This is my first post, but I've lurked around here since BD on 2/6. This board has helped me immensely. I haven't told anyone besides my therapist about wife's affair, and it is very hard to keep that bottled up. This community has helped me feel supported and not alone through the hardest period of my life. Sincere thank you for all you do out there.
My sitch: Five years together, two kids 4 and 1. I'm now 30, wife is 25. We have all the ingredients of a happy marriage - beautiful children, nice home together, we are each other's best friend. But now I realize, we let the marriage get stale and should've been in MC years ago to work on it.
Fast forward to middle of last year. Marriage had been fledgling for a while. Lots of arguments, stressed. Then the intimacy stopped. Then one day my wife said she wanted a divorce. She started therapy and I turned into mush trying to win her back. This went on for a few months.
Then Bomb Day. She was having an EA which turned into a PA and was no longer in love with me. Said she never was. No remorse, said she didn't feel bad, I was the reason for her infidelity, etc etc. I get even mushier. Begging, pleading, forgiving. Pushing her further away.
That was 1 month ago. Two weeks ago I found this site. I detached and tried to GAL. This to me is one of the hardest things about DB. I obsess about losing my wife, my family unit, her affair all day everyday, but have to be upbeat and head high at the same time. Not easy, my head remains in a bad place. Really down, but doing my best. I did OK at it for a couple weeks. One thing I messed up on though, was the snooping. I scoured phone records, tried to hack email, looked up web history.
Things seemed to get a little better in terms of my wife's state of mind. She talked about wanting to work on things at one point (not truly committed though). We were on friendly talking terms, even laughing and joking at times. It's been hard to fully detach because we are co-parenting two young children. But things were OK. Not good or bad, but it just seemed neutral.
Then this morning I snooped again on the phone bill. And she has continued talking to her affair partner every morning for about 30 min to an hour on her way to work. I snooped more, she posted a yahoo question (where you seek anonymous online advice) about not being able to get over her affair and not being attracted to me:
(I can,t get over the man I had an affair with...? Please do not judge me… I started having a long distance affair approx. 8 months ago. I have since come clean to my husband and started going to therapy. My husband seems like he would like to work on things, but I am not too sure. My therapist said that if I want to work on things with my husband I NEED to stop communicating with this other guy. I have honestly tried and I just can’t give him up… My husband and I have two young children, a beautiful house in my dream neighborhood, so many friend and family ties. I can tell if I am scared to lose all of that or if I don’t want to lose my husband. He is a really good man, we sometimes have fun together, but I am not sexually attracted to him. Don’t get me wrong, he is a good looking guy, I just don’t feel that spark…).
It seemed so flippant, which has really bothered me throughout this ordeal. She doesn't seem to care about giving everything up over puppy love? She doesn't seem to care about how much I'm hurting, and how much this may hurt our young children.
Seeing all this overwhelmed me. I thought I was making progress and it turns out she has just been drawn to OM more and more. Don't hold back, I see now how impatient I am for only doing 2 weeks of DBing. One of the things I've been awakened to (and one of my contributions to the breakdown of our marriage) is my need to be in control.
And now I've fallen victim to this shortcoming again. I called a divorce mediator to setup a consultation. I told my wife and asked what her schedule was. She was surprised, but really seemed unfazed for the most part.
If I'm honest I know part of me wanted to get a rise out of my wife and maybe snap her out of the spell this other man has her under. But I'm hurting so much and I'm in an open marriage, and I can't keep allowing her to walk on me while carrying on her affair. I really did come to the conclusion that I needed to do this to establish an important boundary. I will not be in an open marriage. There would be no way for us to fix this if she continued talking to the OM for an hour each day and probably dozens more texts/emails.
Have I gone too far? Did I just seal my fate to soon be divorced and split up my family? What in the world should I do now?
I know at a minimum I misplayed my position. Easily could be much worse. Please don't hold back, I need as much honesty and support as I can get right now.
