Gabs..... breathe. You are in the middle of the hurricane and all the emotions are flooding you all at once, its suffocating ... feels like your chest will cave in or explode depending on the exhale or inhale motion .. I remember all to well.
You asked for some success stories, there are plenty here, might not be the successes you are looking for, its more about a broken individual who saved themselves from the rubble and came out stronger and better than ever.
However ... if you need a story where a man who found himself lost and broken after his wife left 'to get some space' ... ended up having an affair that lasted nearly 18 months in total, Found this forum and took to heart what the vets would advise (Not always perfectly) turned his situation, his life around...became a MUCH better man than when he entered into this ... was weeks away from signing final documents for divorce only to have his W stop and ask to work on the M, and currently have been doing so ... about a month or so away from moving back in with each other ... Then here ... I am one of those stories.
Reading along with your sitch ... it drips with FEAR ... and thats totally acceptable, given the time vested you have lost track of Gabs, the one who your W fell for and stayed with for that long. She did not all the sudden wake up and decide to bolt, I assure you ... this has been gradually going on for a bit .. and you will have to gradually change and become 'Gabs 2.0' as I have phrased my metamorphosis.
I get how painful this is .. I also remember how a$$ backwards the approach is. Thing is .. begging and pleading paints you as needy and pathetic, no woman is attracted to that .. nor can she respect that .... the key is to become a man she will respect, the painful part is letting her go a bit in order to do that. Someone here shared the visual of walking your dog on a long leash, he darts off into the woods and gets all tangled, by you holding on to that leash so tightly there is no escape ... let go of the leash and the dog would be able to run about and return ..... outside of referring to the W as a dog .. there is a good parallel here .... the tighter you hold on the faster and harder she will run.
You have to start the process, the trick now is not to save the M, its not to make things worse.
