He's telling friends he thinks we'll reunite

[MarieC]

Hi, Red,

Thanks for writing! I hope the kids find something constructive to do this summer. Any plans? Pool open soon? Anything you could do with them that would be fun for you and perhaps pique your husband's interest in the cool things you're doing together? Just a thought - I think about you and your situation a lot, as I have a hunch that this OW in your case will DISAPPEAR once she has her degree and has landed her first job and doesn't need him anymore. Then the ball's back in your court. I could be wrong, of course, but that's what I'm suspecting.

As for my spouse, if she gets pregnant in Germany, she OWNS him until the kid is 26. It is OVER for me. In addition, he's adopted and was very upset when we weren't able to have kids. Our only hard time prior to this was when I lost a baby at 15 weeks; he had been so looking forward "to having someone I'm related to." That would be the nail in the coffin for us, I fear.

I keep thinking back to him telling the lawyer, when he was pressuring for when to file (first chance is around Valentine's Day), that he doesn't love Bimbo, he loves me, but he needs some space and time. Afterwards, the lawyer told me he was an "Arschloch" (a**hole) and quoted that line Paul Newman used about why eat hamburger out when you can have steak at home. The lawyer ended up being a little too friendly with me, unfortunately, but at least appreciates me for my brains and what I've accomplished and apparently my looks. My husband seems to be appreciating my looks and brains of late, but I want my husband to leave that bimbo and LOVE me and - though he said he loved me in that note last Thursday - the REALITY is that he's still with that bimbo.

What you said about there perhaps being a crisis brewing with bimbo was interesting - you might have something there. Before I saw my husband last Thursday, in response to an email he sent, I wrote back and told my husband what my neighbors said about bimbo saying he'd gone to meet her parents and that the neighbor definitely knows who my husband is as he even knew our license plate number, so I wonder if my husband got upset with bimbo for talking about this visit, when he still seems to be keeping her under wraps. He has gone so far as to deny he left me to our former neighbor and an older man who has always been such a dear friend to us - and to me he acts like bimbo doesn't exist. (I do NOT understand *this* at all, as I am open about her existence.)

THis whole situation is so hard. I just think I'm too close to it to see it clearly.

I don't know what to think. He wrote a lot over the last few weeks, often 4-5 times/day, and was positive and trying to get a conversation going - about ANYTHING, even the rain. I was trying to DB - told him in that "willing to listen" note (as advised by MWD) that I would be willing to really hear what he had to say - but then - again, as suggested by MWD - left him alone and went dim on him. I wonder if I screwed up when he started writing so often and trying to get a conversation going when I only politely but almost curtly responded, but never enthusiastically and never warmly, which is totally out of character for me. (I have always been warm and friendly and enthusiastic with those I love - in my huge suburban high school years ago, I was "friendliest" and "most cheerful" in the yearbook - and I'm still the same way.) So I have been wondering if he has been trying to make overtures that I've just repeatedly shot down.

He also knows that when I was in London a few weeks ago, I met my up with old friends, including an old boyfriend who had proposed marriage several times. My husband knows me well enough to know that I would not let anything physical happen with this old boyfriend, but at the same time, he knows this guy is still important to me (though my husband was always secure I loved him more, as I turned down the ex-boyfriend's marriage proposals but enthusiastically married my husband.) In addition, at a time when my husband was failing his MBA program, I was meeting my old boyfriend, who has a PhD in economics and is so successful (he's a multimillionaire and executive at a huge company, and we met when he was the smartest man in our group at Harvard), but even with this situation, my husband still started writing (actually, started writing MORE) when I was in London and kept up the increased friendliness and effort to stimulate conversation (which I only minimally responded to) for the last three weeks.

So I've been wondering if I missed some "baby steps" on his side toward at least starting a conversation again, as I was so focused on not "chasing" him and going dim....