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

[hoosjim]

So, this afternoon, we have a previously-scheduled MC session via Skype. This is the last one we currently have scheduled, though MC has urged us to keep scheduling regular appointments and to schedule at least one "intensive" (2-4 hours) in-office every 4-6 weeks. I am sure that will come up again today as today is our last one on her calendar.

I am seeking input on how I should be thinking of approaching this session, and what issues, if any, I should be bringing up, while keeping in the back of my mind that it is Christmas, a week-long family trip to see both our families looms starting the 26th for the ensuing week, and what effect me dropping too much of a bomb right now would have on everything. So, that is issue 1:

1) In general Should I just soft-peddle this session, play it passive, validate when she talks, and basically keep all my cards hidden for now? If not, how much should I open up about and to what extent? MC, FWIW, has preached and continues to preach full and open honesty at all times, including about what we are feeling and, in general, I am feeling very, very turmoiled and very, very "not safe" right now in this relationship. I have heard input ranging from "bring it up after christmas and tell her I won't work on this if it is not working towards an intimate/sexual marriage" to "don't say anything, just pull back based on your concerns and stop scheduling MC sessions". There is a lot of stuff on my mind including:

2) The recent bout of sleeping apart, when she spent four of six nights on the sofa claiming she was just tired and fell asleep and was too lazy/tired to come upstairs, which bout only ended after I mentioned to her that it concerned me because that had been a dynamic leading up to our recent problems-- either of us finding excuses to sleep outside of the MBR. This relates also to

3) Her talking about "not being able to see us as being intimate, even though she is willing to work towards that". FWIW this was discussed previously and she says she only meant that from "where she was standing now, it was very hard for her to see that happening, even as she understood from what MC said that it is possible." She remains scared that "we will put in the time on that and keep trying but that it won't happen."

4) Her offhand comments on a couple of occasions that, in essence, indicates she sees herself as the kind of person who wants to do some things contrary to "what others think is proper".

5) Related, seemingly, to "4", and a separate issue in itself that we already discussed at LW's MC session, is her intentional visit to a clothing store that is in the same strip mall as OM's favorite pub, on a day he was fairly likely to be there. As a reminder, she told me she was going there, I told her I didn't think it was a good idea, and she went anyway (and told me later), saying she wanted to "show that she could do it" and "didn't need to be afraid of going places."

6) Her seeming discomforture in recent months in church, her failure to go to confession or communion since the advent of the A, and her increased willingness to skip mass. This seems to me to be a rebellion thing, given her fairly strict catholic upbringing, as well as a likely overhang from her affair guilt. (she's always had a difficult time admitting mistakes/failures--as an example took her almost three years to get up the guts to go to confession after a terminated pregnancy in college).

7) Failure to put back on wedding ring-- I have not yet broached this subject with her.

8) Nearly two hour shopping trip she took out of the house two weekends back without her phone (which she knows I can track and volunteered awhile back to enable tracking on). She came back with bags and receipts from three different stores that probably didn't allow her time for any shenanigans but... I have no way of knowing for sure, and very unlike her to go anywhere without her phone.

9) She's had a couple of get-togethers with her WW bff, none really monitored by me, though the one time I did some checking up and am pretty sure given the circs that she just saw bff for dinner. At any rate, every time she gets together with bff, she comes away a little distant, a little more moody. As a reminder, bff is a VERY wayward woman, engaged in an EMA and constantly trumpeting how "she's never been happier", how she and my W were denied happiness for so long, and how "sometimes you just have to pick you"

10) Two recent discoveries of facts concerning her A with Om that I did not previously know about and which I find troubling: First, we were talking after LW's MC session about who knew about what, and I decried the fact that her bff's AP (who is a frat brother and former friend of both mine and of bff's STBXH) knew from bff about our situation and about her R with OM-- W tells me, with certainty, "Oh, he doesn't know, bff hasn't told him..." Which I know for a fact to be a falsehood because a) my own best friend told me that bff's AP told him he knew about it and b) During one of my surveillance phases months ago I overheard bff tell my W that "it's still weird for AP to see pictures of you together with OM" (and not with me-- remember, AP and I were frat bros and friends and he has a long history of seeing me and my W together). I am also pretty sure my BF told me that AP told him he had seen pics of my W and OM. I said nothing at the time my W said "he doesn't know" but... it bothers me. This is in the past and she is supposed to be able to be honest with me about that kind of thing.

11) Second recent discovery about the A is that picture of flowers posted as W's background photo on FB was, in fact, a picture of flowers OM had sent her AT HER OFFICE! (Brazen SOB.) I had suspected this to be the case, though W had previously maintained they were flowers sent to another coworker that she just thought were very pretty and reminded her of Hawaii. When she took the picture down off of her front page and replaced it with a shot of our boys in August, I thought of that as a potentially good sign (if, in fact, the flowers had been from OM.) Well, she confirmed to me LW that those flowers had in fact been sent to her by OM. This did NOT, however, reinforce my feelings that taking the pic down was a "Good sign". Rather, it made me mad (and has been making me increasingly mad) that she left it up as her FB front page for an entire month after we had our big "reveal" and supposed commitment to work on "us" on July 23rd. She will say she uninstalled FB from her phone and did not go on for a lengthy period of time... but she was definitely back on before 8/23 when the pic came down. (she did unfriend and block OM and his friends, and gave me her FB password.) Also, the picture, while taken down, is still in her FB photo archive.

12) I have suspicions about a couple of pieces of jewelry from earlier this year that she still has and wears, but nothing concrete. My MC said I should bring this up to W and discuss my concerns (but this MC thinks we should bring up and discuss everything because "secrets are bad.") I even have suspicions about a necklace she has been wearing-- nothing fancy, just a silver ring bisected by a silver chain-- that showed up a couple of weeks back around the time she had an unsupervised evening outing with bff. I think she says she picked it up at CVS or a discount store (which she does quite frequently with costume jewelry) but... she literally has not taken the thing off, even to sleep, in two weeks. I told her I "really liked it" right after she got it and a few days later but... I sincerely doubt she's wearing it 24/7 for that reason.

13) The two "new data points" in 11 and 12, above, along with the MC's urging for "full honesty" and my insistence to W a while back that she be honest and not tell me any falsehoods about the A, are making me want to revisit the beach trip over July 4 weekend. That was before we entered the intensive counseling phase on week of 7/23 and before my W cut things off with OM, and, so, is "covered" as prior misbehavior BUT... the fact that there is pretty much no way she and bff did NOT hang out with OM during that trip but yet denied, two or three times, that there was any contact continues to really, really bother me. She and bff both had a very close relationship, in my wife's case nearly daily contact for a time, with OM, and that beach trip had been planned since last December. There is no way that OM did not know they were going to be there and no way they did not know Om would be there (which he was, a mere three blocks down the boardwalk-- stupid SOB posted a pic on FB of himself standing outside of a well known beach bar there on that weekend.) It borders on the impossible to think that they did not at some point meet up and it pretty much is impossible to think that W did not at least know Om was going to be there when she left early from our family vacation at a nearby shore destination to go have her three day "girls weekend" with bff and another friend. Yet she denies all knowledge, at least as of the last time this was brought up a couple of months back.

Maybe I'm just obsessing about some of this but, dammit, I want the frigging decks cleared. If we are going to move forward we cant have these things overhanging from the past. And dishonesty or burying it or ignoring it ain't gonna help. We also gotta act like we are married if we are going to BE married and try to re-establish that relationship. If you go into something planning to fail... chances are you're going to fail.

A lot of this stuff amounts to "not acting like we're married", which is probably how I would couch it. Thoughts? Bring any of this up? None of it? Lay low, wait until new year and bring some or all of it then? Just chuck it all, play dumb and quiet during MC today and then go dark and let her figure it out?



Oh, and how could I forget:

14) The "kiss incident". Which, oddly, doesn't tick me off that much about her. I think I even understand why she said what she said and I don't think she was necessarily playing any games with me, BUT... the unreturned kiss I found very, very, very off-turning. It was a BIG turnoff for me. So much so that I did not even find myself attracted to her for a couple of days (and she is a very physically attractive woman and I have a VERY normal male libido these days). That REALLY whigged me out a bit, because I thought I would always be attracted to her no matter what. What I felt those days really troubled me and made me feel very hollow and empty, and has continued to trouble me a since then, though I once again feel an attraction towards the woman. This whole angle of it is something that I did not reveal nor discuss.