I had announced to some friends here that I was thinking about moving on and filing for D.
So what made you decide to change your mind?
You wrote this but was their something else?
Quote:
She has given me enough space to debate to stay in our long term marriage or cut ties and try again with someone new at some point in the future. I turned 50 and have done a tone of soul searching about that. Unlike what she did to me I won't leave her in limbo for years. I've decided to stay. I have invested my life with this person, have wonderful kids with her, and although she plunged a huge dagger right square into the middle of my heart, I do still love her.
I really just weighed the pro's and con's of staying in my marriage vs D and moving forward in other directions. Where I struggled is that I didn't go half way on the 180/GAL/detach. I really did it. I had let her go in my heart because keeping her in there was killing me and she kept hurting me. What the experts don't always tell you is that if this works and your WS/WAS wants back in, as mine did, that you might not want them back. You might have detached to the point where you question if this is a person you even want to be with anymore. Especially when you find out they're not exactly the person you always thought they were. If anyone had ever said my wife would cheat on me I would have laughed in their face. If you had surveyed anyone who has ever known us who they thought would cheat they would have said me. Nobody would have said her yet I've never cheated and she did (big time).
Anyway, that's all MLC water under the bridge. She's "back". She's sane again. I can see it and feel it. I always knew she was cheating even when I didn't know. I was never an absentee husband. I felt something was off from the very start but trusted her. If she ever falls back into those ways I'd know it in a second and would walk.
Another bonus of programs like this is it gave me the strength that if anything like this happened again I'd walk in a second with head held high knowing I'll be just fine. The strength I've gained is seeded in the knowledge that I want my wife but I don't need her. I don't need anyone for my happiness, I can provide that for myself.
I have decades invested with her. Although we officially had our 30th anniversary last year I don't really count it because she ruined that marriage in the 26th year. I have yet to celebrate an anniversary.
I think it's worth growing old with her. She still has many qualities I love. She's smart, funny, kind (as funny as that is to say), compassionate (as funny as that is to say), and loyal (as funny as that is to say). She's no longer on a pedestal but maybe that was my fault in the first place for putting her on one. I always said she was a perfect wife. I used to joke with her that she was like Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. I'd tell her she has a pure soul, one of the purest I'd ever come across. In retrospect that was a lot for her to live up to. That's my fault and I accept it. She's just a person and none of us are perfect. She screwed up and almost ruined her life. She carries that now and I can see that it bothers her and probably always will.
In the end, I still love her and know that nobody is perfect and that I'd rather grow into an old geezer with her, caring for each other as our bodies eventually decay, and some day when either of us are on our death bed that the other's face will be the last thing we see as we leave this place.
That vision of the future was more appealing to me than a similar vision with someone else. I know I could find that if I wanted but I've realized I already have it so I'm staying. I'm all in and will never bring up her MLC/cheating again unless she does.
