First Piecing Thread

[Hope4us]

It came up in conversation last night. Don't know exactly how it started, but we were having dinner and it did.

Just a summary, cause I just don't remember all the conversation, but the gist of it is.....

W understands why I still feel a little unsure of us. It bothers her cause she feels like she's done everything she can to reassure me, but understands it's just going to take me a while.

We talked about ANY contact at all. I related some things I've read about former waywards and ANY contact at all, including seeing things online can keep the little bit of fog that's left alive.

We talked about my concerns that at some point in the future OM has a problem with his new wife and contacts my W "just to see how it's going" and how she was going to handle it. I told her that for me to feel completely safe I need to truly believe she understands how this type of thing happens and what she's going to do to protect herself from it ever happening again. She said "you make me feel like I'm dumb because you think I would let it happen again". I replied, "I don't think you're dumb. I just understand how it can happen and from what I've read, EVERYONE is vulnerable to an A, and that it's only personal boundaries that keep people from going there". She looked at me and said, "I do understand how I let it happen and I won't let it happen again".

We talked about the 1000 little decisions she made along the way that if she'd have had boundaries in place, she wouldn't have made and the A wouldn't have happened. We talked about what she liked about herself during the A. I thought it would be a good thing to know as it would give me some clues about what I might not have been doing that made the A worth losing everything for her. She said "At the time, he just made me feel confident. That was almost intoxicating and I didn't want to give it up, at the time". So I asked her "what about now?" She said "I realize now that I was just in a weird place and let it go too far, and then it was too late".

So we then talked about not having conversations with members of the opposite sex that should you should only have with your spouse and I said "I'm guessing here, but I would imagine that at some point you said something to OM about something I did that ticked you off and he used that to start building your confidence" and she said, "um...yeah, pretty much".

I then mentioned that a couple months ago she had said to me, "you're more of a man than OM will ever be" and then said "so what happened that made you realize that?" She said in so many words, that once NC had been in place for a while she started seeing me in a different light, that the things she hung on to to justify the A, just weren't there or she realized that they were just that, justifications. She did say it was a slow process, and there'd be back tracks, etc, but it just took time.

So that's about it. We did discuss FB, not specifically her looking at, but more how it's a recipe for trouble and she said "I'm going to just delete my account" and I told her I would do the same.

It was pretty quiet the rest of the night, but this morning she's been IM'ing me like crazy.

And tomorrow I'm surprising her with a trip to the Smoky Mtns for a long weekend. I'm really looking forward to the trip.