Emotional security is more of what I was thinking of, but I agree that she's probably not thinking about what that really means. People who get into affairs are typically using them like bandages to cover up internal issues of their own. I certainly feel your H is doing this. I don't understand how anyone can move into another relationship while they're still living with a spouse or not working to resolve existing roadblocks of their own. This is not inviting a positive outcome.
I do wonder when it will dawn on her that she can't trust him. Once the giddy excitement that she's 'won' him from me wears off and they're properly together I suppose. I have no idea if they've agreed to an open relationship at the minute whilst they are an ocean apart. I don't ask and he doesn't tell. He did admit that it's disrespectful to her to be trying it on with me though and that it's also unfair on me.
It's all about him and his selfish needs and wants. He is absolutely using the new relationship to mask his issues and is opting to run away rather than face up to problems with our marriage and more importantly problems within himself. I've told him this several times and he's admitted on many an occasion that he has serious issues.
Originally Posted by Sunflyer
Drawing from my own experience, I feel that my wife is not capable of feeling satisfaction in her life without a man. It's like an addiction. When her previous affair (with someone known to the whole family, including me) broke up, she seemed to feel down for several months, and then she met her current AP, and she jumped right back into the game.
I haven't been single since I was 19 and now I'm 45. One relationship of 3.5 years led straight into one of 23 years. No idea how to occupy myself so GAL is hard but I'm doing it. H left home at 22, straight into a shared house and was there a month before I'd also moved in and we started a relationship. So neither of us has ever lived alone, nor been solely responsible for a household. He will be moving out to a shared house again before eventually moving in with OW.
Originally Posted by Sunflyer
I'm using this time to work on healing myself, not just in terms of accepting that we are divorcing but also working on improving the faults and mistakes that I made in my marriage. I don't want these issues to interfere with any future relationship I might have. And I am making progress with the aid of DB and the people on here. She's got faults of her own but instead of taking a break and using this period of her life to address them, she's just going right into more relationships.
I've spent the last 7 months working on myself to understand where my marriage went wrong. I feel I now understand myself and my H far better than I ever did. Now it's time to learn to live alone, GAL and build my relationship with my kids. I think my H desperately needs time by himself to work on his long list of problems but I suspect he'll hang on at home as long as possible so that he moves straight from one surrogate parent to another.
Originally Posted by Sunflyer
Like I said, bandages. Not wanting to admit they need to work on themselves. And it sure sounds like your H has work to do.
There's no doubt about that. He admits it himself and I told him jumping from one relationship to the next will only make things worse for him as he'll take the same issues with him and create new ones. He knows I'm not pursuing a new relationship now, he's not seen me cry for a few days and I'm going out most nights. I told him I need to mourn the death of this relationship first and take time to decide what I want from life.
I came home tonight to find him asleep in my room. He got up and made a snack and then went back to my bed, stripping to his pants, like it was normal. We literally had a conversation on Monday morning about how that wasn't fair on me and he agreed to go back to the sofa. Last night I was simply too tired to set the boundaries again so I just climbed in, wrapped myself up and went to sleep.
