New M, new WAW

[SteveLW]

Wow Mako, I am reliving my past reading your post. First, welcome back, sorry you are hear and going through this. But also thank you for sharing your story. I hope we can help each other.

I first discovered MWD in 2005. That fall my W had an EA with an old flame from Jr. High. I noticed some strange behavior from her, staying up much later in the night, not coming to bed until after 2am. She always had an excuse, most of it related to work she was trying complete. One night I watched a sporting event, my favorite player of that sport was retiring and that event was his final event of career. I was so excited at how well he was playing I jumped out of bed (it was pretty late) ran down to the office in the house, and when I came through the door to share my excitement with my W, I noticed she switched windows on her computer really quickly and in a rush. At first I didn't think much of it, but I shared my excitement and returned to bed. At 4am that night I sat bolt upright in bed in a panic. I just had a dream she had cheated on me. When I woke up it woke her up and she asked me what was wrong. I told her about the dream and of course she assured me that things were fine. But I couldn't get the dream nor remembering her switch windows on her computer, and I started to slowing investigate. I found this strange name on her IM client, and questioned her. "He is an old friend. We IM sometimes. blah blah blah." I finally installed spy software on our computer and caught her red-handed.

She immediately said she didn't want to get a D, she wanted to save the marriage. She agreed to send him a cease-and-desist, block his IM account and end contact. (She did slip up one time after that but for the most part kept her agreement.) We slowly began to R. I became a human vacuum, sucking up everything I could read, watch and listen to related to saving your marriage, being a better husband, fixing intimacy issues in your MR (we were a SSM). But slowly over time I slipped back into my old habits of resentment, criticizing her, isolating myself, not sharing my life with her, etc. And it slowly began to simmer again. Then to boil. And finally the explosion came in the form of another EA in Dec. 2017, but this time her immediately saying she wanted a D.

Where I related so much to you was that I didn't learn from my first sitch. I bandaided it, buried it under the rug, and went back to living my life and slowly slipping back into the old ways that had worked their way into causing issue #1. The only different was I made the same mistake twice with the same woman, you've made with two different women.

If I'm honest with myself, the real bomb was in 2018 and the M was basically dead since then. If I'm really honest with myself: I probably wasn’t that far from being a WAH myself if not for the kids. In other words, the status quo was not working and if that’s all that’s left then D is the right thing to do.

That really hit home for me. Up until BD 12/23/2017 I was very close to walking away myself as well. That anger, bitterness, and resentment at our SSM, and having had two EAs myself in the 7 years prior to sitch #2 (both were very close to becoming full PAs before they ended), in those years I thought about D quite a lot, but just like you just couldn't imagine doing that to my daughter. So I stayed, was miserable, and was making her and my daughter miserable too.

When I confronted her about the EA in Dec 2017, I was very calm. Very firm. I had my gameplan down and was following it to a tee. Until she dropped "I don't want to be married anymore". Those words triggered in me the fight side of fight or flight. And I wasn't going down without a fight! For the next two days I was mopey, sad, clingy. I begged, cried, pleaded, reasoned, tried to use logic. But on day three I woke up and remembered DBing. I started reading and watching MWD and others that used the back off, remove all pressure, go out and get a life, become the best version of me I could, and detach approach. I started trying to implement that plan to the best of my ability and had some good DB days, some not so good DB days.

You are at that same point, and I feel for you because your story transported me right back to that last week of Dec, 2017. I know you are spinning, freaking out, followed by periods of calm and peace where you start thinking clearly, only to go back to the former again. It is an awful place to be. But you know what to do: GAL, 180s and detach. Focus on you and the kids, remove all pressure and pursuit from her. We are here to help, to listen, to support, to exhort. Hang in there, brother!

If you are still reading after all of that, at this point all you can do is DB!