But Mike, if an R can't heal from infidelity, then pretty much everyone on these boards has completely wasted their time.
In Mish and Gabe's case, neither party has ever acted like HE/SHE was totally done, not really. It's been pretty frustrating to watch actually.
Here's the deal --
To have a good romantic R with ANYONE, Mish and Gabe BOTH have to do a lot of work on themselves, and a lot of work on who they are as partners. They BOTH have to deal with the old issues and work through them with someone, they aren't going to go away. It is possible that Gabe got a wake up call and is ready to work on himself. We don't know.
We do know that Mish needs to learn to own her choices, make herself happy, set and maintain reasonable boundaries, learn to be strong enough to take real emotional risks, etc... The present situation is thus potentially a good opportunity for work that Mish needs to do regardless of how things turn out in the long run.
What do I really think about the chances here?
Small. But, that is true of ANY dating relationship. MOST dating relationships fail, very nearly ALL of them fail.
What do I really think about the situation?
It's a mighty fine mess. I'd certainly recommend dating someone before living together in a sexual relationship, especially with children involved. But, that's not what happened. Neither of them was DONE, or Gabe wouldn't be living with Mish. They are having sex. There are feelings involved. There is so much game playing between the two it is ridiculous. It's like an annoying soap opera where the star crossed lovers keep almost sharing their feelings, but then stop because of fear or because the other person pushes back because of fear for the nth time. The standard Harlequin cliche. Blah blah blah. Over and over. Drives me nuts, really nuts. Worse, they are living together as parents of their son. Son no doubt has his hopes up now too. What to do??? If they are BOTH toying with the idea of starting a new R and seeing where it goes, what to do? It is indeed a mighty fine mess now that they are living together as parents of a child and having an active sexual relationship. Crazy.
But, how do you back up and take things more slowly? I guess Mish could stop the sex, have Gabe move out, and tell him that she might be interested in exploring a dating R, and then set boundaries on such an R. But, given the context, it is pretty tricky to get from here to there.
You say men can't change. That's bull. Is it likely Gabe will change? I have no idea. Mish probably has a better sense of whether there has been a real shift in him. If he is changing and they wind up together, dealing with his past infidelity, his present floundering when it comes to learning how to be monogamous, and his future fidelity (when triggers to cheat arise) will be work that they have to do together. But, whether they do it together or not, they will BOTH have to deal with the infidelity issues that each has now. They can do it together, or apart, or not at all. But if they don't do it at all, the issues will sabotage future Rs one way or another.
One thing in all of this seems certain to me: it is better for Mish to make decisions based on her wishes from a position of strength than to run away in a panic mode when she knows darn well she'd halfway want Gabe to run after her.
MISH -- whatever you do, it will be hard. There isn't an easy path from where you are. So, focus on doing right by YOURSELF. And, remember, you can always change paths, you can always change your mind.
For certain and for sure, the farther you go down a new R path, the more treacherous it will get. There WILL be backsliding. There WILL be new mistakes. There WILL be old dirty laundry aired that you never even knew about. There WILL be a lot of new pain. There MIGHT be new joy. There MIGHT be growth. There MIGHT be success in terms of a new R.
Where you need to get in your head if you stay on the treacherous path is that NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS with you and Gabe, the experience will be a success FOR YOU because the possible benefits were worth the risks and because you treated yourself well EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. You gotta learn to do this when negotiating the path of any R. So, learning to do this now will make your current experiences a positive for you, even if you decide to change your locks (with Gabe on the other side of them) tomorrow.
