Boston Dad in need of Help

[Accuray]

PS- hello Acc, how have you been?!

Hello AnotherStander! I've been good -- in a new relationship for over two years now, loving life!

Teppo I'm just going to reinforce what you've said and what AnotherStander has said, there's nothing you can do about the EA. Reading and tracking her text messages is the equivalent of punching yourself in the face which you will eventually figure out. Best not to look, and to enforce that by cutting off whatever access you have.

I'm also in Boston, and I can tell you that in MA it doesn't matter at all. She could have sex on your kitchen table in front of the town and you could be perfectly faithful and it wouldn't make any difference at all in a divorce.

A divorce in MA consists of a child custody agreement and a financial settlement. The only thing that would impact the custody agreement would be if one parent could be proven to be unfit, and infidelity doesn't count. The financial settlement consists of alimony, child support, and division of your assets. Every lawyer I spoke to said that everyone ends up in the same place on asset division, which is about 50/50, and the only difference is how much money you spend fighting over it. Alimony is based on your income differential, the only think you need to know is that for marriages under 20 years alimony is for 80% of the duration of the marriage, and for over 20 years its for life, so if you're getting near the 20 year mark it can be a critical decision point.

If it comes to working through any of that I'm happy to share more details, but my only point in sharing it now is to tell you that there is no benefit to keeping track of what your wife is doing because it doesn't matter. The only thing that would matter is if she's doing things that would pose a danger to the children, like getting drunk or taking drugs and driving them around, or leaving them unattended overnight, etc.

My wife had a few EA's so I know exactly how devastating it is. She absolutely feels horribly guilty and she blames you for that, because what she really WANTS to do is enjoy her EA guilt-free.

For that reason, there is zero chance that she'll be able to hear you if you write her a letter or pour out your feelings to her. She'll just feel that you're making her responsible for your happiness and she won't like it at all.

There was a great quote I used to post here but it's been so long I can't find it. The gist of it was this -- your wife thinks she knows you 100%. She knows how you dress, how you think, what you like, what you don't like, how you will react to things etc. It's like you're playing a game of poker with her and you are showing her all of your cards, and she's not showing you any of hers.

Time to stop showing your cards. Time to make her guess what you're thinking and what you're going to do. Time to change things up to make her wonder if she knows you as well as she thinks. The best thing you can do right now is make her wonder.

People in affairs have a nice situation -- they're getting all of this excitement from their affair partner, but they also have a nice safety net with their left-behind-spouse who is longing away for them.

Time to pull out the net. Lean into this -- GIVE HER MORE SPACE THAN SHE IS ASKING FOR. Do not, under any circumstance, tell her how you feel or what you want.

Do you have the self-control to pull that off?

There was a person I referred to this board that I met through a friend, so I got to see him both online and in real life. His situation was similar to yours. He kept insisting that if he gave his wife space, he was giving her permission to leave the marriage, and if only she know how he felt she would surely reconsider, so he kept convincing himself that writing her heartfelt letters was okay.

So he would send her the letter and it would have no effect other than pushing her farther away, so then he would conclude that he just didn't do a good enough job expressing himself, so he needed to send one more letter, etc. etc. and he ended up "one more lettering" himself into a no-return situation.

I promise you, your wife knows how you feel. There is no need to tell her again. Instead, the very best thing you can do for your situation is to change things up and go the other way.

Regarding the MBR, I would tell your wife "I understand that you're involved with another man, and that you'd like a divorce. I'm not okay with being in an open marriage. Since you're the one that wants to leave, I'd like you to move out of the MBR and I plan to return to it beginning tonight."

How do you think that might change things?

If you do that, you're clearly not pursuing, begging or pleading right?

Acc