I recently saw this excellent post by TeaEarlGrey aka The Captain over in Heavy's thread:
Originally Posted By: TeaEarlGrey
It will still take a long-time to recover, it feels like someone died, etc. I found, what I later found as the 1-2 months of recovery for every year in the relationship, to be generally true in my own life (I knew my wife for 11 years, married for seven when the affair was revealed). Although my fatherhood role changed immediately (and the way I identified with it), it took about nine months before I took those first real steps to identify myself in some other way to establish a revised self-identity. It was 19 months before I felt "recovered enough" to allow myself to be "available" for another relationship. And let me tell you that was really a lot harder than I expected particularly where children are involved.
And most importantly, never use the children as a wedge in the middle of a divorce simply because it has really, really toxic effects on their lives. If there was anything that my ex and I did correctly, it was that. We honored that and our son would tell you (as he has told me) that he knows that his life could have been so much worse just looking at some of his friends that went through divorce. As disruptive as it was on our lives, we worked pretty hard to keep the disruption of his life to a minimum. I had some context to operate with because my parents went through a fairly nasty divorce in that regard.
I think you can incorporate the disruption part in your email response to W.
You would want to focus on the following areas in your response:
-Reiterate that you do not want a D -Emphasize that a D isn't the best interests of S9 -You prefer the mediation route -You are saddened by HER choice to go to the D and L route -Simply confirm thst you've retained a L -Have W's L contact your L
No more discussing separation, D, or splitting up with W. Let your L handle all communications with W.
