You sound great :-) My guess is that SO is trying to reassure you that he is not with OW without communicating that directly...
Anyway, please pardon me while I vent a bit... After a very long absence, I've been around here too much watching people bang their heads against the wall and it is taking its toll on me. Did you ever know someone, maybe in elementary school, maybe in a job, that *really* wanted to be great friends with you, but you didn't want to be that close to them? This person would have been OK as an acquaintance, maybe someone to go out with after work for a drink occassionally, but was not a person that you wanted to have a heart to heart convo with, ever. This person seemed to need you, seemed a little clingly, a little pathetic and very sad. Even after they quit asking you to do stuff all the freaking time, they always looked up expectantly as you made your way toward the door for lunch. You could always perceive the slight hurt in their eyes when they overheard what you did with friends over the weekend. This person was always just waiting for you to adopt them as a close friend. This person did sweet things for you without putting any demands on you -- bringing you a cookie, telling you about a good airfare to someplace you want to visit, offering to dogsit when you went on vacation, getting angry on your behalf when your boss snarled at you... Do you remember the cloying suffocation you felt just being around this person? The stress of having to deal with this person's emotional neediness day to day? Sure, they weren't asking you to do stuff all the time anymore, but you could *feel* their desperate desire for a pal? Ugggghhhh... Exhausting. Then there is the anger and resentment that comes from having to live with this unwanted burden. The funny thing is, the person would really have been OK and you can see why some other folks in the office have no problem with that person as an occassional after work drink buddy. If only the person would back off and sincerely quit being the best friend in waiting, you'd probably be fine with them. But NO ONE likes someone who insists on standing in a more intimate R with them than they want with that person.
So many people here insist on playing the loyal committed spouse offering unwavering love and support which totally ignores the WAS's desire to have a less intimate R with that person. WAS's no longer WANT a husband-wife R with the LBS, yet the LBS's, mired in denial continue to thrust it upon them, pretty much guaranteeing the demise of their M and a lack of progress on themselves.
To really respect someone's feelings that is pushing you away, you need to give them at least as much distance as they are taking from you. Probably more to give them decent breathing room. This doesn't require closing the door on your M or having an A. It requires getting on with your own life and being responsible by making sure it will be a good life for you regardless of what happens to your M so that you aren't needy and dependent with respect to having the M in your life. Otherwise, you are like that annoying, cloying, person in the office who suffocates you by jumping up to get coffee everytime you do.
Anyway, enough. There is no reason for me to post this on your thread NM -- I think that you are doing a wonderful job of not chasing the distancer so he has to go farther to get the space he wants. You are also doing a wonderful job backing off so that he can come closer without getting uncomfortable. I'm just fed up the last few days watching people chase their tails, or better, watching dogs chase cats thinking that's the secret of getting along with cats. In truth, it is exceedingly frustrating because some things become so obvious and it is painful watching people hurt themselves. And, I'm pretty impatient these days, probably thyroid stuff, so my tolerance is about shot for watching people shoot themselves in the foot and then proceed to shoot the other foot because they somehow think it won't damage them the second time.
Oh, then, of course, there is the enabling that goes on by the cheerleading squad on these boards because the cheerleaders are stuck in the very same place and are really very excited to see someone who might actually figure out how to shoot themselves in the foot correctly
So, I'm putting my steel-toed shoes on and stepping back. But, I'll still be around some...
