Again, still a long way to go, but it seems like we're in that second honeymoon period. I'm just going to enjoy it while it lasts, continue to be patient until W is ready to talk. But I see it coming.
H4U,
I would encourage you to spend some time now, while there is no pressure, thinking about how you're going to handle that. It's going to be a CRITICAL conversation from your wife's perspective, and you need to be careful how you play it.
It's very important that she come away from it with a feeling that you are not going to "lord her affair over her" moving forward, and that you GENUINELY forgive her.
She is embarrassed.
She is, at times, humiliated.
She is ashamed.
You need to let her know that you forgive her, and that you are now PROUD of her that she is making effort and now making good decisions.
Let her lead the conversation, and VALIDATE.
She wants you very much to DEFEND HER, and be PROUD of her again. Notice the strong reaction you got from her when you defended her honor in the bar, and how she needed that, WHILE also feeling strong and that she "could have handled it herself."
It's going to be a balancing act, but you can do it. Just best to jot some notes and thoughts to yourself AHEAD of time, when things are calm and going well, rather than get caught off-guard, because make no mistake: she WILL be "testing" you in how you respond to her when she becomes vulnerable to you in that moment.
I agree with what Puppy said. And, she will need to forgive you, too. You both got to this position and you both need to forgive each other for the past and move to the future TOGETHER. Communicating.
I am soooo sincerely happy for you, Hope. Just think how great your relationship will be now. You will have a deeper, more meaningful, more spiritual marriage than you ever would have. It's the good out of the painful bad. What a message you have sent your kids and your self.
I read this and thought this would be a great signature for someone who is positively recovering.
"Marriage had been like a snow globe sitting on the desk, with all the snow on the bottom, and now it's been shook up, and the snow is flying everywhere. In the end, the snow will settle back down (in a different pattern), and life will be come normal again, and we can be stronger."
I appreciate the thoughts guys. I'm out of town for work and just haven't had much time.
Things have kind of cooled down since Saturday night. I think W was in "the mood" Sunday, but I was sooooo tired I just held her hand in bed and went to sleep. We went back to work on Monday and things are definitely different now. I don't know if it's because she doesn't get as much sleep during the week or if her going back to work reminds her of OM and that causes feelings that pull away from me or I know she's really busy at work so maybe that's it. But definitely not the same excitement from her we had last week.
Not that it's bad or anything. Still talking, sharing etc but the affection has dropped off. And Tuesday night when I went to bed I gave her a kiss good night and I could tell she didn't really want to kiss me. Then she slept on the couch all night. She came upstairs a few minutes after I got out of bed and she crawled into bed and I said to her "I missed having you next to me last night" and she replied "I fell asleep on the couch and when I woke it was 3:00 am so I figured since we were getting up in two hours it was stupid to come up to bed".
Not sure I buy that. We had gone shopping earlier in the night and everything was fine. And then on the way home we were talking about how crappy the weather was and how we wished we were still in Florida and she said we should go back and I said "what about for our anniversary in March?" and from that point the rest of the evening she was colder. Not like she was ignoring me or anything, but it was just different. And it has been since.
I left for this work trip Wed afternoon before she got home and I called her on my way. It's like she was in a hurry to get off the phone. And then when I called when I got to my hotel, after we talked for a bit she said to me "S16 wants to talk to you". S16 gets on the phone and says "I didn't say I wanted to talk to you". So WTF was that? Using S16 to get off the phone?
I came to the job site this morning and spent from 8 am until about 1:30 500 feet underground in a cavern we're building. When I came up I had a text from her so I called her and she was like "hello" in the most uninterested voice you've ever heard. And she knew it was me because she has caller ID and would have answered in her "work" response voice if she didn't know it was me.
So wow...that's a lot to say WTF is going on? How can you go from passionate LM multiple times last week and as late as Saturday and her wanting to on Sunday to something decidedly cooler Monday evening? It's so discouraging. I thought we were so on our way to her figuring it out and then a set back. I know I shouldn't worry about a couple of days and she's going to have these ups and downs and especially with returning to work where she met OM it had to have an affect on her.
And I don't know. Maybe this work I'm doing is affecting her. This cavern we're constructing had a cave in on one of the shafts a few months ago and she wasn't excited about me going "down hole" so maybe this is a defense mechanism. Or maybe one of the reasons she had the affair was because in the year and a half prior to it starting I was traveling a lot and this just reminds her why she had it.
Who knows. I just know I'm pretty down after the previous weeks events. But I guess that just goes with the territory huh?
Hope4us
Me - 49, W 49 S22 & S18 Dday 9/4/07 W claims NC 4/7/08 8/29/09 - Divorce Busted. Lots to work through, but we're going to make it.
