Point of no return

[SteveLW]

Hi,

I'm 44 and feel like there will.be no future relationship.

Yeah right. We all think that at one point. IN fact, what if she came back right now? Would you not be willing to forge a new relationship with her? Remember, your old relationship is dead and buried. If you R with her it has to be MR 2.0. A new beginning. Doing what you did before will just get you to BD #2!

So yes, the emotional side of you is saying "no future relationship". But the rational side of you knows that isn't true.

Thanks for the continued input - it all makes perfect sense in the rational brain but the illogical mind always takes over. The psychologist I just spoke to briefly reiterated your advice.

Sounds like you have a good psychologist.

Your illogical, emotional side cannot be trusted. Making decisions based on emotions is what your WAW/WW is doing right now. You need to be thinking clearly and cut through the "feelings". If you read other's threads here you will see that when you go on emotion, it usually never gets you to good decisions on action.

I'm just finding it so difficult to function right now and just need to sound off. The problem is my wife was my main connection, so doubly difficult to break free.

You are not unique. Most of us LBSs were overly attached to our WAS. That is why this is all so troubling and difficult. I like the way LH describes it, as being a loss of control. You are reacting to the loss of control that you thought you had over your life. Unfortunately, that "control" was built on the mistaken notion that you had control over your W too. So once you felt that loss of control over her, your entire life felt out of control.

Fact is DJH, you still have control over....yourself! You seem to keep missing that. Saying things like "sorry I COULDN'T follow advice". Oh you could, you chose not to. And look where it got you. And then "my wife was my main connection". Yeah, that is every loving husband ever. The problem isn't that she was your main connection, but that you were overly attached to that connection.

We live in an imperfect world DJH. Accident, disease, and decisions can all take our "main connection" out of our life at any moment. You have to be properly differentiated and healthy as individual to mourn the loss, but then go on with life!

I still struggle to get my head around her with someone else, even though it will continue regardless if what we both say. She has had an opportunity to put it on hold and hasn't taken it, so yes I need to recognise she is gone and isn't coming back.

So so hard.

More sense of loss of control. Let me ask you this: Do you love her enough to want her to be happy.....no matter what? Or are you so concerned about regaining control over your life that you want her, against her will, to disavow OM and come back to you. Even if that means she is a miserable prisoner in a situation she doesn't want to be in? And what kind of relationship would that even make for?!?

SO again, you get to decide. Let the thought of her with OM crush you and rattle you to the point where you are stuck and never able to move forward. Or realize that life is imperfect and that you need to live your best life, regardless of what anyone else (including your WAW) decides to do.