Things are going pretty well. We've been talking so much about everything. Probably about 8 hours of discussion over the last 5 days. W has been frank about what happened in A, which was not easy for her, but it helped me to get a grip on the situation. She has agreed to cut off all contact with OM. We have both been clear that our M will only have a chance to heal in the complete absence of contact.
I understand that W will need time to grieve that relationship, and that there will be a great temptation to recontact. My position is that it's not a "one strike and you're out" thing, but rather an issue of trust and recommitment to the M. I stressed that recontacting OM will only make things harder for us, but that I'd rather know about it so we can work on how to stop it together if it's a problem.
W has gone from not showing much remorse, after our first confrontation, to really expressing remorse and recognizing my pain. She has also been able to articulate the hurt and loneliness that she was feeling that formed the context of the start of the A. I finally grasped how my behaviour contributed to this.
I am doing an individual counselling session next week, then we are going to see how things go working on the M ourselves, with DB and DR as guides. We're going to check in two weeks from now to see if MC is something we want.
So that's how things stand right now. Lots of work ahead, but also lots of hope.
