I'm so sorry dmbfan, it sounds like you handled it like a champ. I know your heart must be breaking, as much as we like to tell ourselves we're not getting hopes up, doesn't stop feeling something when you get kicked again.
Her asking how you could be so calm, still sounds like she's trying to read you. Let her...but I have a very good friend who went through a long R that never manifested...he would still pick up the phone and text her for years, just to see if she was paying attention still, not bc he wanted her back. Ego stroking. Boredom.
Never read more into it than this. Even my STBX, when he came home for the first day, he was shocked to see I'd taken our pictures down. He asked me why, as though he hadn't been telling me for weeks that our M was hopeless. He sounded irritated about it. I told him it was too painful to look at every day, (and I'd also told him the night before that I thought we could go slow)...he turned away with irritation, huffing and puffing. When they see evidence of our acceptance of the situation, it baffles and annoys them. How dare their caring rock be anything but a rock.
The dark question is a hard one, I think. I didn't have a healthy R to begin with, but when I went dark, my H got colder and rewrote history harder and harder. The theory goes that it's enough to bring them to their senses, self respect and time for yourself to heal, that LRT. I think with an affair situation, you have to though, otherwise you're cake eating and she's losing respect for you for still being on that end of the rope. My gut says that you go dark to her, but let her see glimpses of you being a man a fool would leave through admin, kids, social media, whatever.
Be the lighthouse I guess, just don't shine in her direction.
Mid 30's Psych-abusive M with violent tantrums from XH D 9/15; NC forever on
