What should I be doing (Working toward D 9)

[Coconut]

Sandi can hit me with a 2x4 if she disagrees, but maybe your actions/reactions and interactions contributed to her not following the path you wanted. I am not putting the blame on you, but maybe you prevented conditions being ideal/more suited to her putting in the effort..

I think you are right in this, I think my inability to detach before we started trying to piece (partially due to how fast piecing seemed to occur), caused me to put extra pressure on her. Not much I can do about that now, but if I was able to do it over, I think I would have gone a lot slower in trying to rebuild and spent more time allowing us to deal with our individual feelings. But with that said, I don’t think anything would have worked without her going NC, I mean she claimed the whole time she didn’t care about him, talk to him or anything, but she went right back to him when we agreed to a Monogamous Separation (or maybe before then, I don’t know)

Don't burn your bridges. Maybe you will choose to never recross that bridge and maybe you will never even pass by that bridge,but just in case be mindful to not burn it!

This is good advice, and definitely worth encouraging, thank you.

I have no idea what you hoped to accomplish with that exchange. It doesn't show anything about trying to talk sense into anyone.

ME:
My personal belief (not saying I'm right just what I think) is that the emotional connection (or possibly mid life crises) was already happening, he was perusing you and you loved the attention, which is why I noticed a difference in you.. Then when I started showing you attention you felt guilty because you saw that I could change and we could work things out, but you wanted the high you got from him and the firefighting... You didn't want to stop the high, so you pushed me away thinking I wouldn't go anywhere and escalated the affair to increase the high.
And I'm not the only one that saw you change, I believe others asked you about what was going on with you
WW - No one has said anything to me about "Changes" they see in me. They've told you because everyone is trying come up with reasons for why we are going through this.
ME: So your BFF didn't ask you if there was someone at the station because u were acting weird
Or your mom didn't tell you she thought you might be going through a mid life crises
All before anyone knew about the affair

This was me trying to get her to see that she changed since she started the affair; she keeps claiming that the only changes are her getting in great shape and feeling good about herself and doesn’t think that she became a crappy mother or friend. Her Mom and BFF both addressed her changes before anyone knew about the A, and I was trying to get her to recognize that if the 2 closes people in her life saw it, then it was likely that she had (but she didn’t address).

What it shows is that if you start a conversation with a long-winded statement that talks down to the person you are communicating with, they will not be receptive to hearing what you are saying.

I was tired of her always saying it was a mistake, saw the article, thought it was a perfect way to say what I had tried but couldn’t find the right words, so I shared it. It was not meant to open a conversation, it was just me sharing what I felt was the perfect explanation as to why it was not a mistake, but so much more.

Neither of you seems to want a divorce, but at the moment you don't want to stay married enough to tolerate her continued participation in FF, and she doesn't want to stay married enou to quit FF.

I went the route of trying to make it work without her going NC, that was a bust and I won’t make that mistake again… NC or bust.

Continuing to engage in these kind of exchanges is doing no good. It makes it less likely she would give up FF to stay with you.

Agreed

Maybe this was just something you needed to get off your chest. IDK.
But it was not you expressing you wanted to save your M. You told her you have no love for her, only anger. dropping the FF for a man who says he doesn't even love her certainly isn't going to happen.

I’m’ past trying to save my M, I am only trying to figure out how to lose the anger. I realize those types of communications don’t help with that.

your conversation was a desperate attempt at trying to get her to admit all her wrong and show major remorse . I had a whole bunch of them. You know what they got me? More hurt, anger, and heartache.
I had to learn to live with never getting the apology or remorse I felt I deserved. Until I learned to love with that, I was anger and bitter. When I let all of that go, I found peace.

Wasn’t so much trying to get her to admit it, and definitely didn’t expect to see major remorse, I was just trying to get her to see it… and Yes, I know that I can’t convince her with logic. I will say though, that she does seem to be getting back to her old self with our S and some other things, but her logical processing of what has occurred and how it has affected soooo many people in her life still seems to be lacking. She still wants to believe that what I did had a big part in why we are getting divorced, even though she never seemed, acted or mentioned being sad/lonely/upset about how I was. In fact, I got a facebook memory yesterday that she sent me last August saying that I was the best husband she could ever imagine, I was her best friend and she will love me forever.. (this was 1 ½ years after she apparently started being unhappy). BTW, anyone have any idea how to block facebook memories?

I hope you find peace in your heart soon. For yourself. There is no one who can give you that except yourself.

I agree with having to let go of the anger, resentment etc. to find peace, that is what I’m working on now. I’m glad you’ve found your way there.

Also, I've been seeing for years on these boards a recurring theme......
wAS has complaints about M. Too much drinking, no attention , not being present. All very valid complaints lots of the time. It takes a lot to keep a M together..... LBS decides those complaints were valid and makes those changes.
LBS gets upset that those changes aren't immediately accepted with open arms. Because they usually aren't. Then there's the whole " I did what you asked, what's the problem?"
Unfortunately, damage done doesn't tAke a few months to undo. Changes take a long time to be trusted. This process is a rough one. LBS sometimes need to be patient beyond where humanly possible sometimes.
your dialogue had a lot to do with " well, I changed, you didn't see it" you wanted it to be accepted as soon as you were ready to show it.

She saw the changes I made immediately, she has told me so, of course with the standard but I didn’t believe they were for real or going to last.
I get that, no problem, gonna take time to prove I’ve changed. BUT, she told me and never changed her story that she started the AFFAIR after I made the changes, so when she turned it around and said that she had the affair because she wasn’t getting any affection from me I had to call her out. We all know how it works, you get the ILYBNILWY speech and immediately go the exact opposite way and push them away with all the attention you want to shower on them, but don’t tell me you weren’t getting the attention when you started the affair.