I've been lurking for a while. Picked up DR at the suggestion of a couples counselor we saw for discernment counseling. I've been working my way through. But a little history. H 37, I'm 36. We've been together almost 7 years, married almost 3. We each have one D from previous relationships my D 17 his D 15. Both are with us full time. All of this happened so fast and so furious I've been in a whirlwind of crisis and grief. On Oct 5 of this year we were in the Caribbean for a wedding and our lives, our sex life, and our marriage seemed great. By Nov 5th I already knew we were in trouble. He had changed his hair. Decided to run a marathon. Started hitting the gym hard. We stopped being intimate physically and emotionally. He kept meeting w/ a friend I had never met before for lunch. Stopped contacting me during the work day. And then the phone bill came. Confronted him twice about his EA with proof. After weeks of trying to make me think I was crazy, insecure, if there was anything going on it would be my fault, blah, blah, blah, the usual cheaters check list. He finally admitted it after Thanksgiving, but flat out told me he wasn't going to stop. Things had been tense, but I had been able to keep home life fairly normal. We had a calm talk about our options after this. He was leaning toward divorce. I was leaning toward trying to save our marriage and keeping our family in tact. He was vehemently opposed to the suggestion of a structured open marriage (apparently he's allowed to do things I am not). But in the end he said he wanted to at least try and would agree to IC and MC. Then I caught him trying to meet OW in a very public place during Xmas shopping time. I definitely raged a bit. Not my finest hour, I'll admit that, but screaming at him how the bleep he thinks they're going to skip off into the sunset hand in hand when she's got someone at home waiting for her too was cathartic none the less. Things got much worse after that. I completely went dark and he just mirrored the behavior. I changed our counseling appointment to a discernment appointment. We didn't speak a work to each other until that day. Then fought over the session and everything else ever for 2 1/2 hours after. Tension was definitely increasing day by day. Dec 23rd, I broke down and gave in. After a lot of thinking told him I'll give him the space and time he needs, but he's on the couch until the OW stuff is over. And I won't be waiting him out forever. That I want my marriage and my family, but I'm done talking to a brick wall, he wants me he can let me know. That I didn't want to do another discernment appointment as we were both rushing to two different finish lines and neither one of us had really sat in our grief, anger, or this mess for very long for either of us to know what we really wanted. He would have to tell me where he was even if he was with her because him disappearing for hours when our kids aren't babies is difficult to explain away, and we could at least agree on a lie for the girls for now. He agreed with all of it. And we set a date to revisit our mess on Mar 1 if he doesn't engage a R talk before then.


Through some individual counseling and a really strong support system and, soooo much reading and research have been able to work on GAL like crazy, which was super hard as I've been dealing with clinical depression and grief for about a year. But it's helped so much with the anxiety this was causing. Through trial and error I've learned 'lovingly detaching' vs full on shut down has better results. As a pursuer I thought that kind of 180 is what needed to be done but I was so wrong. Being a cordial roommate thus far has been what's been working best. He was wonderful during Christmas week. Home. Kind. Engaged. Called me pet names. But Dec 30th he went completely silent again. Was unaccounted for 5ish hours. No clue where he was or who he was with on NYE but he came home. He always comes home. NYD he wanted to go to brunch as a family. Wanted to watch a movie and have a nice dinner at home as a family. They are talking less from what I can see. He switched from text to FB messaging at some point, because he thought that meant I won't know. But he doesn't realize I can see data usage in real time. If you use 68,000kb at work you're not streaming, it's pretty obvious what you're doing. Since the day after Christmas his data usage dropped dramatically. I've been able to be more clear headed and better at being receptive vs reactive when he does want to chat like we're pals. But honestly riding this roller coaster with him is exhausting. I don't know if this is like an early MLC, or a mental break, him just being selfish, or his immature way of acting out because of needs that weren't being met that I didn't know about. He over the course of this has said, he loves me but isn't in love with me, loves both me and the OW, has no romantic feelings for either of us, and will always love me but doesn't deserve me right now. I struggle daily with convincing myself that none of this is my fault, when I know my mother's passing and depression prior and post that death was hard for him. I know we didn't have a perfect marriage prior, but I thought it was good. Right now he's with my D shopping at the outlets, and they had lunch. He stopped by my mother's grave to see if they finally put in the head stone. I didn't ask him to do that. Yesterday he took the kids for dinner while I was at IC and was incredibly concerned if I had eaten or not. Every single day he's a different person and it's exhausting to know how high I need to make my walls that day. How long I need to keep the kids out of the house because I don't know where he is. If attempting to wait him out makes me seem like a doormat. GAL and a crap ton of self care keeps me out of my head most of the time. But man, lying in bed at night after a good day I start panicking about the next bad one. After a bad one I panicking that we'll never have another good one. I've told my best friend that this is like when I'm having a bad time with one of the girls. You know the hormonally charged teenagers. I don't know what will set him off that makes him check out, much less what makes him check back in. I don't know what kind of energy I'm going to get back no matter how measured I am. I feel like I'm white knuckling every day. And it's all so new I don't know what the new normal for us is, or if any of the decisions, actions and reactions I'm making are the right ones.