Looking for Advice

[gutwrenching]

Situation Update here in the New Year and back to work (sorry it is long):

So where am I at now…confused probably describes it best.
I did not do a good job of detaching over the holidays. Good or bad, we spent a lot of time together and together with the kids.
I have become a little more accepting of the fact things might not turn out as I hope, but still a long ways to go from being at peace on this or being truly willing to accept the fact that it could all end in D. I have made progress, still a ways to go.

I have learned that W gets stressed every night before bed, probably starting an hour or so out; she shared this fact with me a couple of days ago. She is sleeping in same bed again, but that doesn’t mean much. She began sleeping in bed over holidays so the kids wouldn’t find out. She continued practice last night when she didn’t have too. Will see if this trend continues or not.

I have no real evidence of any contact with OM. I suspect it is a couple of e-mails a day. Now that we are back at work, it has the potential to be much, much more communication and I will never know if they are using work phones/computers. I need to just let this one go for now and stay alert and look for signs.

W’s mood and attitude towards me has been all over the map. In general, I see positive signs but don’t know whether or not to trust them. Potentially positive signs: she has initiated comments about our upcoming move this summer to include asking me about child care options for us and she mentioned a house for rent that we could only afford on both incomes and it would be too big if S or D. In talking of the move today, she said maybe we should tell our boss we are already having issues in M to factor in when deciding the exact positions we are going to be sent too (in other words, not tough/long hour jobs for both of us)…then she changed her mind that she wasn’t ready to tell him that. We have started (today) working out together in the morning. Getting up early, going through a detailed program to include a refined diet. She was very open to the idea. I initially suggested that we might want to try the program because it was part of my GAL (to get into better shape) and I was just making small talk, I was shocked when she immediately agreed to the idea. She woke up angry today (she told me that, I asked what at, and she said just overall angry) but after working out seemed to be in 100 times better spirits and was even smiling at me as I left for work. Also, in the past few days she has shared with me some medical issues/medication with her that I knew nothing about. She commented to me that she assumed I would have gone through her medication and figured it out…which I hadn’t and told her…and she said I know, I could tell my medications hadn’t been touched. We watched quite a few movies/TV shows together without distractions of computers and without animosity or serious conversations or anything like that.

Negative signs: she stresses out before bed time because she is afraid I’m going to unload something on her or want to talk about things and because things aren’t “normal or at least not what normal used to mean.” There is still anger that flairs up, just about every day at some point; it no longer lasts days, but hours. She admits it and says she is just angry at the situation she is in and she knows she needs to be better about it. I haven’t seen real remorse yet. The closest was “I feel bad” about the large xmas gift my parents gave us...and she genuinely did...this was about a week after Xmas.

So the positive/negative signs are either results of contact (or lack of) with OM or a true conflict in her mind and maybe she hasn’t 100% made up her mind to leave. It has been 15 days since exposing the EA and setting boundary. It has been 10 days since re-iterating boundary with removal of him from her facebook.

Quite possibly the holidays helped. We had to put on a good front for the kids and we spent a lot of time together, some tense and cold, others relaxed and friendly. Even spent one day skiing together without the kids.

She is still way gone, that is obvious, but she is either putting on a show or not quite as gone as she was a few weeks ago.

I know for a fact that the past 2 weeks saw a serious decline in communication with OM. They went from talking 6 to 7 days of the week for 30-60 minutes each day and 40-60 text messages a day and multiple e-mails, to probably just a couple/few emails on the account she knows that I know about, but she still never talks about and still almost pretends isn’t there. As I stated earlier, high risk for increased communication again, but I think I know enough now to at least be able to see the warning signs.

So the big question in my mind, is how to proceed from here. For now, I watching/thinking about it and asking for advice. Becoming workout partners is a twist I didn’t expect. I think there is potential upside to this; it is a 180 for me. It is something that she wanted to re-initiate a few times in our our M, but I resisted and is something we have not done since very early on in our M. And if this morning was any indication, it caused a rapid mood change for the better. We were even laughing some during the workout video and personally, I wasn’t thinking about our situation at all, I was too into the exercise.

The best part of my changes continues to be with the kids. They see the change. Their attitudes and affection to me has changed. I am a much better father and very proud of that fact.

Thoughts/comments from the experts and supporters?