"Walking Out Of The Valley"

[AnotherStander]

I will have time to do plenty of reading. If anyone has any advice on some great reads please chime in? I am going to take advice given earlier about reading up on tough love, being an alpha male, attraction, and commanding respect.

My favorites:

DB (read it again)
Love Must Be Tough (good book on the distance/pursuit dynamic and "opening the cage door")
The Married Man Sex Life Primer (great book on alpha versus beta)
The Happiness Trap (good techniques on how to handle anger/ stress/ anxiety)
The 5 Love Languages (learn what you did wrong and how you can be better in the future)

I feel like I will eventually have to confront him and I will probably beat his butt. Will this feeling ever go away or will I always feel like I need to confront him?

Hopefully you will eventually come to realize that he is not the cause of your problems, he is a "result" of them. Your problems stem from your W going through something. It's mental and emotional, she's confused and in turmoil and making extremely poor decisions because of it. You are part of the fallout from that, so are your kids and believe it or not, so is OM. He's going through hell himself. Lost his position at the school, probably losing his W and family, and all for what? A temporary fling with your W? Believe me he's getting a heavy dose of karma without you needing to intervene. You go beat him up and what will happen- you'll likely end up in jail and you will be a disgrace to your kids. You might as well punch yourself in the face, it will hurt less in the long run and you won't get arrested for it.

You want a target to focus all your rage and anger on, and OM makes the perfect target. It's frankly not a lot different than your W looking for a target for all her rage and confusion and unhappiness and that target is YOU even though little to none of it is actually your fault. Fixating on OM is not going to help you and it's not going to bring your W out of the fog. Only time will do that.

So the letter was just a smoke screen for how she was feeling at the time.

Yes, this is predictable. Here is what I wrote to you after you posted about the letter:

"Yes, absolutely! Did she mean it? Yes, I'm sure she did. AT THAT MOMENT. Here's the problem, we're always talking about when they say something negative that it is just a reflection of how they feel at that moment in time and that it can and will change with time. However, the same can be said for expressions of remorse. She was drinking and crying and poured out her heart in a letter. Tomorrow she may be sneaking off to the bathroom to text OM, or sneak off to see him. You are right to be skeptical."

"Again, she felt that way at that moment. She's going to regress and contact OM again, I'd almost lay money on it. She's on her way down but hasn't hit bottom yet. Once she does hit bottom she may be all-in on the M."

See the bolded part in particular. You've got to be more patient. Until she hits bottom you've got to continue treating her with tough love because she is STILL wayward.

I can’t believe how her emotions and feelings change so quickly.

I can, it's not at all unusual. You've got to be the rock while she is flipping and flopping.