Help - boundaries. Am I doing th ewrong thing?

[Woke_Up]

You & your girlfriend are biological parents to a girl about 5 years old. Right?

Yep.

You work 14 hours a day while your girlfriend stays home with your girl, and does some part time work for your business. Right?

Yep, including the commute. I guess the real reason she is employed is that it is tax efficient, her main role is looking after the home / children.

Do you live in state where your relationship is or may be recognized as a common law marriage? (Search the web for info).

We live in the UK. Common law is not recognised, however having a child together does bring with it significant responsibilities.

Assuming you are not in a common law marriage, and therefore she has no direct claim on your money, you could decide that you don't want to materially support any part of her affair.

But I think this is where Sandi2's point is important. Cutting off the money might be the easiest action to take -- and it may well end up being the right action -- but you have to start with the idea of protecting your feelings and dignity, as opposed to trying to control your girlfriends behavior. I think there is a subtle but important difference.

I don't see an easy answer, when you have lives that are entangled, and explicit and implicit agreement exists to run a household together.[quote=ForGump]

That's exactly where I am at. I don't feel that it's MY money or anything like that. It's ours. One of the reasons I went self employed was to enable her not to have to go out to work and let her spend more time with our daughter, it's not that I don't value what she is doing or feel she isn't entitled to anything.

[quote=ForGump]Cutting off payment for one mode of communication (say, the Internet) while paying for her phone -- that feels punitive and controlling to me. If you stop paying for her phone but then you share money to pay for groceries, then what prevents her from just paying for the phone out of those funds? If so, then your actions just become a petty game.

I think that's where this will end up. We live in the countryside, so her cell phone reception isn't that good, but quite often it's good enough. This morning she just went onto Google Hangouts instead of Skype to carry on. I still have her google account on my phone from way back when this was first discovered and she set up an alternative account - I found it out. I should probably focus on not looking any more, but it's difficult to not want to know what she's up to.

I'm not sure what the right thing is, but I think you have to back up a little and look at the big picture. You and she have settled into an agreement that you work outside the home and bring in money, and she mostly stays home and takes care of your daughter, and that makes sense for a couple who love each other. But she *is* saying, through her affair, that she no longer wants to be your lover/partner. She's crossed the boundary of that mutually understood relationship by having this affair. What should you do to protect your feelings and dignity?

The million dollar question. How do I do anything that stops me acting as an enabler, when in reality everything is so intertwined. I'm sitting here half contemplating moving her stuff into the spare room and mine back into the MBR, but again, is that petty? Does it really protect my dignity? Certainly, it's a consequence and it will definitely cause friction.

Do I say we put the house up for sale? she would probably have to agree to this as it is in joint names anyway. And then, if we sell it, where does that leave us? Both in a worse position and living apart. I suspect at some point she will probably take a jaunt to the states to meet the EAP, and then decide whether she really likes him or not. She's talked about that in the past, needing to meet him to know if her feelings are real. I'm not sure a brief vacation is going to make any difference. I've also said that if she did that, then the R is over. I'm not going to be her 2nd choice or safety net, although I feel like I am still a bit of a safety net at the moment.

I am finding it difficult to think of a suitable consequence without me leaving the home. I have already decided that that would be a bad idea, as well as financially difficult - I would still have to pay for everything anyway.

Some thinking needed.