Yes, that was the robx post I was thinking of. I liked the spirit of it. I don't have answers, and I'm not committed to any plan. This has all caught me a bit off guard.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the whole "no contact letter, transparency plan" is really for infidelity situations where the A gets busted while it's still in the crazy addiction phase, where the wayward spouse is ripped from OP, and is going through withdrawal. I wish I was stronger in the early days of my sitch, I might have been able to bust the A. From what I know about my W and how she was feeling, I would have been in a CONSTANT battle to try to prevent the A from flaring back up, again and again.
Unfortunately, I didn't bust the A. It ran it's own course over the last two years (!!, wow, time flies when you're having fun). I kept pressure on her, I was tough in our legal mediations, I made it crystal clear that I'd never let her take our kids to OM's country, and I showed her that I would not allow the artifacts from her trips to be in my house. I refused to normalize her A, which drove her nuts. She normalized it within her inner circle of friends, who were giggly with interest over her stories of passion, but me, my family, my friends, one key friend of hers, and most of her family would not accept her A as "ok". All of this I think contributed to the death of the A to some degree. I did what I could to make sure her reality was nowhere near the fantasy of how she thought it would go.
My W has known OM since they were teenagers. He was "in love" with her back then, but she had no interest. They have gone through periods of 10+ years of no contact. I know from intel that she had no contact from him the entire time she knew me until two years ago when our M was falling apart, and she started an e-mail correspondence with him, which grew to an EA, and then PA. I knew from my intel that my W was behaving in a manner I'd never seen. She was over the top crazy about OM, someone who had pursued her in the past and was always rebuffed. This is all common A stuff, and is fueled by years of resentment over her unmet needs in our M. All of a sudden OM became the greatest thing in the world, and she threw herself at him every way she could. My failure as a H led her to feel unwanted at a core level, and OM filled that need.
I didn't mean to imply that I wasn't worried about any further contact with OM, I am, and I could try to deal with that through transparency, but like I said, they've gone through long periods of no contact in the past, and he has no W or family. Deep in the back of my mind I imagine 10-15 years from now, we're empty nesters, our M is going through a lull, my W has had no contact with OM the whole time, but is feeling unhappy, remembers the thrill of her A, gets tempted and in a moment of horrible judgement, as she has shown herself capable of in the past, decides to send OM something like
"Hi OM, I don't know what's going on in your life right now, but I'm finding myself thinking about you and the incredible adventure we shared together. I did try to save my M, mostly for my kids, but they're grown now, and it's clear to me that H and I are not intended to grow old together. I'm now free to travel unencumbered. Do you ever think about the plans we talked about all those years ago?"
Of course in standard WAW fashion, she'll send that to him BEFORE letting me know she's planning on leaving me, and wait to see if she has another option. THAT's what will keep me up at night if I decide to try to save my M. Short term contact I can try to deal with, but this kind of thing will loom out there like a hidden monster, and I refuse the live the rest of my life in fear. My alternatives are:
1. Leave my W and M behind, for good. 2. Keep myself so emotionally strong and avoid co-dependence so that if she does leave me again I'm not devastated. 3. Take it upon myself to make sure our M stays strong and healthy, i.e. make it "affair proof".
The last option is the only one I'm interested in, and it would depend greatly on my W committing to the exact same thing. I hate to sound jaded, but I've learned that at my age, EVERYONE has baggage of one kind or another. At least I know hers. I could leave my M behind, meet some wonderful woman, get married, have no idea that she has a monster looming in the dark too, and get completely blindsided by it.
I NEVER NEVER NEVER thought my W was capable of doing what she did. Other women here say the same thing about themselves. I can't just cast my W aside as "defective", when I know she's just human, like everyone else. Inside, I believe she was 100% committed to our M, and lived for many years having some core needs go unmet, trying and trying to be happy, before going down the path she did. Still, I can't ignore the enormous damage done to me and our R. I believe almost anything is possible, but trusting her again might be beyond my reach. Maybe ignorance is bliss, and even if a new woman has a monster looming, the fact that I don't know about it is a good thing.
