Ah, yes, more background. As far as I can tell there have been no practical consequences of the A. She has not lost her job, and she has told her friends (and the AP) as well as her immediate family that the divorce is a certainty, but nobody except us, the OM, the MC, and my parents know that she has been having an A. We are still sleeping in the same bed but there is no physical contact (it's a king-size bed). I no longer share dinner with her when she is at home, and she no longer wakes me up to talk to me in the morning, because she's busy online with OM the whole time. I'm not unpleasant to her when she is around, and when she engages conversation I respond, but I don't make it a point to begin or to continue a conversation, which means (because she's mainly focused on him, fixated on her computer screen) we barely even look at each other.
I did read DR/DB but I'd better re-read them.
He's her co-worker. She got to know him just as he was ending a 6-year relationship (She helped him move out). They began their affair by sending each other incredibly explicit sext fantasies about what they would want to do to each other. From the moment I found out, she refused to give him up, saying that because she'd spent the last seven years following me from place to place (true) and never found any real close friends in any of those places (also true) it was monstrously unfair for me to ask her to give him up now that she finally found a dear friend she could really relate to. No matter how it hurt me, she kept refusing to abandon him ("He cried when I suggested it... 'how can I lose my best friend?'").
But she adamantly refused to acknowledge that what she did was wrong. Ever. She still, to this day, denies that what she did and what she is doing is an affair. She denies that the sexting was an affair ("we were just playing a game, trying to embarrass each other"); she denies that her making out with him while I was out of town was an affair ("We didn't 'do anything'"). She didn't think that what she'd done was a PA, and she insisted that I should be okay with her wanting to keep pursuing a PA, because, as she told me, "I'm actually 'polyamorous'." (About which even the polyamorist-promoting websites and blogs say "no, that's BS, you're having an A.")
She denies now that all the time she spends with him is an EA; she denies that her kissing and snuggling with him is a PA. I believe she still thinks that I don't know that they tell each other "I love you", because she hides the chat screen whenever I come near her computer.
So from the start of the A, she has always been worried that she'd lose *him*, and told herself that she'd be willing to lose me. Now that I understand that affairs are addiction, I can see that in those first couple of weeks, when she actually considered giving him up but utterly fell apart when she did, I should have recognized this as withdrawal instead of thinking that it would be the kind thing to allow him to be her friend. (Hindsight and all.)
As for financial needs... when we moved to a new place 2.5 years ago, I had actually put my career on hold so that she could establish herself, and I have not yet found a new job (I have a highly specialized skill set, and my job search really should be international and not local). So the one income we have is hers. The most critical part of my GAL is to GAJ.
An ironic point is that, two weeks ago, as I was investigating the divorce process in our state, I discovered that many employers have strict rules against their employees having affairs. Fearful for her job (our only income), but not wanting her to know that I was looking into divorce law, I called her workplace HR.. anonymously, I thought, not thinking that I was calling from my own caller-identifiable phone. I was relieved to learn that the workplace had no such rule. But the receptionist is W's friend, and asked W why I had called HR. W then flew into an incensed rage-- she assumed I was trying to get her fired, and I didn't argue, assuming that she'd never believe me-- said that she was now committed to D, and began PA with the OM that night ("if you don't care about me, then I don't have to care about you").
So the OM is living alone, caught on the rebound, and perfectly happy to have this willing love partner with no strings attached.
