Stuck in Holding Pattern

[ben11]

will not want to reconcile -UNLESS-

she believes marriage to you now, & "from this day forward",

could be different/better.

So how have YOU shown her that it could be?

What is different in YOU or how you interact with her, that indicates any possible improvement?

If she thinks you'll hold the A over her head like the sword of Damacles

or throw it in her face every time you are upset, she won't come home. (Who would?)

So she may not feel like it's worth even trying...esp if the MC is re-hashing the past or just about how SHE has to do "x" and "y".

Is it possible that

If she sees no change in you, she may Prefer to take her chances w/OM b/c she knows with you she's getting too little attention and too much anger?

have you done any forgiveness work? Not b/c she "deserves" it, but b/c the anger you feel is clearly influencing your choices, and it hurts You.

Through MC, I've told her I understand how we got to where we are. I understand why EAs happened. She felt alone in the marriage. I attribute that to my complacency, laziness, character flaws, and not being aware of the issue. I took full ownership of those things.

I feel like I'm more angry about the fact that she knows how much it hurt me to do what she did, and still wont cut off contact, than the actual EA itself. She's even apologized a few times for hurting me like she did, and betraying my trust, but yet, still wont correct it. But to me it was like her saying, "yeah, sorry about that. Will it happen again? Well, no, but I'm not going to give you any reassurance of that. Hope my apology means something"

Even after EA1, while we were still living together, she absolutely refused to delete OM1 from her facebook, because she didn't want to cause drama (he's a potential job lead down the road, mutual friends, yada yada). I think this is one of the reasons I really shut off between EA1 and EA2. Why not just pull my nuts out and stomp on them.

I know I can forgive the act because I truly do understand why it happened. When I put myself in her shoes, I can't look in the mirror and say I would've been able to refused the extra attention either. Especially when the M was over in most respects.

The problem with me showing her how I'm different is that, it's really hard to show someone how much they really special they are, and how much they mean to you, when you're separated, and you don't want to pursue them. How can I show that I can be romantic when she finds talking to me at a coffee shop forced and unnatural.

MC asked what if I were to climb a ladder, post a note on her window that expressed my love to her so it was the first thing she woke up to. She said she would think "who told you to do this". This is an example of a way I could prove to her I love her, by doing romantic things for her, but it would be very anti-DB.

One of the things she said in our last MC session, is that her mom said the thing that got her and her dad through the rough patches in their M is that she know that she was the most important thing in her dad's life. She never felt that with me. I validated that immediately, and told her how sorry I was about that and if I could do it over again, I would.

MC asked if she asked her dad the same thing, but she didn't know. He challenged her to ask him, but maybe I'll never know the answer. It probably doesn't matter anyway.

Some of the 180s I was able to do no matter what our situation was were:
- Learn how to cook, be self supporting
- Take better care of myself (exercise, healthier diet, etc)
- Have some drive in life again (finished school, signed up for challenging bike race/ride, planning to move to where we always wanted to live)