WW ended EA 4 mos ago; trying to restore intimacy

[hoosjim]

Thanks, Sandi. Especially for the hugs. Need it on this roller coaster.

I understand being cautious not to appear paranoid, but you really should have asked about the jewelry. You are her H, and if she's clinging to anything sentimental from OM.....it has to go. It makes no difference how much she likes it, how expensive it may be, or how nice it looks on her. It will forever be an attachment to OM. She should place your concerns and need to feel safe in the MR before her friends, things, and certainly anything connected to OM.

I obviously should have asked this question at the point I had my suspicions, and I absolutely get and agree that all vestiges of relationship with OM (including gifts) have to go, but... Honest question: What is really the point of asking that question now? Either I am right, and one or both are gifts from OM (in which case she is being deceptive to me know and, presumably, would just lie and say she bought them for herself or the like), or I am wrong and she actually did buy them for herself or the like. Either way, her answer to me will be the same ""No, OM didn't buy them for me, I bought them for myself." I learn nothing and then she a) is tipped off that I am suspcicious if she is actually up to something, making it more likely she stays "underground" OR b) thinks I am becoming paranoid and focusing on the OM and the past instead of on advancing our MR.

I don't tell many people to do this, but I think you need to either put the surveillance up, or talk to her about your feelings.

I dont know that either of these will be worthwile, and its really starting to bug me, whig me out, and put me back in fight or flight mode. If I talk to her and she is being duplicitous, she's just going to lie. If she's not hiding anything, I come off as paranoid and insecure. As for surveillance, I have been spot checking her and the worst she has done is drive by OM's old hangout, and she kinda sorta told me about it afterward... some of things she says from time to time make me think she knows I can track the car if i want, and I know she knows i can track her phone since she voluntarily turned it back on. Would be a pretty simple matter for her to have a burner phone at her office on which she could talk to OM. She routinely stays late at work, for completely believable and verifiable reasons, but also could easily be meeting OM for periodic talks during some of that time. I simply have no means of finding out outside of hiring a PI or something-- my intel-gathering means are limited to phone tracking and phone records (both of which she knows about), car tracking (which she suspects, I think), and recording her conversations in the car (which I am pretty sure she has figured out or at least suspects based on what I had told her I know of her carryings on with OM as well as based on the fact that she doesn't seem to talk very much, if at all, on the phone in the car anymore unless it is to me. This is at least what the phone records say and the two spot checks I have done on her in recent weeks turned up no other calls, (Though I did find out that some calls coming into her phone in the car, as well as into her phone at her office, do not register on the call log-- possibly due to wi fi and or bluetooth issues.) Im really at a loss here and, for the most part, think I am stuck trusting her unless and until she seriously slips up or else drops the bomb on me again.

She HAS had a pullback the last couple of weeks. Fewer phone calls to me from work... she had been calling pretty much every day and sometimes several times... pulling away some when I reach out to her physically. But all of this could still be just the time needed to get over the A and rekindle feelings with me... I pretty much have no way of knowing and I am trapped in this paradigm of "we're working on it with the counselor", but that has tailed off a bit. Frustrating.