I think exposure backfired?

[AntoniaB]

I meant when she is away (which is now through last week) should I ignore him when he contacts ME or allow him to be in contact with me (answer if he calls/emails). He claims he "can't stop" being in contact with her because he is "enchanted." Yes I've said repeatedly that I'm tired of hearing him talk so casually about her or telling me her "attributes" but it's like he's trying to make a case to my why she is "better" for him. Frankly she is better only because there is no drama with her right now. It's all clandestine. It's exciting. Addictive. He wants the rush of that because everything is so screwed up with us because of HIS infidelity. He keeps saying that if she had only rejected him, he would be willing to try to work it out with me, because he'd have nowhere else to go, but since she did not, he thinks he has to take a chance with her now even at my expense or the marriage's expense or he may lose it forever. I told him the stat on affairs and how like 99% plus of them fail, and he said "and it very well might, but that doesnt' mean I'd go back to you be default." Well what makes NO SENSE about this is that 3 days before he left, he said, in front of our mutual friends, that he and I should think about RENEWING OUR VOWS. Is that not sick? And I've asked him WHY he'd say such a thing and then 3 days later say that he doesn't want anything to do with me, and he can only say that that is because at the time, he didn't really think anything would come of being with her, and so he said it because he really wanted to make it work with ME. Then, when she left her bf and told him, he decided to leave me as well, and then she said a day later "I'm not going back to my bf" and then he told me "I'm going to try with her, the heck with you." It's like she has this stranglehold on him that makes no sense because I've had 23 years with him and only the last year was problematic, where she's had but a few months talking to him. He is acting completely bipolar, which he's never done in his life, and everyone says "this is not the X I know when I hear what he's saying or thinking." It's like he lost his mind.

Tonight I talked to him about counseling, saying can you not give us just ONE try at an appt where we both state the issues, and let a 3rd party make a suggestion to split or work on it, and he actually said "I can't decide that without talking to HER first." How can a person who lived with me the past year in an apparent perfect harmony just overnight become so different, and place this practical stranger on SUCH a pedestal and give her SO much weight?