in my own situation, I can't describe to you how mean & cruel my wife behaved towards me, it was a heartbreaker and I had no one to tell me a few years ago that it would eventually get better.
We're not reconciled yet, mainly because of the fact that I want to see more changes from her before I trust her to have a relationship with her. I don't want what we had and I used to be the one that begged to have things "just like we used to have" and that is wrong.
There will come a time, when your education in this whole situation has come to a point where you will just get it. All of the arguments and points I made on my wife, all the time I spent begging & pleading and reasoning,etc. I look back on that guy I was that was walking around sad, depressed, hanging off every word my wife said towards, took the abusive treatment, the crazy rationalizations for her behavior, etc. and now I'm not that guy anymore and I never will be. Now I'm the one hearing the arguments from her like "... but I love you" (hmmm.. never heard that before), "how about how this is affecting the children" (didn't you tell me that was just me using a guilt trip on you when I said this?), "what can I do to show you I love you?" (stop pressuring me, I'm not sure I feel the same way anymore),"is it ok if I call you today?" (wow before you never wanted to hear from me ever, do you remember how mean you were to me?), "I was just wondering if we could talk about us?" (hmmm... I remember there was no "us" and you were glad to be free).
At one point you will become the WAS in all of this and she will be the LBS, the dynamic will switch over at one point provided you db and grow personally and learn more about yourself than you previously thought was possible.
I have rec'd 3 emails and 6 phone calls from my wife today (so far...), all of them asking me what i'm doing, how I am, that she's thinking of me, looking at some old photos of me & the kids when we were "all together and having fun" and "what are your plans this weekend, maybe we could do something?", "do you want to go out for some coffee tonight, I could get my parents to watch the kids..."
If you had asked me almost 2 years when she beat my sorry ass to a pulp and made me feel lower than the dirt on the ground and left me to have a great single life if any of this was possible, I would have said no and only a miracle could produce these results.
The only miracle was me finally standing up for myself, believing in my own personal value, respecting myself, setting boundaries with how people can treat me and learning that life is truly a gift and that you should live your life and enjoy every day of it - it's what you need to do to live an authentic life and what you need to do to show your kids how to enjoy life, you can't just tell them, you have to do it for real in your own life, that's how they learn and that's how you know you've been successful as a parent.
2 years ago I would never have considered dating either but I now know that it improved my confidence, along with everything else I was doing (personal counselling, going to the gym, losing weight, building muscle, eating right, getting enough sleep, shopping for myself, new clothes, new shoes, new style, hanging out with friends, making new friends, new me!)
It will be a personal choice for you in the end to actually go through with this, no one is asking you to sleep with another woman or get a new girlfriend or get married.
Take into account how you feel that your wife is having a relationship with another man, you still want her, if anything you may have even felt that you want her even more - we all want what we can't have and we also take for granted what we have and only realize it's true value when we lose it. How will your wife feel that way about you if you communicate you will always be there waiting for her till she gets her head screwed on right?
