Thanks, kjb. Tell me a little more about your story, if you would. How long has it been for you since the A? Did he give up the A cold turkey, with no further contact? How usual is it for the S to slip up and contact the OP? Should I forgive that if I find out about it? Do I threaten divorce?
Thanks too for your thoughts about God. I still pray. And I've let Him know exactly how I feel, in some very angry prayers. But I'm still praying.
Last night I arrived home to find W in a better mood. We had a nice almost normal non-R conversation. I showed her the "After the Affair" book and where I would hide it (from the kids), so that she could read it if she wanted to. Later, I gave her a back and neck massage, and it was so nice to have some physical contact with her, other than a quick hug. She told me that the OG and she did not give each other massages. I don't know if that's true, of course, but to give her a massage was something that still felt like it was "our" thing, and it was very nice.
This morning, before she woke up, I checked her cell phone (I know I should probably stop snooping so much, but I really need to know that she is not contacting him). The phone showed that she had erased all of the phone numbers of the recent incoming and outgoing calls. Since she uses her phone a lot, she must have erased these yesterday. To me, it's not clear evidence that she has contacted him, but it's very suspicious. She would have no other reason for erasing those numbers.
Here's more: Using the same computer snooping that I used to find out about the A, I found out that she had redirected her cell phone bill to be sent to her email address, so that I would never see it (she pays the bills, so I often don't see the bills anyway). I went on-line to check the bill and found out that over the course of April, she made 180 calls to him, wrote him 77 text messages, and received at least 100 calls from him. OH. MY. GOD. I was astounded. That's roughly 12 contacts per day. And that doesn't include the times they physically got together. Even considering that many of those contacts were probably just to say "call me later" or to leave a message, that's incredible. BTW, she told me on D-Day that she "only" talked to him once or twice a day (why did she bother lying about it?). I am only now realizing just how totally she wrapped her life around this guy. I wonder if our children have noticed how much they have been neglected. Her cell phone bill was over $400, and that's just 1 month out of 3 (the other months are probably similar. That pisses me off. We do OK financially, but not good enough that an extra $400 a month doesn't make a big dent. (I know, I know, that's the least of my worries.)
The point is, I'm not sure that she will be able to go from 12 contacts a day to 0. As I said in my last post, her evident withdrawal symptoms yesterday I took as a good sign. But I'm not sure at all. The "erased numbers" thing from this morning certainly has me wondering. So the question of the moment is, how tolerant should I try to be if I do find out that she has contacted him? Should I try to forgive it the first time? Or, should I tell her to leave (which I really don't want)? What do you think?
