Your wife needs to feel this way for a bit so don't come out of the shadows just yet calming all her fears. If it's a tunnel she's been in, she has to walk out on her own.
She needs to see you for the attractive, ever-growing and improving, AVAILABLE man that she left. Until she does that with both eyes wide open, she isn't doing anything more than showing a jealous streak.
Do you hear me? Don't reward that.
Hell yes, I felt vulnerable. More than that, I broke completely. And starting with my husband, I went to each person I'd harmed during my 2+years in MLC, including my children who were around 9 and 12 at the time, and I started the process of apology and atonement. I say process because it takes so much more than words. It takes action. A lot of it that must take place over time. Sometimes it takes a long, long time...Allowing oneself to feel vulnerable after being the most active participant in such horrible destruction is hard. And that's an understatement. You'll find out what your wife is made of at this stage. Will she turn back and face the music, with all the risks that come with it, and be prepared to toe the very long and narrow line to restoration, or will she turn AWAY because the weight of the shame and guilt is going to be SO incredibly difficult to bear? I have done both - yet I always returned to stand and just last weekend had the breakthrough I've waited 3 years for and had all but given up on ever having.
I hope your wife turns back. Because the knowledge you have from this site will strengthen you - and make no mistake - you will have to be strong. She might come home and fall apart. You will have to shelve your own justifiable anger and help put her back together before you could have those very difficult and honest talks that you will have to have about all this.
The good news is that she's talking to her friend and it seems trying to feel you out. I'd say be gracious. This hasn't been a picnic for her either. Although at times I know it seemed like it. No one knows the things that haunt a walkaway wife. I do though. And they don't walk away scot-free. There's a terrible burden attached to it.
There's also a terrible burden attached to walking back.
