Am I piecing? Just can't tell...

[Deep]

SBH, the obvious and sensible answer is - don't do it. It being going off and picking up someone for an ego boost.

It sounds stupid to you, but it's part and parcel of the WAS behaviour. Actually, it's not a bad thing IMHO when a WAS says stuff like that, it's honesty from them in a way. And other things aside, I think you should have known by now that if you want the marriage, if you want reconciliation, you can't cake-eat yourself and pander to your ego. I'm not saying you should not keep your self-respect, far from it, but there's a huge difference between self-respect and ego-boosting.

And yes, I speak from personal experience. My W was skeptical if she could ever feel for me "that" way again, if we could ever connect again, and that turned from skepticism to acceptance, and resignation. As in, she accepted I could never make her feel like her soulmate OM did and that she would, in the worst case, sacrifice her happiness for our kids. Try that for an ego boost .

And yep, I had my own "special friend" after that (who Sandi rightfully called me out on). Not that _I_ could have seen it in that light in my own fog. Did my ego a world of good, but nothing else. It got rather messy in the end. Wasn't right for her, me or the marriage.

We're in a much stronger place now. The "feeling" did come back, more than ever. It took a LONG time, way past the point where I learnt to let it go and not obssess over it. My W cannot bear to think back to those bad old days much, she certainly cannot recognise who she was then. Couldn't have seen this back then, and even here and now, we're taking things one step at a time, working through ups and downs as they come, and never taking anything for granted.

Best of luck.