Please help - I need DB advice ASAP

[I'mstillhopeful]

Plentyhope thanks for your thoughts regarding the wedding ring. Thanks for checking to find me Gypsy - especially after the trying week you have been having.

As for me, I returned from my day away and H was very pleasant. We even followed our little pre-vacation celebration of opening the tickets with some fresh strawberries and a bottle of champagne. (This is somewhat significant because in my detective days I read an e-mail he had written to the OW to the effect that he was a reluctant participant of said ritual before the January trip and had only been humoring me.) The tickets have been on his desk for about a month and he made the overture of deciding when to open them and also brought home the strawberries.

Friday morning he told me, "You know, even if we don't stay together I hope we'll still be friends." This is a change from a few months earlier when he said he hoped we would be friendly but he couldn't see us as being friends. Of course, my overly analytic and optimistic mind focused on the more positive translation of the statement. EVEN IF? Did he mean we might stay together?

I've been waiting for the roller coaster drop, and, sure enough, this morning he told me he will be probably signing a one year lease on an apartment. He has no intention of considering MC because he doesn't want to give me any false hope.

Now, for the confusing and distressing part. When he told me he was planning on signing a lease and would be continuing to be moving on with his life he said that he had been lying about the OW. His feelings toward her had not been of a year's duration when he told me initially, but only a few months. He said he had wanted to have a physical relationship with her but that was no longer true. He no longer had feelings toward her. There had never been a relationship although there had been the potential for one and he had been interested in pursuing it.

He had told me about her in December because he thought I would be better able to accept his leaving if it were due to another woman rather than me learning that he no longer had any interest in me. He did say he has "feelings for me". (He also said that it would be easier all around if he were gay so that I would accept the situation.)

I would like to believe him that the OW is out of the picture, it might make DB'ing easier. I read somewhere that intense emotional affairs are more difficult to overcome than brief PA's.
All signs point to the fact that she is in the group who go out to lunch and dinner together on a regular basis. I know to believe nothing of what MLC'ers say and half of what they do.

Please tell me to resist the impulse to become Nancy Drew. Knowing whether the OW is still in the picture won't make a difference in how I should proceed. Lack of evidence won't mean she is not there and learning that she is waiting for him will wreak havoc on my PMA.

Plenty hope, odd that he removed his ring last Sunday if he was only with his sister isn't it? When I described the relationship his sister has with H my coach characterized it as "emotional incest". She would like nothing better than to have H more to herself as her partner probably does not provide the emotional support that her brother can. My coach thinks she has been undermining my marital relationship. Today the three of them have gone to a play in a town that is 1 1/2 hours away. Tomorrow she'll be meeting him for church as well as lunch.

How many OW are out there?

This has been quite a week it can only get better.