Very confused as to how to treat wife. No doubt everyone will say I need yo focus on me. I am focusing on me, but how I act towards my wayward wife during this phase (often called plan A) is critical. And I need pointers.
Some of sandi's db rules seemed to not work in bringing my wife closer. With more affecting and a little touch and I feel she is warning. This is why I needed to talk to laurie to clarify.
Went to the show saturday night with W. Had a great time. Then went home and talked about how we missed D3 who was spending the night at MIL.
Made my W laugh, had a good time, like the good old days.
You mentioned several times you are looking at marriage builders as well as Divorce Busting. I think this is a big source of your issues and confusion, and the source of exasperation from the people on this board. You need to pick one or the other, these two approaches are diabolically different in intent and approach. You cant cherry pick and choose aspects you like from each and expect anything other than the mess you find yourself in.
In DB, you should be doing "the 180" in its entirety. Detaching yourself by building a new life outside of your wife for the benefit of improving yourself whether or not your wife decides to reconcile. In DB, you DONT snoop. You DONT expose the affair. You DONT interfere with your wife's affair. You DONT do anything for your wife. NO pursuing, NO dating, NO valentines. You do things for yourself, new actions, activities, and build a better life for yourself outside of your relationship. It about you growing into a better person, and maybe or maybe not your spouse will decide you are the better option and choose you, and if not, you are in a good position to move on anyways.
Marriage builder's "plan A" does involve tons of pursuing activities like actively trying to meet your spouses emotional needs. So, yes, date them and do valentines. BUT!, BUT the "carrot" of plan A doesnt happen without the "stick" of actions designed to attack the affair - snooping, documenting, massive exposure of your spouse and affair partner to friends/family/work, confronting the affair partner, and doing everything in your power to interfere with and stop the affair - blocking numbers, canceling internet, cutting of money and taking away the car. And in marriage builders, if they still choose the affair after all this, before you would find yourself in the cake-eating limbo you are in you would go into plan "B" which is complete and total separation and non contact from your spouse.
As best as I can tell, most of your actions look like you are trying to use marriage builder's "plan A" carrots and ignoring the "180" rules against support and pursuing, but then conveniently choosing to use a few parts of DB's "180" to justify not taking any plan A "stick" actions over her flagrant abuse of you to further her affair. And then you are coming on to a DB forum for feedback and driving people here crazy.
My advice for you is to think about what you want, think about what kind of person you are, what you think you are and are not capable of doing or willing to accept, and then buckle down on one approach. But whatever you do, neither the 180 nor plan A can possibly be used to justify the position you are in where you are caretaking for your unremorseful, actively cheating wife while not providing any negative consequences for her abuse of you.
