Do you think your wife -- when you didn't respond to a couple of those texts or emails -- in that moment . . . believed you didn't love her? Or was she simply upset that you weren't behaving in the way that she THOUGHT you would, even while she was cheating on you?
For me? It would have confirmed for me that you didn't love me. If I already had doubts, it would have been the icing on the cake.
This theme of women doing something to try to get a reaction from their men is riddled throughout chick-flicks. The problem being, of course, that it's the women that are watching them, not the men. I can think of a line in "The Break-Up" where Jennifer Anniston says that she didn't really want to break-up with her BF, she just wanted to wake him up, to get him to fight for their R. He didn't. They broke up. He woke up after it was too late. It's not a game, just a huge communication problem between men and women, I think.
AT, I'm going to ask you something, and only you can answer. There is a lot of noise on this post right now with very conflicting positions. And then there's the one that's right for you. You did very well last night in communicating your position and laying down your boundaries. You listened to your W telling you that she felt like you didn't fight for her, and you told her you weren't going to while OM was in the picture. And then you shut down the conversation and went on to other light-hearted conversation. Then you followed through on your "ultimatum" by not responding to W's text at 2:30 in the morning.
Did you, at any point in the conversation last night, ask your W if there was anything you could do now that would evidence to HER that you are willing to fight for her? NOW? In spite of OM? And then offer some ideas, measurable things (moving, different job, trip away, marriage retreat, etc. whatever is relevant to your sitch)? After what she said to you yesterday, I'm wondering what she was hoping for in response to her text at 2:30am? I can pretty well guarantee you she wasn't hoping for silence. I'm sure she thought about your conversation the w-h-o-l-e way home. Maybe she heard you, too.
Maybe it is too late and there is absolutely nothing you could do at this point and going dark is the absolute best thing you could do. But if I were you, I would sure want to know that straight from the horse's mouth, rather than from a bunch of unknown people on a forum, albeit with the advice being offered with the best of intentions.
