OK, this may not be what you need to hear right now, but I felt this way on my sitch and watched it with Pommy too.
If there was not a shadow of a doubt that he loved and wanted to be with AP, he would already have been there, with her. Now. But he’s not. He’s living in a home with you, vacillating between you and her. He is telling you it’s because of the girls, or because he wants to support you, or because he wants the two of you to decide when and how the marriage ends. But the reality is that he can’t make up his mind because he loves both of you. And wants what both of you have to offer him. Which is crazy and fantastical, which he knows deep down, so he is putting you in an untenable situation so YOU can decide for HIM.
So, don’t.
Move forward with your own plan b (D), arm yourself with all your options, empower yourself with pathways a, b and c lined up emotionally, psychically, and physically so you can pull the trigger for any of them on your own terms. Pivot the power into your own hands with whatever tools necessary.
Then wait. Because I may be innocent and naive and a fool for love, but I believe that if it is truly over, he will take whatever steps necessary to end it and move on to his new partner. He wouldn’t NEED you as his BFF. He wouldn’t care what you think or how you two navigate co-parenting and whatever conscious uncoupling fantasy dream he has. He would be out and it would have already have happened. FFS, it’s been nearly 3 years!!! That’s probably longer than you two dated before you got married. He has had AMPLE time to GTFO on your marriage and make a happy family of two with OW. He wants your blessing because he isn’t sure of his choice. If he was, he wouldn’t need you to tell him so.
H and I have had some intense conversations over the past 12 hours. And the resounding message is that because I refused to believe, acknowledge or buy the ‘new’ him he was trying to sell me, cracks started to appear in his fantastical facade. And as those cracks got bigger, the truth of his feelings for me and the life we had built together started to shine through. For him, internally. Which eventually led to him realizing what a terrible mistake he was making, not for me or the kids, but for him personally.
I was not a perfect DBer. I begged and cried and reasoned with every ounce of my psycho-analytical prowess. But according to H, what changed it for him was feeling me detach over the past few weeks, giving him the space to feel everything (instead of him fighting my logic) and truly recognizing that the decision was up to him and only he could calculate his personal loss. And more importantly, that I was going to move forward with D on my own timeline, that I wasn’t going to wait any longer for his ‘come to Jesus’ moment.
So, stay true to you. Hold the line, create the boundaries and stay firm in your resolve to 1) not facilitate or approve of his exit; 2) that you will NOT be friends with him or AP post-divorce; 3) that the collateral damage is ALL on him for ever more; 4) that you have a limit on what you can take as a sane human and that he is precariously close to the edge; and 5) that you will not tolerate any discussion about his feelings towards AP ever, ever, ever.
