Not much progress

[Card29]

Keep us posted. Everyone here wants the best for you. Violence in most cases is the worst response. It usually drives a wayward spouse in OM/OW's arms

Let me recap the timeline and then let you look at it from a different angle:

- Saturday you assaulted OM. I can't really blame you for the outburst because I may have done the same thing if I just happened to catch them like that

- Monday she tells you it's over for your M

- Today (or yesterday?) he ends the A

For one, I'd take the ending with a grain of salt. It's been less than a day, and there are plenty of sitches here who've went through multiple restarts with the same OM.

Secondly, maybe the OM was finally pushed past the fun, honeymoon phase. He saw something other than sex and light companionship coming soon, so he was forced to chose between two real relationships instead of one real one (his M) and a fantasy R (the A). This would have been caused by your W telling OM she was ending your M, not by the assault.

If that is the case, the same outcome could have happend sooner had you set a boundary and not agreed to a cake-eating, open R, which is what living with her and trying to be her friend while she is openly in an A. If you had kicked her out and went dark, the A would have went from fantasy to reality for OM much sooner.

Assaulting OM is not a guaranteed marriage-ended. My neighbor recently told me about how, 18 years ago, he found out about an A between his W and the next door neighbor. He beat the crap out of him in the driveway, the A ended, OM and his W moved, and he was able to reconcile (before getting divorced 10 years later). But I don't think violence was what solved that sitch, either. It was the exposure to OMW. Now OM had to choose, and he was not interested in spending the rest of his life with his A partner. He just wanted sex. Your OM also probably only wanted sex and decided to end it once it became clear it was going to be more than that.

Also, it doesn't take courage to act on aggressive emotion. The real courage is doing what is proven to be best even when every fiber of your body wants to do the opposite and tear someone apart.