You need to think for yourself. You are not a puppet, waiting for someone else's voice to come out of your mouth. No one on this board is a professional marriage counselor, myself included. I have the pleasant experience of having reconciled with my husband, and I believe that I have learned a lot from the experience. Most people on this board have not reconciled. In fact, to be blunt, most are headed for divorce. If you want a professional opinion, you should call the number at the top of the page and speak to a real divorce busting coach.
I think your wife made a mistake, but it may not have been a very damaging one. She did have an EA with a married man. Did it go further? Who knows. But I can tell you this in no uncertain terms, your marriage will continue to suffer if you keep punishing her for her actions. I know it feels like you are accepting the unacceptable to forgive her, but the marriage will ultimately die if you do not forgive her for the things she has done wrong to you, AND (very important) she needs to forgive you for what you have done wrong to her.
No, you are not making headway with this childish "you were mean to me so I won't do anything for you" behavior. As I said before, Allen takes the fear of pursuit way too far. Pursuit, according to Michele W. Davis is when you try desperately to get her to like you. The emphasis is on the word desperately. Not pursuing does not mean getting her to resent you or dislike you. It is simply not acting desperate. That is, it is fine to be nice to her in the normal way that you would be nice to other people. In fact, you should always treat your wife at least as well as you would treat a stranger.
You and your wife have had a crisis in your marriage. Yes, you should talk to her about it if she asks you to. I believe that you can have another opportunity. You can bring it up yourself. You can say something like, "You asked me the other day how I felt, and I wasn't ready to talk about it at that time. But I would like a chance to talk to you about both my feelings and your feelings. When would be a good time?" Or you can suggest counseling so that the conversation is in front of a neutral, third party if you feel that it might turn into an argument.
I can tell you from my experience reconciling after adultery, and after 27 years of marriage, there are many things that I can criticize my H for and I'm sure there are things that I do that bother him. But we have both learned to not say anything about them. The less I criticize him and the less he criticizes me the better we get along. We try to be considerate of each other and helpful to each other. Because that is what marriage is, a partnership in life to make things easier and happier for both people.
