Hoosjim's 9th: WW, A ended(?); "All-in" or not?

[hoosjim]

she is maintaining

Hi artista, thanks. I am not sure I take your meaning, here... Do you mean to say you think she is maintaining the affair? If so, what sorts of specific things do you think I should be on the lookout for? Definitive things, I mean, cuz right now I got nothing, BUT... I absolutely do NOT intend to be played the fool again. If she is still contacting OM I want to KNOW and cut the frigging cord. But, like I said, the two occasions I might normally have had reason to suspect something in the past couple of months I spot checked her and nothing going on... unless she is being extremely diligent and careful which is not at all her M.O. and which I do not think she would be capable of for more than a couple of weeks, tops. But... then again, I never thought she'd cheat in the first place. Anything's possible. Just wondering if your own experience might have any insight into what I should be on the lookout for.

FWIW, my own opinion is that I think it's more likely that she is not still in the original A with OM but ratheris still in some general state of "rebellion" which could and perhaps probably will lead to "OM2", etc. at some point in the future. Some of things she says, even to me, have this flavor to them-- "I think I'd have a really hard time living during that era because a lot of things they thought was the "proper" way to behave are not the way I want to behave"; All her talk about not wanting to always do what she's "supposed" to do (MC said "you have a choice, why not do something because you "choose" to rather than because you are "supposed to", to which W replied "yeah, but then I'd just be "choosing" to do it because I was supposed to"); Her uneasiness, almost defensiveness, in church, which was and is obviously a big "you should behave in a certain way" institution. This, of course, all consistent with the idea that she has a lot of issues of her own to work out (her idea that she is "all effed up") and that she really should be undergoing IC if our MR is to have any hope of reconciling.

The only thing that has softened a bit with her is the way she talks to friends (or at least this friend from work who is also friendly and fairly open/frank with me) about me and about the MR. In the midst of the A and early on when she was trying in fits and starts to end it (assuming she did), she had a lot of negative things to say about me, repeatedly said "the marriage has been over for a long time, even before OM", and couldn't stand to touch me or be touched me and couldn't see us together. Now, apparently, she speaks to friends very kindly of me, says she feels guilty for doing things (like encouraging my kiss) that hurt me or saying things in MC that she knows hurt me or are hard to hear, says she would like to be able to get back to a level of intimacy with me but is "afraid that she wont be able to", and is somewhat receptive to touch and somewhat more willing to be touched.

Is that "good enough?" I don't know... Not good enough now, certainly, to have the kind of MR I want, but... could it move in that direction from here? I don't know. I tend to think not without her working through her own issues/rebellion first, though. And not sure what gets us there. Maybe like you or someone else posted earlier that after Christmas I just gotta say "look, this isn't headed in the direction I want to go or towards the kind of relationship I need to have with you. I am attracted to you and I am not going to live in a sexless, low-to-no-intimacy marriage. If you cant commit to working towards that kind of relationship, and if you cant get into counseling for yourself and for your own issues as our MC has advised, I'm going to have to step back from the MC and the "working on the MR" effort."




Any other ideas on what behaviors I should expect from her or words I would want to hear from her to be able to believe that she is committed to a degree necessary to give us a realistic shot at success in reconciling?