1st time - Do I detach or keep showing her my best

[TxHubby]

I did the same things you're doing for 2+ years. My wife and I are together today. Nothing is ever hopeless. I had emails saying she never wanted to be a wife and mother. Imagine how that feels? I read emails saying she never really loved me. Imagine how that feels when we had been married 26 years at the time and she had my heart 100%. Nothing is ever hopeless. The fog of affairs or MLC or whatever can be really powerful. Like going down the dark side of the force and trying to come back to the light (sorry for the nerdy reference but affair fog is like being seduced by the dark side of the force. It consumes our cheaters).

How long you should think about it is up to you. What does she really want? Is she still wayward or is that truly in the past and she wants to R? If there is any continuing "waywardness" then there is ZERO point to working on the R. I lasted over 2 years like this then gave up and filed for D. In a weird twist of fate it was that event that snapped her out of it. As she tells me it was like a bolt of lightening that hit her right in the head and cleared her mind instantly. She finally saw the situation from outside herself and was horrified at who she had become.

Will that work for everybody? Nope. We're all snowflakes. Sometimes we follow patterns (cheaters almost always follow the cheater's script) but we're also unique human beings. We can give you general advice and my own advice is always based strictly on my experience and my obsessive research on infidelity following my experience. Still, it's your unique situation and you have to decide what to do. Your fate is really in your hands. You can work with her and map out a strategy to a new, healthy R or you can cut your losses and move on. Either way, you WILL be ok. Tomorrow the sun will rise and you'll be OK. If you get to a point where you really know that you'll be fine either way (and I know we all lie to ourselves that we're at that point when we're not, I know I did) then you can really work on this situation productively and not while being led by a broken heart. Making life decisions from the perspective of a broken heart is unwise.


Edit - OK NOW you can start a new thread - Cadet