorce. Start saying this to yourself a lot: "I can handle it." Your thoughts will throw all kinds of negative possibilities at you because our thoughts are wusses and detest uncertainty. They want us to take the course that's safest *for the immediate moment* at all times. The more you tell yourself you can handle whatever comes and the more you believe it (because it's true...the great majority of the time, people handle whatever comes at them, even people the rest of us don't think much of), the quieter your Chicken Little thoughts will become. There was a time in my sitch when my thoughts were screaming at me in the middle of the night, "YOU'RE GOING TO BE BANKRUPT AND IN PRISON!!! AND SHE DID THIS TO YOU!!!" As long as I tried to figure out how I was going to avoid those unpleasantries, I tossed and turned. When I finally told myself, "You know, if that happens, you'll survive. Eventually you'll be free and you'll have a job. But she'll still be her." I still didn't get much sleep that night but I was calmer and felt much better the next day, and from then on. (The part about her still being her was gratuitous, I admit, but it helped. )
(I'm going to post this so I don't accidentally lose it, and continue subsequently.)
Stop WaitingFeel EverythingLove AchinglyGive ImpeccablyLet Go
). An alien implies that she's somebody completely else from who she really is as a human. The reality is that she's very confused, she's occasionally/often under the influence of some very powerful brain chemicals, and she lost touch with or is mistrustful of her core values. She's not *all* different. She's not going to inhabit a consistent mindset; she'll vacillate, sometimes wildly. She doesn't have an easy life with her H gone, three young children to tend, the stress of the holidays and dealing with the anniversary of the untimely death of her father on top of it all. She deserves a lot of compassion and you're right to give it to her.
