My Intro: Thanks for Reading!

[RedSoxFan]

What does she want? AND What should I do? Those are the questions I'm really struggling with.

She gets that I love her and I want to save our marriage and family. I don't think she bought the love thing at first but now I'm sure that she's sure I'm sincere. She tells me that she loves me too and is very sad about our situation. When she gives her reasons for not reconciling she does not speak definitively. She says things like she doesn't think she can do it. She doesn't believe it's possible. She feels like too much damage has been done. She says things like "I just can't right now" She also tells me that my declaring my love and desire to save the marriage has caused her to relive a lot of the pain and bad feelings from 10 months ago when I left. She says she feels like she finally made it through something that she literally thought she wouldn't live through, had gotten on her feet, was feeling pretty good. That's when I enter looking for reconciliation.

She has said several times throughout this that she just wants to be left alone. She wants everyone to leave her alone. When she says everyone she primarily means me and OM. She is feeling tons of pressure. She works full time and has a ton of activities with the kids. I do a lot of the activities but she's personally involved in some of the time consuming activities.

So here's my gut feeling and please put me in my place if I'm overly presumptuous or out of line. I think she is no where near healed as she was telling me. I think she tucked all the hurt away to keep going, I think the new guy made her feel good, I think she's very vulnerable and easily influenced right now. I think she wants to be left alone but I also think the other guy is putting a ton of pressure on her and will continue to do so. I think he has the upper hand in terms of influence but she is definitely aggravated about the pressure he is putting on her. I don't think she sees him for what he is. She thinks he's awesome and fun and loves our kids, etc. I see a guy who's using the kids as leverage against her.

I feel like I need to find a way to keep her from tucking all the feelings away again (even though there's a tone of hurt in there) without scaring her away. If she suppresses her feeling about me I think he will reel her in, at least long enough to destroy our chances for reconciliation. I don't see this guy being around in a year and honestly I don't think she does either. She said yesterday when we talked about the over exposure of our kids to him and his family that she hoped he would always be a friend and in her life and that she thought he would always want to ping the kids on facebook, etc.

So it seems like I have to stay engaged, keep the pressure up a bit, force him to continue putting pressure on while I make sure to take the high road every step of the way. I'm just not sure what that looks like.

Also, I don't know if I should continue taking care of her, giving her extra money, etc. I don't want to be used but I would like to show her that I care and that I want to take care of her. She has always put other people first and its hard to force her to do something for herself.

Another complicated issue, I have been looking at houses in a close by neighborhood so I can be in the same attendance zone as the kids. I want to be in a position to be a full 50/50 parent if things don't move forward but making the step to buy a house is huge and it's feels like almost as big a psychological barrier as a divorce would be.