The relationship between the two of you is not currently healthy.
The good times raise your hopes and expectations. They also satisfy your wife's insecurity about being alone and unable to make it.
Someone else mentioned the pursuit dance. I think it's happening here, but not maliciously.
Thing is, someone has to stop that dance and it doesn't sound like your wife is capable.
Sure sounds to me like both of you still have a lot invested in each other emotionally. Getting divorced because the separation is hard is no different in my mind to getting divorced because the marriage is hard.
I hate to make you feel worse, but I have to say that my initial impression is that this is still a marriage that could be saved.
The relationship that was developing between the two of you PRIOR to actually verbalizing getting serious about each other again was a good one. I may be in the minority here, but even with your wife involved with another, the two of cooperating and doing things that make life more normal for the kids is a good thing, regardless of the eventual outcome.
The problem is that each time either of you begins to mentally move in the direction of "maybe trying again," one or the other freaks out and it gets bad again.
My suggestion would be to finalize the separation between the two of you. Make it legal, draw up the papers, settle the financials, sell the house, whatever. Continue moving in the direction of establishing your own lives. But don't resist the cooperation and kindness.
Your wife is afraid of being able to make it on her own. In her confusion, she then sees her fear of making it as financial control on your part. That sends her beck mentally to the bad side of your previous relationship, and makes her feel justified in believing that things are unsalvagable.
If you have any desire whatsoever to rebuild the marriage, you are going to have to show her that you are willing to not only let her go, but allow her to have a fighting chance to succeed on her own.
It's bothersome, because in ways you will feel as though you are providing for her OM relationship. In truth you are setting her completely free, allowing her to remove YOU from the equation of what's wrong inside. Maybe then she will begin to be able to figure out whether she really misses you, or just the security of the relationship.
Blessings,
Bill
"Don't tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon."
