It hurts like hell, and you (like all of us) have racing thoughts and can't get yout spouse or their affair partner, or the whole bloody mess out of our mind. To tell you to try not to think about it is probably not too helpful: no one is THAT zen. ;-)
The reason people recommend "get a life" activity is to help you save yourself. Any activity that demands your full attention and helps you find flow (losing yourself in the activity) frees your mind from fixations on the affair. Sailing, martial arts, rock-climbing, painting, etc are all things that might help you regain balance AND give your mind a break. You can't really worry about your marriage when you are reaching for the next hand-hold as you scale the climbing wall or ducking someone's left hook in your kick-boxing class. Get in shape, give your mind some rest. Running on a treadmill won't help, it allows your mind to drift and you'll have racing thoughts. Pick something that really engages you.
On the positive side, you don't have kids. Sorry if that's cold-comfort right now, but this would be significantly worse if your kids had to go through this. You really have only ONE person to worry about protecting: YOU.
I'm not going to tell you to fix yourself or become a better person you so your wife can see the positive changes. That makes the next 6-24 mos of your life a miserable hell of walking on egg-shells and worrying if she's noticing your changes. Generally speaking, it doesn't really work. She knows your doing it to win her back so she's really suspicious and most people backslide from those changes. Lots of DB "champs" that mentored me THOUGHT they saved their marriages by becoming superman for 12 mos, 18 mos even 2 yrs. Eventually they slipped back into more usual behavior, and guess what? Yup. Their spouses ended up leaving them and cheating on them again. They are both divorced now. They used to have success stories posted on the DB boards.
Yes in THEORY if you, through some herculean effort, are able to change yourself significantly, and maintain those positive changes FOREVER, you might have a chance at attracting your wife back and keeping her. Michelle Weiner Davis says it's the hardest thing you'll ever do. In my opinion, you might have a better shot of making it through the Navy Seals training class. Heck...I believed it at first, and I SWORE I could change. Guess what? Didn't happen for me. I got exhausted. I forgot to grow a spine in the process and I didn't lay down healthy boundaries. In the end, the fact my wife didn't think her affair was wrong (even though she was open to reconciling)took the wind out of my sails. I couldn't stay married to someone who thought adultery was a viable, morally acceptable option.
For your marriage to be saved, you BOTH need to want to save it. DB-ing only gets their attention, but it doesn't really make them want to change themselves, or even experience remorse for cheating on you. That would take serious marriage counseling.
Here's my advice.
1. Don't pursue her. the more energy you put into the relationship NOW, the more she's going to pull back. If you give her space, she MIGHT be curious. Or then she might not. No guarantees here.
2. See a Lawyer and protect yourself/your assets. Know your options. Take steps to move on with your life. You can always stop the train, but getting it started means you are serious about caring for yourself. Right now you are acting like you are a footnote in your wife's story. Start acting like you are the main character in your own play. ;-)
3. If you have evidence of her affair you have to decide if you want to use it. You can wait a period of time and see how it plays out. Confronting her is only good if you give her an ultimatum. It's me or him. Decide now. Even Michelle Weiner Davis talks about ultimatums. They usually are only effective after the the Last Resort Technique and after going dark. In my opinion, your wife may have already decided. Ultimatums are, to some degree, a sign of strength - they show resolve and backbone, which is attractive. Unfortunately you only get to use them once and they don't always work out.
4. Give yourself a time-line. 3, 6 ,9 mos. Decide how long YOU are willing to leave the door open before you file for divorce. And stick to it. If it doesn't work out, at least you walk out with your dignity. Otherwise you'll be dragged in kicking and screaming through a divorce where you have lost all your power.
5. My personal experience though the whole process is this: the WORSE things I imagined would happen DID happen. And several years after the fact, I'm OK. I wasn't destroyed. The worst case scenario isn't going to destroy you. If I had that perspective then, perhaps I wouldn't have been so frozen in fear. What's the WORST thing that can happen? You lose your wife. And THEN what? Can your life still experience joy and meaning? Yes. Do we rise, phoenix-like, from the ashes? Yes. It's really hard to see that, but really, had I lost my fear, I might have been a bit more creative and, perhaps would have been able to f*ck with the OM in my situation, who happened to have been my best-friend.
6. Put on you inner Samurai. Suit up. Lock and Load. It's YOUR life.
