Thanks for your response and your thoughts. I’m going to address your points in reverse order.
Whatever inappropriate contact was occurring between my W and my “friend” ended around the time we began our physical separation in April ’04. I know she had some innocuous email contact in July, but then nothing since that time.
My personal belief regarding the ultimate repair of our relationship mirrors your own. I appreciate your honest comments on this subject. I do not think that true repair or rebuilding can occur while a third party is also intimately involved. My personal choice to defer (notice I said defer, not ignore) a confronting regarding her actions is based upon my near certain belief that no further contact exists between my W and my former friend.
I’ll take a page from Jenny’s book of analogies: at the time of my separation I viewed my marriage like a damn that had been severely eroded over time and whose very foundation was in danger of imminent collapse. Had I confronted my W, particularly early in this journey, it almost certainly, in my mind, would have washed away the rest of the damn and we would be divorced by now. Instead, I chose to see whether I could shore up the foundation sufficiently before choosing to confront my W about the EA. Undoubtedly this confrontation will cause some further damage to the damn but hopefully the foundation can withstand such damage now that it could not have withstood before.
Unfortunately, because no one else knows of the affair, we all are still invited to many of the same events by mutual friends. Being forced to ostracize myself (and my W) from many of these events so that the three of us are not there at the same time is one of the things I have hated most.
As to the cohabitation, the goal of the “sleepovers” is to act as a bridge from separation back toward living together. I completely agree that much of the work in our relationship cannot truly occur until we are both living under the same roof. There is, however, a reluctance on the part of my W to return to cohabitation too quickly. She fears that she would not be strong enough to put our daughters through a second separation and divorce and that she would be “trapped” if we were to get back together and things were to return to the point they were at before. I must also admit that I am not prepared to return to cohabitation until the confrontation over the affair has occurred.
Finally, I second honey’s request for a bit of elaboration on some of the general statements you made in your earlier response if that is something you, or MrsNOP, would be comfortable doing.
I concur with your general statements, as do many self-help books, about altering your focus so that you were not ignoring doing things that were important to MrsNOP and by making sure that your interests included your wife’s needs. Did she come right out and give you a list?
I know that all relationships are different and that my mileage may very, but are there a couple of specifics you would be wiling to share? B
