Affair, no feelings...is there hope? IV

[44tries]

Sorry it didn't end the way you had hoped. She may have been in contact with the OM. The last time you had talked to her over the phone, she seemed pretty desperate to hold on to you. Didn't you get that impression when she was telling you she loved you and needed you? Now she comes home and can't be willing to at least try? That sounds suspicious to me.

I didn't except her to jump with joy. I figured she would throw up the "no attraction" thing. But something seems a bit "off". It could be that she is going through withdrawals of OM/A. When a WW is going through withdrawals, she doesn't feel much anything else but depression.

I agree, Sandi. I didn't want to be too hopeful, but I will admit something just seems to not add up. I definitely got the impression she didn't want to lose me and needed me. I guess that part still rang true yesterday. She said she was afraid to lose me. She cried every time she thought about it. But she said I am the one that has been there for three years, and I think she is more just afraid to be alone. She just kept saying how she didn't want to back to the same cycle, over and over again. The part that really felt off to me was the total distance. It's hard to explain, but in the times I have talked to her in the past couple weeks where she seemed desperate to hold onto me, I felt a closeness with her. I could feel her reaching for me. Maybe it's just because it was in person this time, but yesterday it was like she was closed.

Did she apology for the betrayal, the scretiveness, etc? Did she agree to be transparent?

Not nearly like she should have. I got the impression she didn't want to rehash all the apologies she gave during the confrontation. She would rather just run away and hope I never brought it up again. She was very uncomfortable. She doesn't even like me to see her cry (lots of stubborn pride there I think). She said she has been cheated on before and knows how it feels (okay, not by your SPOUSE). And she said she thought maybe right now I say I can move past it, but it's a roller coaster and I might not feel that way going forward. She said it adds another major issue on top of all the others. But did she say how sorry this made her? No. She agreed if we were going to re-commit she would be transparent. But she also said she felt like I would always be looking over her shoulder, suspicious, etc.

I don't know if I buy the idea about why she doesn't want to share the bed. I suspect she's still texting OM. Even after being caught, the urge will pull at her to contact him b/c she is addicted.

You may very well be right, I have no idea. We didn't talk a lot about the A itself. I didn't ask her why she ended it. But I still haven't seen any reason to not believe her...yet. She said the reason it was so hard to go NC with me the past week was because I was the one she was talking to about everything and that checks out with the feeling I got that the stuff she would tell me, she would have been telling him if they were talking. She didn't text at all yesterday. But who knows. Like I said, I was a little surprised about the bed issue. She hates sleeping in the spare room. But I can see why she would think coming back to the bed would signal she is re-committing.

I hope you told her you would not accept a "friendship" in place of the MR. From her actions, she is trying to stay in the same in-house separation status.

I clearly told her if I was staying here I saw no point other than to work on our MR. I told her I didn't want separate rooms or limbo. I sort of got conflicted about the ultimatum issue since she brought it up herself, but I stood firm on my thoughts that I didn't want in-house separation. Really, she agreed. She doesn't want that either. But she was very confusing because she doesn't want me gone but doesn't want in-house separation but doesn't want to re-commit. I think the answer is she doesn't know/can't face what she wants.

Did you agree with her about the co-dependent statement? Would she consider MC for co-dependent issues?

Yes, I think we probably both have some degree of co-dependency. That word is a bit hard to define but I think of it as the opposite of detachment. I think her points about losing independence and individuality rang true. And my willingness to stay no matter what was obviously a problem. I did bring up counseling or really any way to try to work on it and her answer was always the same--we are buried so deep, we went the wrong way for so long, etc that I don't know that it can be fixed. The feelings will still be there (or not be there). She said this several times, she doesn't buy the willingness over feelings stuff. She said "We can't just say starting at 8am tomorrow morning, we'll go and work on fixing all our issues." That's how she sees it.

Did expound on knowing she was a bully?

Not really. She cried and got quiet for a long time. I had laid out the parts of the boundary statement where I said she can't feel I owe her services, or wait on her hand and foot, or feel like her employee. That's when she got silent, cried, and said she knew she was a bully. Then she agreed it couldn't continue. But no real expounding. At a different point, she did talk about her frustration and resentment about the fact she works and didn't feel I did enough with the house. She admitted after a while she stopped caring about my schoolwork and whatever else I did because I have so many projects and she doesn't know which ones I will actually follow through on. She just knows the ones with the house got neglected. She also said I had improved a lot, but the resentment had built.

I sort of feel like the conversation sent me back to square one. I think her heart is definitely not in the right place. And she felt pushed into talking about stuff she wasn't ready to talk about. But I don't want limbo, so IDK what the right answer is. I want to have patience. But I don't know where to draw the line. And I don't know when to give up.