Been perusing this forum for about a week after checking out DR from my local library and then ordering my own copy. I have greatly benefited from the advice and stories on here. If I may delve into my own situation...
Background: married almost 17 years; together for two prior to getting hitched. Wife and I have three sons (14, 8, 5) along with W's daughter (21) and son (18) from her previous marriage, whom I raised with her as my stepchildren.
We've had ups and downs in our marriage but never anything I imagined would have us looking at divorce. The first chink in the armor (for me, in my head) came in November, when W asked me to fix something with her computer. Not being especially tech savvy myself, I simply tried a restart. When the screen came to life, W immediately rushed across the kitchen in a panic and grabbed the computer away from me, hustling off to the bedroom. It all happened too fast for me to realize what was going on or make out what was on the screen. Clearly something was awry. I finally got out of her that it was a Facebook Messenger screen where she had simply been talking to a male friend. In hindsight, this was clearly an EA, the duration of which I honestly don't know.
We fought about that for a few days; if I recall, she later came up to me the night after it happened and tearfully said she hadn't meant to hurt me. By and large, I let it go, as nothing seemed off at the time. At some point thereafter (unfortunately the precise timeline eludes me) she became sneaky and like a bulldog with her phone. I also noticed way later that she had stopped tagging me in Facebook family photos (something she had done religiously) the first week in December.
I noticed some distance forming between us in February and she barely acknowledged my birthday. During this time, she was taking a few online classes to attain another degree, and she would be holed up in the basement area of our home for hours at a time after the kids were put to bed. I began going to bed before her, something that was previously rare. We also stopped watching tv shows together at night. In other words, she had ample opportunity to get fully neck deep in this EA.
Sometime in March I started getting onto her about suspicious dips into the bathroom that took way longer than they should, accusing her of texting "the guy." One thing about W is that she is not a good liar. I mean, obviously she's able to be duplicitous enough to have this EA going under me, but her body language and facial expression will reveal subterfuge. I knew then that whatever was going on appeared to still be a thing. Unlike SteveLW, whose threads have been invaluable to me (especially with all the posters who chimed in), I don't know specifics - is it one guy all this time? One EA that petered out and another that sprang up? Nudes? Sexting? In my mind, it's been one man consistently and I should probably assume the worst about the content.
Late March or April, W started seeing a counselor under the guise of working on lifelong confidence issues. Has this been a thing with her? Sure. But it also became clear that she was looking for affirmation that I had been a poor husband, to get some air under her wings to perhaps leave the marriage. I had been asking her to let me attend a session to "work on the marriage" as this counselor presumably did both IC and MC. Finally, on Good Friday in April, W admitted to me after a session that she "wasn't the same person" and still loved and cared about me but didn't quite feel the same.
I predictably tried to pull out all the stops (basically doing everything wrong from a DB standpoint). I hounded her about the EA, unfortunately not getting anything. A few female co-workers openly advocated for me to grab W's phone out of her hands when she had it unlocked, but I viewed that as a bridge too far. W would constantly tell me to cool my jets about D talk and that she was "conflicted." I started my own IC in April and that has definitely helped, though I'd say DR and what I've read on this forum have helped more.
Here are a few current nuggets before I post this:
* W has been very attuned to her appearance for a few months, running daily, fussing about gray hair on top of her head and coloring it frequently, getting her nails done (something she never cared about before) and finally - having breast augmentation scheduled for December. She's spun this as a positive for me, but I'm of course leery of a D taking place at some point after this. I think the youthful appearance wannabe thing goes with a MLC, but is this always automatically linked to being on the prowl for other men and/or monkeybranching?
* D talk is not on the front burner but W has been searching for a better-paying job (I know back from snooping that she's told friends she wants to be more financially secure before she tries anything)
* We're starting MC next week, but we both know it might not necessarily be as for a band-aid. My well-meaning therapist suggested I push for it as a way of gaining "clarity" before I was aware of DR and these boards. W finally acquiesced to attending. To be honest, one of my main questions is how to play this session when it rolls around next week
* W has definitely expressed cold feet to friends and to me about forging ahead with D, but you know, "Trust nothing they say and 50 percent of what they do." I know she was recently enamored by the plan of two divorcing college friends of hers - they will rent an apartment and rotate who's at the house with the children.
Any feedback is immensely appreciated! Will post more details as they come to me.
