Completely lost, where am I?

[SteveLW]

It's been a couple of days and I owe you guys some updates.

Sunday

Nothing of any importance happened on Sunday. W worked all day. I did my daily work out and went shopping for supplies to work on the military footlocker I dug out of the garage the day prior. I also spent some time reading and had a long talk with step-D about some things she is going through.

W got off work, picked me up and we went out for some Mexican food. We had an OK time I guess. Mostly just some basic conversation about how her day went. She did mention that she wanted to try and meet with OM in a public place sometime this week to try and get some closure. I said, "I think that is a bad idea. It is only going to confuse the situation, but whatever." and then "I will also tell you that men in his position don't usually need any closure so it may not happen." That part of the convo was dropped and we went back to the useless banter as if it never happened.

We went home and she went to bed, I stay up another hour or two.

Monday

I spent most of the day working on work, and the rest of the time on sanding and priming the inside of the footlocker.
It turns out my prediction about OM not needing closure was correct. I am not sure what he texted her or when, but at some point I realized the W was completely bent. I just left her alone. For dinner I made some baked chicken, with garlic butter pasta and sweet corn. Just before dinner was ready the W told me she was super angry at the OM and wanted to know if we could go out after dinner to take her mind off of things. While I have zero sympathy for what she is going through, I had nothing else to do so I agreed. Since there really isn't much open around here to go do, we ended up at a pool hall (different than I went to on Friday). We had an pretty decent time, she had like 4 or 5 drinks and I had 2 beers, and we mainly just talked about the game.

OTW home, the W decided to open up a bit more and told me the OM had basically just thrown her away and didn't even want to talk to her or help her get any closure. I told her "This is kind of a sorry, not sorry situation. I hate to see you hurting, but it's hard to have much sympathy in this case." She said she understood my position.

We got home and the W asked me to read to her until she fell asleep and I did. When she started the tell tale heavy breathing and light snoring, I quit reading. As I tried to move she woke back up and asked me if I would just hold her. I did and eventually we were both asleep. While it was nice and hasn't happened in 15 years, I don't put any faith at all in this behavior and I am about to explain why.

My current thought processes

Last night I had a strange light bulb moment. Back when my wife was busy confessing what she had done with OM, one of those things was "making out". Last night is dawned on me that she hasn't done that with me in at least 15 years and we have only been married for 17 years and together 18.5. This means that my W probably hasn't been IN love with me and attracted to me for basically my WHOLE marriage. I am now starting to believe that the whole marriage was a lie to help maintain her comfort and lifestyle and that maybe she was more in love with the IDEA of being married and in love than she ever was with me. If she has the capacity to fake a marriage for 15+ years, how do I ever trust that what we end up with after DB'ing is actually real and not just another deep fake? I know Steve85 says look for consistency in behavior, but she was mostly consistent for 15 years that now seems fake.

So right now I am really struggling with this and if I am right, then do I even want to try to fix this? The DB'ing book says to think back to a time when things were right and try to do the same behaviors. I am no longer sure there was ever a point where this wasn't broken that we can even try to get back to. If there is it's so far back, I'll never remember it. I have downloaded the paperwork required to file for Divorce. I haven't started filling it out yet though. When we are doing things like reading to each other and holding each other as we have done a few times in the last weeks. It makes me want to stay albeit temporarily. At nearly all other times, I start thinking I would be better off finding someone that actually cares and isn't going to fake an entire marriage for convenience and comfort.

I feel like I am in the Matrix and being offered 2 pills. I can take the blue pill and I'll wake up in my bed, forgetting this ever happened, and can live the rest of my life in blissful ignorance that my whole marriage is nothing more than an elaborate construct designed to keep me just content enough to stick around but never never enough for true happiness or any feelings of being loved.

OR I can take the red pill, and I stay awake, file for divorce, and reenter the real world, cold and alone, and back at square one in my love life at age 46 with all new dating conventions and new tech, and all the wild weird crap that goes along with trying to find a new love interest and maybe even a new soulmate in the current times and I will get to see just how deep this rabbit hole goes.

So you are basing this red pill blue pill theory on the fact that she made out with OM but hasn't made out with you in 15 years?

Wow. That's thin.

If you took a poll of married couples married for 15+ years. What percentage of them would say they made-out in the last 15 years? My guess? The % of couples that said they had not made out in 15+ years would be in the high 90s. That means a lot of married couples are living a lie based on the "make out" litmus test.

You are over-analyzing things. And I also think you are a bit naive about how R work. Making out is a early R phase thing. Making out is something you do with a person you are all hot for but that you are not having sex with yet. It is a build-up. And sometimes it is a tool for foreplay. So the lower % of couples that would answer yes to that, on cross-examination would probably admit that their make-out sessions led to sex.

What you are doing is you are trying to reason in your mind how your W could have become this WW, cheating W. And the answer is probably a lot more simple than your entire marriage being a sham. These things are complex. LH likes to point out how unhappy 40-49 year-old adults are. And it makes sense too. Most people get married in their early to mid 20s. Have a couple of kids by time they are 30. By time they are 45 their kids are grown, moving out of the house, and the identity people knew leading up to that point is no longer the same. Am I a parent? A spouse? Am I ready for an empty nest? Is the person I've spent the last 20 years with still the person I fell in love with and married? What am I doing with the rest of my life? I am probably half way through my life, what am I going to do with the rest of it?

So your W's issues that have led you here may or may not have anything to do wtih you! You could have been a stepford husband, perfect in every way, and she may still have decided to step out on the marriage.

What I can tell you, is that the people that look back instead of forward are the ones that remain stuck where they are the longest. The Texan, my concern isn't that you will take the blue pill. Or the red pill. My concern is that you will sit looking at both of those pills trying to decide which one to take for the foreseeable future.