I have to admit that busting this divorce I'm now facing seems exceedingly unlikely. There's a long, sad story about how her affair began (D-day was last November) and continued to where we are now, but the shortest version is that she insisted the whole time that I accept her "need" to have the affair. Every time my W and I appeared to reach a low point and start coming together again, she'd remind me that not only did she have no intention of stopping the affair but that once I again felt secure and confident in her love for me, she would want to take her affair further. That is, she literally wanted to make him a "second husband" and was demanding my assent. She was only amenable to reconciliation because of the expectation that I would eventually allow her to "explore" her affair partner. So of course, every time she'd remind me of that, I'd fall apart again, we'd love each other less, force each other still further away, and sink lower still.
A couple weeks ago she finally decided to give up the pretense and commit herself to the OM. She said then that she definitely wants a divorce and will not change her mind.
Since then, my perception of the entire situation has changed. I realize now that she is (and has been) addicted to this affair. She has gradually sacrificed first my happiness, then our love, and our marriage, and the home she worked six years to afford and two years to find, while risking her job and her professional reputation along the way, because she can not stand the possibility of losing the "high" she gets from him. She fell in love with him, yes, but the reason she has insisted on not giving him up is a chemical dependency and has been from the start.
So at this point it's not difficult for me to 180 because I finally see that there's no point in trying to connect with her. And I understand that the 180 is for me to get my own life back (and it's starting to help in that regard). But I don't see how she can miss me at all, because she's utterly consumed by the addiction.
The moment she wakes up, she hops online and begins chatting with him. She chats with him all the way through her morning commute. She works in the same office as him, and will either see him or send him e-mails during the day. After work, she either hooks up with him to spend the entire evening together (until 10 or 11) or chats with him the whole commute home and then, upon returning home, fires up the computer and chats with him until she goes to bed (staying up late with him, besides). On Saturdays and Sundays, she leaves the house at 9am to go to him and doesn't come back until midnight. Just yesterday, she was texting him "I love you" messages during our marriage-counseling session.
At this point, it still hurts terribly to be so abandoned by my W, but like I said it's easier to do 180 because I see so clearly how useless it is to try to communicate or connect with her.
But has anyone else lived through this while practicing 180? I don't see how she can possibly miss my presence in her life if her every waking thought and moment is dedicated to him, and I don't see why she would think about reconnecting with me when all her emotional and social needs are being met by him. Add to this the fact that she even now-- even now!-- refuses to admit that what she is doing with him is an affair, so she will not recognize that what she is doing is "bad" or "wrong".
So: What are some likely outcomes for this story? Is this a hopeless case, or have others here recovered from worse?
