W31, OM20, part II

[RBinBR]

OK, let me step back and explain myself a little better.

As a Southern Baptist, I believe that those who truly accept Christ as their Savior and Lord are saved from that moment forward. They are headed for Heaven and cannot "lose" their salvation. If a "Christian" turns to a life of sin, they will either ultimately repent of it, or they were not truly saved to begin with. The point of this is not to get into a theological debate on this board; it is to explain why my outlook on my sitch has changed.

Previous to the last few weeks, I truly believed my wife to be a Christian, and I therefore had confidence in her ultimate repentence. It could possibly have come years later, but I believed that it would almost certainly take place at the breakup of her relationship with OM (since I saw no long-term future for them together).

Recently, I have been thinking about her and her life and I am no longer convinced that she has ever made Jesus Christ the Lord of her life.

To me, that changes everything. First of all, because I want a Christian wife and want to raise my daughter in a Christian home. Secondly, it gives me far less confidence that she will change, because it changes the equation from her being a Christian ensnared in sin the last 7 1/2 months, to this being the person that she truly is.

All of that, put together with my recent recognition of my desire for more children and my W's lack of desire and/or ability to raise them, has dramatically altered my perception of my sitch. It has substantially lessened my desire to have her back, and it has substantially lessened my belief that she will come back.

Reading my earlier post again, I can see why you think I was angry, but that wasn't the case. I wasn't angry at all. I was explaining to my W why my perception of the sitch had changed and why she shouldn't be surprised if I decide to file. I felt that I owed her an explanation, because I had previously always reassured her that I was going to wait the full two years before a divorce, that I wasn't going to give up on her. She has previously found comfort in that, knowing that she won't be alone if and when her R with the OM ends.

So this was not said in the context of an angry outburst (though she certainly got angry and upset by my saying it). All this was stuff that I planned to say, and I'm very glad that I said it because it needed to be said.

As GH is fond of saying, the opposite of love is apathy, and that's kind of where I am right now. I really don't want her back for myself anymore. I would work on a reconciliation for the sake of my daugther, but it is no longer something that I am actively seeking for myself, if that makes sense.

I am, simply, done. I'm not going to file anytime soon, and I might not even file at all. I still might decide to just wait indefinitely. But I'm done trying to get her back and done worrying about it. My expectations of her ultimately returning to our M are completely gone.

None of that means that I'm going to quit working on myself. Quite the contrary. I'm more determined to do that than ever. But it does mean the end of acting "as if", and it does mean the end of being her best friend, it does mean the end of putting cologne on when I know that she is coming over, etc. That's why I said it was the end of DB'ing -- I'm no longer actively trying to bust a divorce.

I hope this made sense. Feel free to ask more questions.