"Walking out of the Valley" 2.0

[hoosjim]

Lots and lots of similarities I see between your sitch and mine and between our WWs. Unfortunately, by my understanding, your W's affair accelerated to become more involved than did mine... and I am a firm believer, based on personal experience and observation and from following situations on these boards, that the more involved/intimate an affair becomes, the harder and more time consuming it becomes for a WAS to "recover" (assuming she does ever recover). Right now your WW thinks she has found her "soulmate" and she is DEEP in Fantasyland. She gets her OM for the fantasy and the mystery and adventure without any of the "drag" and routine that is real life-- that part of her life is with you. You basically have no chance of R-ing under those circumstances. My MR survived and emerged in the timeframe it did only because my W never threw herself fully into the A... close but not quite... and because she remained tethered, at times only by a thread, to her faith and to the family ideals in which she was raised-- she really feared losing her boys, aged 17 and 18 at the time. Even then, two things had to happen without which she would never have come back:

1) She had to start seeing me as a man only a fool would leave (required major GALing and 180-ing...and i mean MAJOR...our MR was characterized by severe neglect and me having become a complete slug, with the additional challenge of my W being an extremely attractive/desirable woman-- she is 50 and still looks a hot 30-- with alot of options besides me), and

2) She had to fear losing me and our family.

Your W is not close to experiencing either of those things, imho. And she won't, until you do the requisite work on yourself.

When you say she is "staying with a friend out of town", I'm assuming you mean that she is or likely is seeing OM?