Letting go, finally

[JGuy]

Thanks for that perspective, Sandi.

My W has been supportive me continuing to explore a friendship with the OW, and she is trusting me to contain the attraction, but also seems to be taking the stance that she doesn't feel like she deserves to make a fuss about it, given all she has put me through. I have been playing my cards carefully, hoping that I can use this as an opportunity to demonstrate to my W how to deal with an attraction to someone else from a place of integrity.

In summary, I have been solidly acting from integrity, and I am happy about how I have handled it with the exception of being a bit naive about how attraction works. The basis of my friendship with the OW has to do with a curiosity about the strange spiritual connection we seem to have. As you recall, I met her in a dream before I ever met her in person, and then after I did meet her in person briefly, she approached me out of the blue one day to say that she had a vision about be, and this is how our friendship started. Really weird and hard to ignore! I think anyone in my shoes would probably be curious.

In a text conversation with the OW last weekend, she was the one to point out the elephant in the room by expressing her desire to be respectful of my W and not step on any toes. My W is a friend of hers too, since we both know her from our son's grade 1 class, who her daughter is also in. She really would be in a very awkward position if somehow a EA was to develop between us. I assured her that I am dedicated to focusing on rebuilding my M right now, and despite the fact the she is indeed attractive, I couldn't be a more monogamous guy. This set the ground for a platonic friendship and we were both glad to have that out of the way. It felt like we had established a safe container to explore this strange friendship without having to worry about crossing the line.

We hung out together one evening after that conversation and went much deeper into talking about life and all the things we are learning. It was very nice and going exactly how I had hoped it would, and I kept my W informed about every detail.

During all this time, my W has been continuing to inch closer and closer toward me. She has been kissing and hugging me again and she has expressed tentative interest in reconciling, but wants to take it slowly. There is a new quality to our R now that is much more transparent and raw. We are both much more present and it seems like the changes happening in us individually are electrifying our R and bringing some new life into it.

On Wednesday I had another text conversation with the OW. During that conversation, she again expressed her concern about wanting to remain respectful of my W. I reiterated what we had previously discussed about our intention of keeping things within a safe container, but I also apologized if I had in any way been unconsciously sending her mixed signals. I do, after all, really like her a lot, and despite my intention of keeping things platonic, my enthusiasm about wanting to get to know her more may be sending an unintended message. She ended up revealing that she had been feeling an attraction me as well, and in that moment I realized that I may have been too naive and idealistic in thinking that we could easily contain this side of things while exploring something that was "just a friendship". We both expressed our desire to keep our friendship going, but also acknowledged the danger of creating a mess, which neither of us want to do. She said that she really wanted to talk to my W about this, and I encouraged her to do so. She knew that I had been 100% transparent with my W, and I updated my W about this latest conversation so that she knew what was unfolding and the fact that the OW might talk to her.

On Friday I ran into the OW while dropping off our kids at school. She asked to talk to me and we had a brief conversation. She explained that she had seen my W the day before, but couldn't find a way to break through the awkwardness and bring up the topic. She was feeling really bad about it. I apologized for my part in creating this situation, intentional or not, and reiterated my good intentions. We discussed whether it might be good to keep our distance for awhile. It was sad, and I felt regretful that it may have been a mistake when I naively decided to be honest and tell her about the attraction in the first place.

Later that day, I talked to my W about it and told her about how bad the OW was feeling. I suggested that it may really help if she could talk to the OW and address the issue. My W did it! According to my W, they had a good conversation in which my W told the OW that she shouldn't worry or feel guilty about any of this, that my W trusts us to be respectful and would never want to see our friendship come to an end as a result of us worrying about this.

The OW texted me Friday evening to say that this really helped and she was feeling better. I felt relieved. I am still feeling sad about the fact that I may have to keep some distance from the OW for awhile. I thought I was doing a good job of keeping it safe, but I also doubt whether I was being realistic.

On the bright side, this experience has helped me to see that there will always be other wonderful fish in the sea, should things not work out in the end with my M. This gives me a bit more of a sense of security, so that while working to see if I can rebuild my M, I won't be as desperate or as likely to abandon myself due to a fear of being alone. If I'm going to rebuild a good M, then I need to be fearlessly true to myself.

Also on the bright side, I feel like I have done a decent job of setting an example for how one can deal with an attraction to an OW from a place of honesty and integrity. This has earned me some self-respect and I hope some respect from my W, too.

Things are still very unknown with my sitch. It's good news that my W is interested in reconciling, but I still have a lot of ambivalence and concerns about our R that weigh on me. I want to really focus on seeing what we can do to save the M and maintain high standards for myself, good boundaries etc. One of the things that I anticipate being very difficult for me is resisting the temptation to jump back into having sex again as soon as she wants to. The longing for physical intimacy is extremely strong in me after having had zero for 3.5 months and counting. I'm really not sure what boundaries I should maintain around that. It seems like my sitch is really shifting into reconciliation mode, so I would appreciate any advice there.