Five months in ...

[late30s]

So the current situation is this. She stays at their apartment most nights of the week. She comes here and stays with me on Saturday nights. Once in a while she will come here on a Friday night as well. She typically leaves on Sunday evenings.

During her time here, we enjoy each other's company. The relationship talk gets shelved because we are busy doing other things. We have made frequent family trips to the mountains (we live in CO) and to the various national parks around here. It's a family outing and we all enjoy it.

Once Monday rolls around, it becomes an entirely different animal. Typically she finds some slight in our conversations. Sometimes they're real but most of the time it seems insane. The most recent one for example. She told me on Saturday that she and the OM had broken up, but she was still living there. She told me a bit about it but then we headed downtown with D12 and spent most of our day there. Afterwards, W and I went to the bar and had a couple of drinks. We came home and went to sleep. Sunday went much the same. Monday she was FURIOUS with me, because she had to break up with the OM and it was all my fault. She stayed in this mentality until Thursday. During this time (it's almost always from Mon-Thu) she wants nothing to do with me. The vast majority of our conversations are her spewing hatred at me and every little thing I do is under intense scrutiny.

As I write this, I find myself thinking that the wisest course of action would be to simply go dark during this time. I am going to try that next week. I think the both of us could use some time without the stress.

I have been tossing some ideas around in my head. On the one hand, I want her to see that her feelings matter to me, that was one of her major complaints when she left and I can see my part in it. So I keep the status quo so the door is open for me to show her that she matters. (In this area I feel like this is where I have needed to make a 180, she felt like I took her for granted and that her feelings didn't matter at all.)

On the other hand, I feel that I have been allowing to cake eat with me on the weekends. All the quality family time. There is a part of me that feels that I should become firm and tell her that I do love her and I am interested in repairing our marriage, but her A makes it impossible to do. So until the A is over, I can longer share that family time with her. If at some point she would like to have that aspect of my life with me, she'll need to prove to me that he is out of the picture.

At the moment, I feel like I should give the first option some time. I plan on moving soon. In the next 2-3 months, at which point I think it would be a good time to move to the second option.