Back home - but for how long?

[Accuray]

NYCPeter,

I understand what you're going through. Always remember that your imagination will fill in the worst interpretation of events.

What are you thinking of doing next?

You say that if there is a PA or an EA, you want to bring closure to it. You know that you cannot bring closure to it right? Only your W or OM could do that. You getting angry and demanding closure, or trying to explain why closure is necessary will get you no where.

WRT your W, you previously had made ultimatums that if there was OM, then the M was over. You don't feel that way now, but your W still assumes that you do. The "rule" you established was that OM would not be forgiven.

Is there any way to reset that rule now without tipping your hand? I don't know. It would have been easier when you truly didn't know anything. What do you think?

If you could magically transmit a message into your W's brain that she would believe as fact about this situation (potential OM) what would it be?

Reading your post above, you are obsessing about the FB message you found (and I can understand why, I did the same thing, only I found probably a hundred messages, most of it snippets of IM dialog pasted into e-mail to share with her GF). One thing I read was my W saying to OM: "On your birthday, you asked for what you wanted, and you got it, you deserve it!"

Naturally I right away assumed the worst, but it turns out that the office manager had bought OM a chocolate cake for their office party. That's what I mean about your imagination filling in the worst and only looking at part of a conversation.

It sounds to me that you feel you *need* to:
-- understand what the FB dialog was about
-- have contact with OM ended if it's inappropriate
-- understand what has gone on

This need is causing anxiety and obsessive behavior that will blow up on you. You will either snoop more and get caught, or you will confront W when you're not in a good state of mind -- you've done this in the past.

Start thinking through how you can get yourself back to a good place. What can you do to not obsess over the things above? Can you reasonably detatch and stop thinking about it?

If the answer is "no", then what's your plan? The point is, think it through and plan, don't let it pop out by mistake because you can't take it anymore and you happen to be in a bad place in the moment.

If you're going to have "the talk" with W, and you don't see any way around it, I would suggest writing several drafts of it first to make sure you get the points across you want to make (I can forgive, I want this to go forward, etc.)

--Accuray