Awkward situation

[EDF]

Absolutely not. It's like a car wreck...you may be in the right, but you still want to avoid wrecks at all costs.

I don't mean to offend anyone,but to put this a bit bluntly, I'm looking for experience advice from someone who has some insight into a scenario like this and is NOT separated or filing for divorce. This is a divorce busting site, yet it seems the majority of people on this board are not succeeding at stopping their divorces.

I get the "desire to avoid wrecks at all costs", but to continue the car analogy I think sometimes a collision is unavoidable... like you're going downhill with no brakes... sometimes the decision is not to crash or not crash, but to crash in as controlled a way as possible before things build up too much speed. People and relationships can heal.

Some situations are just messed up, and you're not going to find a perfect way out of it without taking/causing some damage no matter what you do. Your best bet is to control what you can control (your own actions, and how you respond to other people's actions) and use that to help mitigate the harm.

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Regarding the advice thing, I'm no expert, and I'm still working the process like everyone else, but for what it's worth I am in a pretty positive place at the moment so wanted to weigh in to express support for the DB principles and the advice you've been getting.

My wife was in an EA she was trying to explore further - she had asked for an open relationship and kept passively aggressively threatening separation/divorce. She was very deceptive and disrespectful. It was a rollercoaster applying the DB principles, but a few weeks ago she sent a NC email we wrote together, and we've been spending a ton of time together since then and I often feel like now she's the one pursuing me.

I can't guarantee that she won't cheat again. I can't guarantee that I will be able to completely overcome what she did. But I feel optimistic about my future, regardless of whether it ends up being (hopefully) with her or without her.

As my situation has improved I've definitely been spending less time on the boards, and less time updating my own thread and I think that's definitely a recurring theme and a big part of the reason the forums can seem overweighted with people "not succeeding at stopping their divorces".

I guess the big question is aside from telling or not telling my sister, is there anything else I should be doing in dealing with my wife? .... My wife and I get along great in daily interactions, but she swears she will never want to work on our relationship, get close to me, or love me again. When asked what her plans are if things continue the way they are, she simply responds with an I don't know.

I don't have any silver bullet advice for you, but standard DB principles and Sandi's rules continue to apply here.

E.G. Don't believe anything she says; don't have R talks; don't pursue; get your balls back. (This is an ongoing process for us "nice" guys.)

I've seen several people ask you about what your 180s are, and what your GAL activities are but I haven't seen much of a response. What are you doing to be the best Tate you can be? If you can't find time for you why should your wife?

Also you mentioned a "disorder" helping cause your marital problems - what's the status there? Is this still ongoing? What are you doing to manage that?

I will point out that I strongly agree that the WW has no chance of having feelings re-emerge for the LBS while they are still disrespecting them. Right now it seems to me like you're so afraid of making your wife mad, so afraid of things getting worse, that it's getting in the way of you applying the DB principles properly, and preventing you from effectively setting/enforcing boundaries and standing up for yourself. My WW reacted poorly when I stood up for myself and got in the way of her cake eating, but they were necessary steps along the way to where I am now. My WW would have been much happier at the time if I had stayed a doormat, but I had different goals.