oooooooooo, I can remember just burning up inside about it. She'd just pass it off "I had to talk to someone." As if her affair partner were the only one on earth with a telephone.
He's right, you know. It's hard to give her up.
What can you do? Arguing with him about it is probably not a good strategy. Hot conflict is not going to help. You guys in counseling?
Maybe you could find a safe place to raise your concern. (I know, you've been quite clear, "zero contact". I know, I was down that path, too. But sometimes it takes a different venue to make it stick. An authority figure like a counselor.)
This is a funny side story, about how much of a lily liver I was.
I remember having this kind of conversation with stbx; I'd ask her to stop contacting the guy. I didn't insist on an immediate answer, but I'd ask her for an answer. once I said, why don't you take some time to think it over? Let me know in the morning. Invariably she'd give me the answer I wanted to hear. And then invariably she'd go back on it.
It got to the point where I was doing a Bill Clinton thing with her. Ok, so "no contact; that means....you won't call him, right?" (yes) "and you won't go on a date with him, right?" (yes) "and you won't send him emails, right?"
And when I stepped out of myself, and heard myself having this conversation with my wife, I thought, this is ridiculous. She knows darn well what I mean. It hasn't been a misunderstanding. She hasn't been contacting him based on some misunderstanding that by "no contact" I really meant "please don't tell me when you go on dates with him," or "please use a secret calling card when you phone him from the house."
When I stepped back I saw how ridiculous it was.
So, yes, I know how you must feel. It was just so infuriating that she could keep saying one thing and doing another. (Later I could see she was just on the hump, undecided about whether she wanted to be married, so for her, it was totally ok to talk to this man more than she talked to me.) So I've been through it, but the bad news is, unfortunately, I don't have a solution for you.
You could continue to be clear about your expectations and requirements in the relationship. I know you have been up until now, but i guess what I am saying is, you could just continue .
Or, you could decide enough is enough.
I'd recommend the first option!
If you take the first option, are there ways you could ally yourself with him to help overcome this problem? Could you say, [i]Hey, dear, I've read alot about this situation, and I think I understand a little more what you are going through.It IS hard, like a drug, some people say. So is there some way we could work through this together? When you feel like talking to her,maybe you could call me. I promise not to flip out." (or something like that)
[I tried this and it didn't really work. she felt bad enough about the thing that me continuing to be nice and solicitous toward her only made her feel worse about me. ]
Another approach might be to appeal to a higher authority - and by that I mean an expert. Like "I was talking to XXX who recommended a book on reconciliation. The book has some really good ideas on how to get over the hump. What we're going through is pretty normal and common for this stage." (don't say "affair", and totally avoid words that would trigger guilt or shame.
Another diversion - My stbx once flipped when I said that I wanted to be monogamous. She had suggested that maybe I should have an affair, to even things out. I told her, no, I'm not really interested. I'd like to be monogamous. And she flipped! My saying the word was just pushing her guilt button.
Getting back to YOU - if you do this, your tone should be confident and secure and businesslike, like this is just par for the course, just something you gotta do, we're cool, we'll just keep on going, etc etc. Not threatened or ticked etc. ).
Another higher authority might be a marriage counselor. I found one that insisted on a policy of zero contact before she spoke to us. We each had to make a commitment to the counselor. Making a commitment to a person we had just met - that somehow carried more weight than the commitment we had made to each other in a sacred vow. How dumb is that? But anyway, it worked for a while.
I don't know if these things could work; just some empathy for you, and some ideas.
