The affair was the most intense when I discovered it two years ago. They both made a half-hearted attempt to end it for about a month, then started back up again, albeit with lesser intensity. If I'd had the guts to PROPERLY expose it then, she would have been thrown out as she was at the very end of her timeline for presenting her dissertation proposal. She had 4 days left. If I had exposed it on the eve of the proposal, she would have shaken and failed and with no time left on the clock to try again, been told to leave. Hindsight's always 20/20.
I HAVE thought about future contact, and have decided that once she's been gone for a while, I'll show my husband some of the evidence I've collected, including an email where OW bragged about the attention WH was giving her, and the friend advised her to keep using my husband as much as possible. I'll also show him OW's police report, the one where she said she had no plans for a relationship with him regardless of his marital status. With her no longer here to lie and defend herself, that should put a damper on his future dealings with her.
As for "ripping off the bandaid", yes, that's ALWAYS the preferred method for the BS, because it gets the OP out of the picture asap. Very few BS's have that option, though. And the reality is, you can't FORCE someone to do something they don't want to do. THEY have to want to change and leave the affair, and most don't. That's why they go underground and prolong it, heightening the excitement.
Larry doesn't see the OP or the MLC as the problem. As painful as they are, they're symptoms of a BIGGER problem, which needs to be addressed before the WS will agree to change and give up OP.
You can't "flip a switch" and go back to "normal," because the status quo was only acceptable for one person in the relationship - the BS. That's why the WS is acting out. You can't ignore it. If you just resume what you were doing before, you open yourself up to the same kind of trouble down the road.
So, we're working on it.
I've always known my husband was selfish and self-centered, but prior to this saga, he was always good to me and I didn't have much to complain about. I've since learned that it's a result of his chaotic childhood, where he had to learn to do for himself or get plowed down. His brother's the same way. So are both of his parents, who also grew up in tumultous households.
For many years, I always gave him what he needed: time and space to do what he wanted, and plenty of strokes to his ego.
But when the kids came along and he wasn't the center of my universe anymore, the trouble began. We stopped communicating. I resented that he dumped all the childcare on me, he resented that he worked long hours and I didn't give him the time of day. A sad story, yet all too common. He was starved for attention when OW came along, and with her agenda, that was all it took.
These days, I'm working on giving him the attention he craves, in small, intense doses. I purposely have little interaction with him, but when I do, it's usually full of praise and compliments. It seems to be working, albeit slower than I'd like.
