It is a bizarre purgatory. I have faith I'll come out the other side a better person, either with my W or not. Raising kids together, particularly young kids, makes detaching extremely hard, and they are like a gravity, pulling us together. My W resists the pull because she's a WAW, I resist the pull because I'm DBing and I need to protect myself, but sometimes it's exhausting fighting that pull.
DBing does require growth, which makes it hard, but satisfying. It is forcing me to be a better person in almost every way. The only risk I feel is potentially the loss of time moving on, if that's where I eventually end up. I do know that I have to get to a place where I'm 100% ok without my W before I can be my most attractive to her (or anyone else, for that matter). I'm about 75% right now.
One thing has occurred to me lately that concerns me. I think deep down my W is ashamed of her A, but she desperately wants to believe it was acceptable given that she perceived our M as over. She portrayed it to her friends as an exciting and wonderful new relationship. She told them our M was over a long time ago, and that the decision to end our M was mutual between us, giving her a get-out-of-adultery-free card. If she acknowledges that our M has any future, then she has to accept that she was a cheater and adulterer. She will fight very hard and very long to deny that. The sad thing is, I know her and she won't be able to maintain that lie and illusion forever. There will come a day when the truth will come crashing down on her and she'll have to face what she did, and she'll hate herself and regret what she did. Will I still be around then? Who knows?
