Wow, a guy takes a weekend and your sitch ends up on its ear!
Something told me to log in this morning and looks like my name was dropped a few times ... again I am the ghost of MLC future.
Here is the thing my friend, I seen Mach dropped in out of the blue, thats a good thing for you he really has a way of flipping your perspective from her to you and it helps tremendously. Listen to him, take your time and answer the hard questions after your reflection.
Remeber when I told you my MLCr could not work on herself and the M at the same time .. I still think this rings true in your case. When mine had that awakening period there was a good deal of shame and remorse for what she did to me, the M and the family, so far I am not picking up on that from your W, so I ask the same question Mach did .... what does reconciliation look like to you ... does it look like getting back together with your mate with the undertones of "I'm not getting physical with you" (Although she pulled that card previously to try to get you back in line didnt she?)
Seems she is very much still in the manipulation phase of all this Gordie, you are in the middle of the much and can not see what many of us can now spot from a mile away. She knows you love her and knows you want to save the M at all costs so she is saying what she thinks you want to hear. Mine too 'dumped OM' only thing was thats not what happened, like Mach alluded to in her case OM was tired of being grilled about his cheating and went back to his W momentarily (MLCr contacted his W in attempts to blow that up under the guise of 'telling her the truth about her husband') I was to close and blind to see that, after a cool off period they restarted the affair on secondary phones no one knew about.
She needs to arrive to a place where she realizes there is a good deal of trust that has been demolished, its up to her to meet your needs for reconciliation and its up to you to figure out what you need vs what you want.
I will tell you this, when the mini awakening happended for me I thought I could get over the affair and all the betrayal that came with it .... what I learned is I never really dealt with that I simply put it in a box and shelved it thinking I had gotten over it when what actually happened is while attempting to work on the M I had to pull those boxes down and deal with the true feelings .. I wanted to punish her for what she did and make her pay for her actions that broke me. She would not be able to say she was sorry enough to satisfy me in my mind back then .... Seeing the damage she did I think she realized she was not up for that kind of work to save the M, nor was she working on herself so back in the tunnel she went.
Figure out what you want Gordie ... take the 12 months to do this. I would not state you are 'exclusively dating' her ... I would leave that out, she needs to win back her husband and trust for what she has done but first must figure out why she went off the rails .... she has to arrive at this place without your help. You can be supportive of all this from afar, as you too work on yourself and sort out how you really feel vs being so focused on saving the M, just try to put that on the shelf for now as you both do some mirror work.
