I guess I'm trying to figure out a) whether R is possible/what we actually want to do and b) what I or the W needs to do or see for that to happen 100%. I told her what I expected if there was ever going to be full trust between us again, i.e. she needs to devote herself to re-building our marriage, which would involve cutting all romantic/inappropriate ties to both OM's and proving it (full disclosure/access). Cue the wayward, "you're treating me like a child/being controlling," script. Fine, I went to the gym.
The only reason I thought about confronting the OM's head on is mainly because the W has always had an issue with me being passive in defending her against male advances, taking a laid back approach and rationalizing it with, "well if I trust my wife, I shouldn't be jealous," all the while dismissing huge red flag warning signs of infidelity. Actually, one of our neighbors messaged me during my previous deployment a picture of OM2's car parked in front of her house and said she saw a man walk into our house. The W and I laughed it off that she was the neighborhood busybody, slightly crazy, and that wasn't the OM2's car (I didn't know that is was). W revealed to me before returning home from this last deployment (almost a year later) that OM2 had stayed over that night, but had stayed in the guest room (lie). Another example: way back when we were engaged we went out barhopping with friends, and she complained that the brother of one of my good friends was making inappropriate advances and grabbed her backside. Not wanting confrontation, I said, "well I didn't see it," and never said anything to the guy. That night ended in a huge fight where she complained that I never defended her. So this issue has a history.
Anyways, maybe I've been doing myself a disservice in trying to psychoanalyze what my W wants to see from me to really commit to R, and defending our marriage from outside threats is one of those things that I've been mulling. Although as some have said, that could end very, very badly.
