Help... I need to stop reacting!

[Deep]

Hi Rocked, just thought I'll pop in and add my 2 cents .

I think you already got the message loud and clear on OP. Besides the fact that she is, has to be, insignificant, realistically, what could you ever achieve from contact? Shame her? They have no shame. Reason with her? They are dysfunctional. Plead with her? They have no honor.

I struggled alot with the contact with OP issue in my sitch too. I guess I can at least partly understand your difficulties. For me, it wasn't so much the actual $ at that time, but of related issues. W had major financial security issues and resentment at my inability to provide it (real and mostly perceived). And she had finally after years of working hard gotten a job she loved and the recognition (and pay) she deserved. I had plenty of advice and "tough love" on this forum about never compromising on NC - all given with the best of intentions and really solid advice. I chose to adapt it and indeed compromise. Was I weak in doing so? To be honest, yes, probably more than I would like to admit. I did think long and hard about it though.

I did not want to rock the boat for a WAW who "at least" promised to end the A and try to work things out. I didn't want to destroy her self image, an important avenue for her self-expression (her job), and heighten her perceived $ worries. Of course, the natural answer would be "tough, she made choices, now she has to face the consequences". That would almost invariably be the right response. I took a (pretty big) risk in compromising on that. As in your sitch, contact with OP was supposed to be "strictly business".

I did however, insist on:

- deletion of all personal contacts on online chats and mobile devices.
- Passwords to all the various email accounts she had set up to contact him.
- reasonable explanation on time spent apart from me.
- (as little as that may count), her word that the A was over and she would not only not contact him, but discourage contact from him.
- to be informed if he does contact her.
- her best efforts to have him removed from her portfolio
- and/or she has to look for a new job opportunity

I also made it clear:

- I was compromising and extending trust in working out our M, but I was NOT happy with the arrangement.
- she would have to show me she was working on the M.
- the arrangement was not to be permanent.
- I would be GAL and if at any point I had reasonable doubt about her, I would give her fair warning and want out. I was not and will not live in an open M.

And I "DBed" and detached the best I could. I have to stress, contact, even negative contact, is known to reset the clock to 00:00:00 and I really had no assurance how this would pan out. Then again, whether you insist on full NC or not, the point of detaching is really to leave it to your spouse to make his/her own choices. I felt I could deal with the consequences if she continued to make the wrong ones.

It was a VERY difficult and painful route - for her as well. She didn't get over the fog or the addiction overnight. All I can say is that she woke up and then earned the trust back. I have to say I was emotionally done at certain points and it would have taken very little for me to pull the plug. Through a million ways, her actions, her entire PERSON changed somewhere along the line. As I posted elsewhere, the dropping of the WAS mode entails a complete change of BEING - some things cannot be faked.

In hindsight, what may have helped was an incident very early on when OM texted her in what was clearly a non business tone. She immediately texted back to leave her alone. He claimed it was a mis-sent text. I was in a cold rage and called his home and asked to speak to OMW. When told she was busy, I left a polite message for her that her H had an A with my W, and that W wanted him to stop pursuing her. Only much later in our sitch, W told me OM called her and freaked out, telling her that I had no right to invade his home like that. She told him to stop contact then, and to consider what he had done to my home.

I just wanted to share this - I am not saying you should make the same choices. My W is an immensely strong woman and I did sense a part of her that really wanted out of the fog.