Last time I posted was one year and four months ago!
I thought I'd come back because over the last year I think I've gotten a lot of insight into these situations, and wanted to share what I wish I would've known back when I was in your shoes as the LBS. You may not want to hear it though.
My ex, the WAW, had contacted me back early last year about how much she missed me. So much, she said, that it hurt! She was still living with the OM, since spring '04. But I didn't pay any heed to her. Over time, you see, I was paying no attention to her contacting me because continued contact with a WAS slows down your healing process and can cause the renewed pain of relapses in your progress.
A couple of months after that, I got an apology for her betrayal! Sounded like she had regrets over her past choices now. Curiosity got the better of me, I admit, and I returned her call. On the phone, happy to hear from me, she started going down memory lane and reminding me of what good times we had and wanted to visit with me, spend a day together.
Many of you would probably say at this point, "Bravo!" and look at me with envy or joy, wishing your walk-aways would make such overtures. But I have to tell you, that would be a mistake.
Yes. At the very moment that I realized what I was hearing could very well have been the turning around of my WAS, the beginning of her coming back, something which you all would love to attain, something clicked in my head as she spoke. "Why", I asked myself, "would she be interested in me when she's been with this other guy for three years? And what kind of woman calls her ex husband to tell him she 'misses him so much that it hurts', while she's living with her man?"
It came to me that she was maybe now setting me up to be the eventual OM.
It's not about realizing that she really loved me, or realizing she really had feelings for me. That's self-delusional thinking, for when are those feelings fostered? She wanted away from me a few years ago! Then, in the arms of her new man all this time, she's growing feelings for me? I doubt it!
I'd say it's more like, it turned out that the grass isn't greener; she's not happy there; wants to bail; looking where to land. Just like when she wasn't happy here; looking to bail; wanted to find a place to land.
You see, a person who cheats is a person of low integrity. She did it to me, now she was doing something like that to him.
That leopard didn't change her spots any.
There's no way you want a person like that back in your life. You can't make it really work again and that's because it's beyond DBing.
DB are strategies to use when your relationship starts to fade, to correct its course, not to revive it after it's way gone, as in the case of an affair.
Once that trust is broken, you can never trust that person again. Oh, you may think you can, and your pastor may say you can, and so may your marriage counselor, but if you think you can, it's only by fooling yourself.
The day the moment comes when the ex-WAS is late coming home from work, or the phone rings and some one hangs up when you answer, or they're taking just a little bit too long with their trip out to the grocery store, or they say something out of the ordinary that makes you go "huh?" or any little out of place thing that registers in your gut, what do you think is going to flood your mind? How are you going to feel? It may be innocent, but what happens if it's another A? And when I used to read the reconciliation threads, that's what I'd see much of: repeat offenders.
The odds of reconciliation working out... You wonder why you don't hear of many success stories, it's because there aren't many. The few that there are, they have to learn to live with the fault line always there, the giant elephant in the room that can't be mentioned. That is not the greatest relationship to have. Do you really want to live that way, just to have back the person that could care so less about you that they betrayed you? When the WASs come back, those few that do, is it because they truly love you, or is it because they got shafted in their pursuit of happiness elsewhere? Is it really better to be with a person like that than to be alone?
Better and easier to start with a clean slate, make better choices in partners, and conduct yourself better in the relationship, not repeating mistakes - and don't give up everything you are to someone else.
This is why I decided to come back and tell you these things, from one who has been where you are.
