What Greek said stirred up a painful memory. Deep in my W's A but before discovery, I was doing a lot of pursuing, begging, pleading etc. I kept telling her what a great Mom and Wife she was. She just went berserk one time, swept things off the dresser, and said with venom: "I'm not. I'm not a great mom, I'm not a great wife. I'm me, just ME. Can't you hear that? ME!". of course, a part of it had to do with her guilt too.
The dating part ... I'm not sure what to say. Depends on what is "dating". I would also feel it is not right to be intimate with anyone else while married. I sure went out with lots of friends male and female once I started to GAL, something I hardly did in the last few years prior. W has always known I don't have problems attracting attention. I guess I walked on a fine line with a woman friend that I now acknowledge had hopes to be together if I had D. That's another story.
I didn't "date", but the "fact" that there were women who wanted me did have an impact on W. To be clear, W agreed to break the A, but maintained OM was her true love that she would sacrifice for the kids, that we had no connection, that she wouldn't be too unhappy being M to me as she cares for me and "it's not like I can't stand your face". That wasn't an M I cared to be in and I told her so - that was co-parenting at best. So I detached from the limbo, went out a lot more and spent a ton of time with the kids.
As the fog lifted over the next few months, she kept seeing her friends, colleagues, mutual friends (male and female, including hot gym trainers), mothers of our kids' classmates, either socially flirting with me or telling her her H looked so hot and was such a good father and how lucky she was. I would suspect that helped burn off the remaining fog. That was when she started hacking into my cell and emails and insisting that she knew only too well how friendships can go inappropriate and how trusting me is different from trusting "predators". Go figure .
How to convey that "fact" and how "dating" fits in, and how useful it is to different sitches though, that I wouldn't generalize.
Me 42 W 39 Married: 11 Jan 1998, T: Since 1992 First Bomb: Sep 2007 Confirmed A/OM: 4 Nov 2007 Kids: D10, S5 Reconciled and together again after (alot of) time and heartbreak. 3rd kid, S, born 2 Jan 2010.
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