My Wife Having Affair/I just filed for D

[Accuray]

Well that is a pretty brutal story. It reads like you have been a good husband, communicated when you needed to, etc. I think in general folks on DB are quick to tell you that you weren't meeting your spouse's needs, or there was something "wrong" with what you were doing in the marriage that lead to this, and that is always a great place to start looking and good soul searching to do. It's not always the case however, sometimes you didn't do anything wrong and you can still get cheated on.

That said, no one is perfect, so it does bear doing the introspection and determine if there is anything about you that needs to change to make your future relationships (with or without your wife) as affair-proof as they can be.

Following your story, your W went into real estate, which is a highly "social" profession. The business really runs on referrals, so it's important to spend time building relationships and getting people to like you. My MiL was a mortgage broker and had an affair with a realtor. The whole realtor / mortgage agent / real estate lawyer ecosystem seems to thrive on wining, dining and socializing in order to build the referral network. There's at least one other person I'm aware of on the boards whose wife is a realtor and had an affair with another realtor.

If your W was also hitting some kind of MLC point in her life, then you had a perfect storm brewing of opportunities to court validation and affirmation outside of the marriage outside of a regular workplace. I agree that getting back on track may well require her to change careers for some period of time until you have mutually re-established trust.

I think what to do next depends a lot upon what you want. When a WAS initially leaves a panicked LBS tends to think that the WAS returning "will make everything all better", but the reality is that the return of the WAS is just the starting line for the next period of struggle and hard work. If your wife returns but remains uncommitted or checked out, I guarantee you a life of misery.

Relationships need balance to survive, which is to say that each party needs to "want it" to roughly the same degree. If she comes home reluctant, your M will be out of balance, and she will do as she pleases or threaten to leave you when things don't go her way. She'll know you want it more, and that will impact how you relate going forward. When the WAS comes back for the safety net, or as a second choice, and is not willing to do the work to make the marriage better, I think you're better off if they didn't come back at all, because you are just prolonging an inevitable destruction.

That said, I do think it's worth it to play hard ball. The steps are as follows:

(1) Determine what YOU want: What do you want in terms of a recovery and reconciliation plan? What does a longer term marriage look like that makes you happy and satisfied? Spend some time figuring that out for yourself.

(2) Communicate your needs to W: "W, I believe in marriage, and I would like to save ours from dissolution. I'm willing to do the work to make things better between us and deliver a relationship that will make you satisfied. I will not, however, be disrespected or do it alone. If you want to re-engage with me, we will need to work together to improve things between us. I'm not telling you what to do, you can do whatever you want to do. If you want to start a new relationship with me, I will have some requirements."

(3) Create and Enforce Personal Boundaries: W, I will not be in an open marriage. If you persist in seeing OM, I would like you to move out. If she will not move out, resolve that you will limit your interactions, separate your finances, etc. etc. Definitely don't stand for or enable cake-eating.

WRT your filing, as long as she is involved with OM, or even still in contact with OM, she's very unlikely to take any action to make things better between you. Therefore, if she's still with or seeing OM, and you proceed with your divorce filing, you are likely to end up divorced.

That can be a fine long term approach, as the best way to get your spouse to re-engage as equals is to first completely "drop the rope" and let them go. That said, finalizing a divorce is expensive and comes with some structure and rigidity regarding custody and finances that can be very inconvenient.

One strategy might be to suspend the divorce proceeding without telling W and wait out the affair while pulling back on any behaviors that would enable cake eating.

Once OM is gone and W no longer has a back stop, that's when I would put the divorce proceedings back on track if you're not seeing any re-engagement and feel stuck in limbo.

Good luck!

Acc