Thanks for your input, number lady! I'm pretty baffled by it all too. My W had a very emotionally deprived childhood and was the parent to her whole family for a long, long time. A family which suffered from physical abuse (not sexual) and infidelity. My W was an adult way before her time. When she began to become overwhelmed by all she had taken on in life during our M the OW became her surrogate Mom, nurturing her beyond anything reasonable. I was working my ass off to listen and pick up all the day to day tasks to help out. I was pretty wiped out too. I couldn't give her the deep emotional stuff she wanted (I don't think I really could of anyway, it was way too much) and the OW made it her calling in life to nursemaid my W's every desire (oops, bad choice of words). So, I think the A is really a very deep EA between two very needy individuals, one a chronic caregiver and the other a deeply emotionally needy person. The sexuality thing I don't think is that important. They spend practically no time alone together in places where they can "get it on" and when I told my W that the thought of them "together" made me ill, she looked at me in shock and said "We don't do that". So basically, who the hell knows what's going on. My W refuses counselling, which my T sees as a major worry, she won't deal with her depression and is a master at shutting out anything that might touch her emotionally about what she is doing. She just puts her head down and bulls straight ahead. It may well be that there is nothing I can do here but even on those darkest days I can't walk away. I won't put my kids through that kind of hell unless I just can't do it anymore. I also know that there were many things not right in our M, and I share that blame , but, as I told my W, I am 100% ready to make them right. I just need a willing partner. I took our M for granted believing in the "M is forever" thing and not responding to some of the issues she brought up. For example, the need to go out together regularly, to lose weight, to be romantic. To my credit many things she did complain about I did work on and the romance was one of them. But, by the time I decided she was right and got my ass in gear she had already closed the door (just forgot to mention it to me). She actually told me to stop because "It's just not you". She wanted better communication but refused to work on it with me "if you need me to help you than you just can't do it" No grey areas with this lady. Anything that required work together was just not worth doing because everything should be "spontaneous" and "natural" (her words) Anyway, thanks again number lady, just thinking of me is more than enough.
