Thank you, Tenbook, Ripken8, and Bob723, for your kind thoughts-- they made that day considerably better.
The difference that I'm now noticing, with her moved out and my declining to contact her, is that I constantly feel her absence. When I taught my class on Monday nights, it had previously given me a feeling of "being bulletproof": strong and confident and happy. But now I discover that a large part of that feeling was a kind of defiance; I knew on those nights that I was coming home to an unfaithful wife, and my ego and self-confidence were set in opposition to that. Now that she's gone, I learn that the class is so absorbing that I forget about my situation while I'm there, but the moment it's done I am reminded that I'm heading home to no one. It's not a crushing despair but it is a disappointment that will not be banished.
Generally, though, I'm not ruminating as much as I had been because I've now said to her everything I wanted to say. Part of the reason why she wouldn't (or couldn't) look at me, when she came to get her stuff, is likely that in our text conversation prior I was able to express to her in a sober and logical way that, however I might've contributed to the original betrayal, the responsibility for our ongoing pain and this situation's outcome was entirely hers. That is, I explained that because the cause of our trouble was her behavior, anything I tried to do could only be aimed toward trying to control her behavior (which always made things worse) and, moreover, I showed how (using the facts of how our situation had progressed) that our love and marriage had been entirely unsalvageable as long as she refused to stop her affair. Further, I shifted responsibility for my own "hostility" onto her, by drawing an analogy to her cat; imagine, I said, what you would have to do to severely traumatize your cat. Now imagine that you did that every time she came within reach, and that you prevented her from escaping, and that you started doing it on purpose, remorselessly, and sometimes as deliberate punishment. Would you expect loving behavior from the cat? Would you expect anything other than claw, bite, and hiss? Lastly, I pointed out that the camping trip was adultery (not that the rest of her behavior isn't, but she still is denying that her behavior was ever even an affair).
Which leaves me with nothing left to say. Of course I didn't expect any of what I said to change her behavior-- she still sincerely believes that her life cannot be happy if she has to deny herself any part of her emotional and sexual relationship to OM-- but saying these things provided me with a satisfying release.
I didn't blame her. I talked about responsibility, rather than fault. But it is her fault. Our marriage really didn't have problems-- it wouldn't have been difficult to recover what had gone wrong, or even to fix and maintain it after her initial transgression. The problem was, and is, that W is incapable of solving problems, large or small. I have always been appalled and frustrated by this inability of hers. Whenever she had a problem that affected her emotionally, she would always allow that emotion to control her behavior until it subsided, even if that meant treating me miserably. Only after the emotion was gone would she allow herself to think rationally and to apologize. This case is no different. What's worse is that, when confronted with any problem, W would always make an initial attempt at solving it and then, if her first strategy failed, she would more likely angrily destroy whatever-it-was instead of considering a different approach. Again, she treated our situation the same way.
Which means now I'm dealing with the new status quo. Which means that your encouragements and expressions of support are muchly appreciated.
