A Wife that has come back? Post Affair feelings ,,

[Deep]

Hi, I just found this forum after reading DR and I just wish I had this resource when my life fell apart. I hope I won't be pissing anyone off as I'm not really sure what I'm doing here - partly venting, partly to seek views on my current situation perhaps? I've read through the abbreviations to hopefully make some sense as all the terms confused me when I first read the threads here.

Anyway, I'm 41 this year and caught my wife (38) cheating on me 4 Nov 2007. We've been together 16 years and were married just 2 months short of 10th anniversary when it happened, with D9 and S4. I suspected for some time before that. The usual stuff, texting from the bathroom, late nights and refusal to entertain calls or texts, beating me up for every thing I did. The irony was throughout our time together, she was paranoid that I would cheat on her. We're both attractive and look much younger than our ages and she certainly knew I had chances to stray - she also knew for SURE I did not and would not. E.g. we even had couples approach me for 3somes in the past and I never hid anything from her.

So it was like the sky fell when I found out. The sweet girl next door that I married could turn into this demon.

I did everything wrong when I found out. Thinking back, I really feel sick about myself and how pathetic I was. All I could do was cry and repeatedly whine "How could you?". Actually, the next 6 months hurt a lot more than the actual affair. I got the classic ILYBINILWY, a long list of the things I did wrong, and a million other hurtful crap. It was made extremely clear to me that she was in love with OM, and that she would stay only for the kids.

From there to here, there are a ton of twists and details, many of which I would like to post later as I sort out the mess in my head. There are many twists in the tale, which I won't bore readers here with in my first post.

Right now, I feel ironically even more messed up than ever. Back then, the RAGE in the year post discovery was bad, but what I'm feeling now is this burning anger at the back of my mind. I'm haunted by many of the hurtful things she did. I trust her, and yet I don't. And the sense of detachment which I forced upon myself (without the benefit of reading DB or DR then) has, if anything grown. Now in many growing ways, _I_ am the one that is feeling a growing lack of connection with her.

Oh, the paradox is that my current situation is perhaps what many might be working towards. W seems to have woken up completely around mid last year. She has been trying very hard, throwing herself into being the fantastic mum she was again, doing things to please me. Now and then, she breaks down and tells me how sorry she is. And at some point, the "ILY" switch seems to have been thrown. As we were trying to heal, she would qualify herself by saying she loves me, even if the love has evolved into something different, of caring for me. In the past few months, she has been telling me she loves me, and is in love with me. We have a support group that we attend post a marriage help program, and recently, she broke down in a sharing session where she called me a "gem", that she had almost lost everything that mattered.

These are the plus points, and I'm very, very grateful for them. Yet I can't seem to move on on a few areas.

One major one relates to my breaking a cardinal rule I guess. Everyone seems to stress no contact with OM means NO CONTACT. I would agree 100% and this was one major point of conflict with us. I flat out rejected her view that he could still be a friend and she wanted to keep him around then. It took me weeks to get her to delete his number and their online contacts. However, they've kept in contact, and still are to this day. Reason being he is a major client in her portfolio.

Perhaps I was too soft? Back then, one of the major reasons she gave for her "indiscretion" (as she calls it) was her frustration with our financial situation. She felt I was a bad provider with unstable sources of income. Sure, running my own business comes with risk, and I'm no tycoon, but I felt that having made 6 figures over the past 5 years shouldn't be a cause for shame. She wanted "more than that". Also, she had just started to make real headway in her career in her (then) new-ish job and for the first time was getting recognition and financial recognition. She was very proud of it and I was proud of her.

I just felt I could not take that away from her. She insisted she could not change her portfolio in any way and when the fights got really bad, she would scream at me that she would quit to get me off her back, but made it clear it would destroy her. She also said she will keep it professional and avoid unnecessary contact.

I did not think I could accept it, but just suffered in (mostly) silence. I guess that was a big part of the detachment. I had to force myself to stop caring so much or I would simply have gone mad.

It still bugs me that they are in contact. Sometimes, I just don't know what to think. And lately, I've been really out of sorts, feeling very lost myself now. I look at the family we have and the W I seem to have won back and tell myself "hey, you got back what you thought was lost forever, just be grateful".

Would appreciate any advice, and thanks for reading. Will post more later.