Stealing from a couple of other threads here but this is also great advice from melissa and something that got thrown in my face the last time my wife and I talked.
Whether we blame it on mental illness or otherwise, the point is that we tend to discount the WAS's feelings, which, more often than not, is exactly what got us here in the first place.
She told me that one of the biggest problems she's had throughout all of this is that I was selfish and tried to control her. I asked her how she felt that I did that because I obviously didnt feel like I was controlling - in fact, I felt like she was controlling me!!
Her answer kind of blew me away - She said that I never listened to what she wanted and instead tried to convince her that she would be better off doing something else (which is the things that I wanted).
Of course to me, I was 'fighting for the marriage' and 'giving us a shot' and all those other things but to her, I was just arguing with her and convincing her not to do what she felt she needed/wanted to do. Which is understandable, since she wanted to hang out with the OM and not 'work on our marriage' but I see now how counterproductive it was to do that. If I had to do it over, I would have been the one to take the leap of faith earlier and tell her to do what I finally had to tell her last night - that she needs to do what she needs to do but that I wouldn't be second place - and take the leap of faith myself that she would come to the conclusion on her own.
I have noticed that some of these lessons are very very hard to learn until you have experienced them. I never ever ever felt like I was doing the wrong things or making the wrong moves. I read everything about what I should be doing, took notes, made lists but when it came time to apply, i went with what i felt was right instead of trusting what I had read.
Don't be so hard on yourself there really aren't any right or wrong answers it's all about living and learning. There are somethings that no matter what you would have chose the outcome could've very well still been the same. None of us here are experts no matter how simliar the situations are or how briliant the advice seems. Truth is your sitch is you sitch and hindsight is always 20/20. Try not to dwell, feed the positive starve the neg...STAND UP!
