I'm on your side here. But because of that, I am going to poignantly ask you why you sent the OM's fiancee a friendly email. Why? If you want to detach, that is about the furthest thing from it. You are now involving other "innocent" people and making the situation uglier. That's not detaching, that's obsession! You are dignifying the OM's existence by doing this...and even more simply, you are not minding your own business.
See, right now, what is your motive for spying on your WAW? If you are not going to do anything with this evidence, then stop gathering it and truly detach. You only gather evidence if you need to prove to her you know that an A has gone on and you won't tolerate it anymore and want out, no joking whatosever. Which is not what this site is about. I have come to realize that you only spy if you want to catch your wife doing these things and then hold it against her while working towards a divorce. If you DON'T want a divorce, then you need to stop spying. All this is going to do is cause you to go crazy. You might not be there yet, but you will be at some point...everyone has their end of their rope.
You need to decide whether to either:
(1) Detach completely, knowing full well that there is going to be an OM involved for an indefinite period of time with your WAW. You do it under the premise that you deep down love her so much that you are willing to set her free for this unknown period of time, while you simultanteously improve you for YOU. She may notice your changes and she may not, but all you can really do is work on you and let her come back to you if she truly wants to. You have to be very patient and accept that some or many other activities may have gone on with OM during this time, some of which you will go to your grave not knowing about. Your love for her has to be ultimately stronger than any of that. Sounds like a very over-romantic thought, but that's what you have to do if you go this route, which is the DB way.
or...
(2) If you decide you want a divorce, then, spy your heart out and keep listening to these conversations. But all that will do is give you more reasons to dislike your wife and you will find out more things you really didn't want to know. That will likely cause you to harbor increasing resentment to the point where you can't overlook anything you've heard or seen. Furthermore, contact with an OM can come in waves...you spy and you find out that there has been little conversation between them for a while, so you get excited and think maybe it has cooled off between her and OM. THEN, a few days later, you're disappointed again when you find out they're back at it again, talking, flirting, worse, you get the idea. Then you are lible to get mad.
Now, I have said in a couple of previous posts when I was less wise that I am not against spying whatsoever. I now know than I am, and why it's a DB tactic not to do so. It only messes with your head. Spying is for detectives looking to gather evidence to CONVICT someone, not to bust a divorce with them. So, if you have decided you don't want to divorce bust, then keep spying.
Look, I know it's hard not to know what's going on with your wife. But the spying will just wear you down....it seems you are already a bit addicted to it. But you are really just wasting a lot of precious time you could be using to better yourself...you have to basically tell yourself...I don't care anymore what she's up to...I'm going to go do something that makes me happy. And as I said earlier, do not involve OM's fiancee in this. I know it's tempting, but you are just wasting more of your time getting other people involved too. That's not the way to detach, rather it only further increases the drama.
True gritter is right, work on yourself for the long term improvement of you. The ball is NOT in your court right now, it's in your wife's to come back to you. It may or may not happen, but that's your only opportunity to successfully DB.
Wow; that's an awful lot of assumptions. What research or books do you base all of this on?
I'm not an expert like some of you, and thankfully my wife isn't having an affair (I don't think). But to say "If you want to divorce, go ahead and spy, and if you want to save your marriage, then absolutely don't" seems awfully, well, ABSOLUTE to me.
I'd rather know the truth about what's going on, so I'd know what to do about it. Maybe that's just me.
