Where I focus on charity and prayer

[DifRent]

Thanks, NDY... I don't know. I feel like maybe I employed some of the suggested strategies a little poorly in the beginning, and she's pulled away from me and towards the OW in response. I have "snooped" mostly in plain sight... in an account to which I have access, but I confess I've also read text messages. Mostly, they are teenage-like "sext" messages, and they don't bother me, because they are stupid and juvenile and embarrassing. I mean... they see each other every freaking night. What's the need to text about this stuff in between?

The W and I spent the first five months of our relationship apart as she was working overseas, and with the exception of maybe one somewhat heated and desperate Skype conversation, we never did that sort of thing. We talked about things that had meaning, and substance... relationship building conversation, not sex. WW and OW? Well, I won't repeat the nonsense I've seen!

As far as this current situation... if things don't work out between us, they don't. I can't even imagine being with the woman my W has become anyway.

But I don't want to have miscalculated making a particular move in such a way that it contributes to or makes impossible genuine reconciliation at some point. Too much time vested, and even too much money vested with a DB coach.

I wish I could ignore her, but the OW is an unconscionable human being who couldn't find an appropriate single person to date, so she saw an opportunity in my W's vulnerability and pounced. I can see in retrospect how she lined things up to her advantage from the moment she met us... in MARCH... to destroy our family and take what she wanted. It enrages me... which does me no good, but it is what it is.

My W is just as culpable, of course - and none of it should matter. I am supposed to focus on ME, I know this!

But... forgive me. I'm slogging through dark times here, like all of us. It's just that I might be dealing with more than most... the kids moving out (coming home to their empty room today was very distressing), not having a "job" because I no longer work in our business, losing my wife, my best friend, my home, the whole future I imagined. Yeah, it's not the best PMA. But...

At the divorce group tonight, the leader began with a prayer from a book. And the prayer noted that when people are widowed, it's a completely different story: people bring casseroles, they want you to cry on their shoulders, you are given time and space to grieve. Why isn't it the same when our spouses leave us? And isn't even worse? Because when a spouse dies, s/he didn't leave you on purpose. You weren't rejected. Another person didn't come into the picture and steal your spouse away...

I am trying to be strong. All you good folks here are helpful, to be sure. But really... it would have been easier if she had died. I'd be two months into the grieving process by now, and there would have been closure. This? Wow... could not have ever imagined how awful THIS could be.


Edit - merged your threads so you still have 20 more posts in this one - Cadet